Yourcenar, lectrice de Proust: de soi et d’autrui dans l’expérience littéraire

Abstract

This study attempts to identify the permanent relationship, made up of regular attention, admitted admiration, but also and contradictorily, of vehement moral criticism and intellectual distancing, that Yourcenar maintains with Proust throughout her work.This complex relationship is highlighted through the positions formulated by Yourcenar in Diagnostic de l’Europe (one of her first published texts), in her letters and interviews, in some of her works – Le dernier amour du prince Genghi, Denier du rêve, L’Œuvre au noir, Le Labyrinthe du monde – and unfinished fragments, to be included by her in a new edition that she was considering for Les Songes et les sorts.Through Yourcenar’s relationship to Proust, the aim of this study is to suggest, in the background, the always possible haunting experience that, to assert oneself, a writer may face in front of another, recognized creative and cultural model. A haunting experience that tells us a lot about the domain of literary creation.