Marcel Proust: genius and insomnia

Abstract

Marcel Proust is considered one the greatest novelists of all times. His life was characterised by a long list of diseases. We analyse an important illness suffered by Proust: insomnia. It began in childhood and continued throughout his life, worsening progressively, and leading to a complete reversal of the sleep–wake cycle in the last years of the novelist's life. Several factors may be involved in the pathogenesis of Proust's insomnia. The beginning of insomnia since childhood, its characteristics, and the lack of precipitating factors suggest a form of idiopathic insomnia. Psychological traits of his personality (severe anxiety and depression) may have played a central role in the onset of insomnia. Further factors such as asthma and intake of stimulating substances may have had an important role in the maintenance and worsening of his insomnia. This sleep disorder affected both the lifestyle and literary genius of Marcel Proust. Insomnia is the prominent figure in the first novel (“Swann's way”) of Proust's masterpieces entitled “In search of lost time,” in which the novelist begins his journey through involuntary memory starting from his insomnia.