Proust in Perspective: Visions and Revisions by Armine Kotin Mortimer , Katherine Kolb (review)

Abstract

iooo Reviews work in the construction of Anglosexuality: the masculine 'word' is combined with the 'feminine' image to create an 'androgynous imagetext' (p. 172), and thus a new language in which to express homosexual desire. Unfortunately, the study contains a number of typographical errors, especially in quotations. Some surprising misreadings also intrude, as when Eells claims that 'the only sexual act Proust's narrator admits to indulging in is "le plaisir solitaire"' (p. 29). Occasionally, too, one detects a loss of tautness in the argument: the relevance ofa par? ticular intertext to the formation of an Anglosexuality is, at times, only belatedly and tangentially established. None the less, the work has considerable interest and value fora wide readership, including specialists in Proust studies and Victorian literature, as well as those interested in the more general fields of intercultural and interaesthetic exchange. Cardiff University Margaret Topping Proust in Perspective: Visions and Revisions. Ed. by Armine Kotin Mortimer and Katherine Kolb. Urbanaand Chicago: University oflllinois Press. 2002. xii + 316 pp. $39-95- ISBN 0-252-02754-x. It is fitting,as Jean-Yves Tadie remarks in his foreword to this excellent collection of nineteen essays on Proust, that it should be published by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The university not only hosted the Proust 2000 symposium, which provides the springboard forthe collection, but was also the home institution of Philip Kolb, editor ofthe twenty-one-volume Correspondancede Marcel Proust (Paris: Plon, 1971-93). Indeed, Kolb's monumental research achievements are commemorated in the university's Kolb-Proust Archive. Fittingly,Luc Fraisse demonstrates in the incisive opening chapter that Kolb's work on the correspondence is simultaneously an exegesis of A la recherchedu tempsperdu. Fraisse, forwhom the correspondence is the Big Bang in the history ofProustian composition, demonstrates elegantly thejunction between epistolary and novelistic productivity and traces the transmutation of everyday occurrence into the 'bit of eternity' (p. 31) that is Proust's work. The role of chance and circumstance in Proust's composition ofthe Recherche is furtherexplored in a number of compelling contributions: Christine Cano reflectswith acute insight on how the arbitrary moment of death itselfbecomes a contribution to editorial process; and ifCano, through her analysis of the competing editions ofAlbertine disparue, ana? lyses the ontological status of writing and its editing, Nathalie Mauriac-Dyer's 'Gen? esis of Proust's "Ruine de Venise"' complements this. Thus Mauriac-Dyer illustrates how the thematics of cultural destruction that infiltratesMarcel's response to Venice finds an editorial correlative in the savage deletion of text practised late on by Proust, deletion that was to make possible the controversial, abbreviated version of Albertine disparue published by Grasset in 1987. There are important explorations of Germanophiliaand sociology by Jerome Cornette and Alberto Beretta Anguissolarespec? tively, and also of Proust's treatment of sexuality, Elisabeth Ladenson reflecting on 'Gilberte's Indecent Gesture' and Laurence Schehr analysing, through the encounters at Balbec between Marcel and Charlus, the latter's radar-like search for the ho? mosexual. In the area of aesthetics, Francoise Leriche proposes a striking twinning of Proust and Gaudi as a prelude to resituating the author of the Recherche within the Art Nouveau movement. Ruskin, who plays a key role in Leriche's reappraisal, likewise figures in excellent contributions by Diane Leonard and Sara Danius. But ifthe vol? ume conveys genuinely insightful 'visions and revisions', italso alerts us, through Antoine Compagnon's erudite reflectionon allusiveness in Proust, to the real potential for loss of critical insight. Arguing that allusiveness in the Recherche is regularly not spelt MLRy 98.4, 2003 1001 out by either author or narrator, Compagnon provides striking examples of how, for today's reader, much of the implicitness and assumption, especially in the representa? tion of homosexuality and Jewishness, risks becoming buried and lost. Compagnon's salutary reminder notwithstanding, Proust in Perspective is to be welcomed as a con? sistently impressive set of contributions that will stimulate furthercritical debate. Royal Holloway, University of London Edward Hughes Le Roman monologue: Montherlant auteur, narrateur, acteur. By Sabine Hillen. Paris: Lettres Modernes Minard. 2002. 212 pp. ISBN 2-85210-064-9. Critics of Montherlant's novels and theatre have tended to divide themselves into...