From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Proust connu et inconnu

Louis Gautier-Vignal

Why we're reading this: It is in French, but it contains a direct testimony of someone who knew Proust. Not easy to find.
[close] It is in French, but it contains a direct testimony of someone who knew Proust. Not easy to find.

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Jun 25, 2013 Fionnuala added it

Shelves: biography, read-in-french, proust-and-related, non-fiction

Louis Gautier-Vignal met Proust for the first time in 1914 when Proust had already become a semi recluse. They were to meet up from time to time over the next five years, mostly in Proust's apartment late at night since he slept during the day, and sometimes for a late night supper/breakfast at the Ritz, the only restaurant which served food into the early hours of the morning. Although written many years later, this book is G-V's account of their conversations and his impressions of Proust's st ...more

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Jun 25, 2013 Manny rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-and-biography, life-is-proust, french

This virtually unknown little book was pointed out to me by Kalliope, who has done an impressive amount of background research in the course of the nearly-completed Year of Reading Proust. It has obvious flaws, but if you're another Proust fan it is pretty much irresistible. According to this page, Comte Louis Gautier-Vignal was born in 1888. He met Proust in 1913, when he was 25 and Proust 42. They saw a fair amount of each other for the next few years, and Gautier-Vignal got to know him very w This virtually unknown little book was pointed out to me by Kalliope, who has done an impressive amount of background research in the course of the nearly-completed Year of Reading Proust. It has obvious flaws, but if you're another Proust fan it is pretty much irresistible. According to this page, Comte Louis Gautier-Vignal was born in 1888. He met Proust in 1913, when he was 25 and Proust 42. They saw a fair amount of each other for the next few years, and Gautier-Vignal got to know him very well; rather better, as he frequently points out, than nearly all of Proust's official biographers. He published Proust connu et inconnu in 1976, when he was 88.

How did it get written? I don't know, and I wonder if anyone has more information. It's an uneven piece of work. There are some brilliant passages, but it wanders around and repeats itself; we are constantly being told that Proust never removed his overcoat even indoors, that he suffered from hay-fever, that his room was lined with dirty-looking cork to soundproof it. My guess is that the author had a bunch of notes which he'd been accumulating for most of his life; at some point when nearly all the people concerned were dead, he decided he could turn it into a book. I wish he'd done it earlier.

Gautier-Vignal is anything but objective about Proust. He gives us one anecdote after another about the great man's extreme oddity and lack of all common sense - my favorite was the time Proust came to visit him and had to be rescued by the concierge after getting trapped in the elevator. And then, completely straight-faced, he tells us that Proust was actually a pretty normal person, except for his habit of working by night and sleeping by day. He explains that there is no evidence to support the theory that Proust was gay, and brushes aside other people's claims with the retort that he knew Proust, and they didn't. This is undeniably true; it is, however, rather hard to read A la recherche and think of the author as straight.

But even if it's written by a highly unreliable narrator, the book is fascinating, and gives you all sorts of new angles on Proust. I must check out Stendhal's De l'amour, which is quoted several times. And, even more interestingly, he says that Proust was deeply influenced by Kant; they apparently used to discuss Kantian philosophy quite often. I've always thought that the books have a pronounced philosophical dimension, but few other people seem to agree. Unfortunately, he never gives you any real details.

When you think about the book that Gautier-Vignal could have written if he'd been a bit more organized, it's hard not to feel annoyed; even so, the one he ended up producing is very nice, and I'm sure it'll help me understand A la recherche better. Thank you for the recommendation, Kalliope!

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Wait a minute... why didn't I think of this before? (view spoiler)
...more

17 likes · Like · see review

Jul 14, 2013 Marcelita Swann marked it as to-read

Nov 10, 2013 Juniper marked it as to-read

Shelves: biography-and-memoir, literature, french, translate-pls

Mar 12, 2014 Jacob Ulrich marked it as to-read

Sep 29, 2015 Brian marked it as to-read

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