Proust and Journalism

In his strange polemic-cum-second novel attempt Contre Sainte-Beuve Proust writes as follows: "It is the imagined approving silences of this or the other reader that the journalist has in mind when he weighs his words and tries out their equivalence to his thoughts; and thus his work, composed with the unwitting collaboration of other people, is less personal."

Any journalist worth his or her salt would agree with the first part at least. One of the earliest lessons you learn in the trade is to keep a clear image of the reader in front of you at all times.  Words and phrases are indeed chosen with a view to evoking or provoking in the reader a certain response; this leads to the kind of creative shadow-boxing Proust describes. The latter part of his judgement is more questionable.

Of course, in making this charge, Proust was not out to be fair: he had Sainte-Beuve in his sights and was out to get him.  Since Sainte-Beuve's literary prolixity involved mostly journalism, this might mean that the latter got winged in the process.  Yet Proust himself was not averse to producing a few column' inches himself. Indeed, the same book Contre Sainte-Beuve describes well the thrill of first seeing your work in print, the strange fragmented sensation of savouring its multiplicitous appearance up and down the land.  But he makes clear that he is only a dilettante; he would not want to be thought one of the poor hacks of the ephemeral feuilletons.

Mostly this has to do with his high conception of literary endeavour.  Although it begins rather differently, Contre Sainte-Beuve turns into a disquisition on just what the primary characteristics of fine writing are.  Initially the work was intended as simply a rebuttal of Sainte-Beuve's belief that knowledge of the writer brought knowledge of his work, and that the latter was somehow encompassed by the former.  For Proust, with his belief in the transmuting and transcendental powers of art, this was anathema.  What is interesting in what could have been pure rant, is that not only does Proust move on to explain how he appreciates literature, he begins to hint at what his own variety will be.
 
The first few chapters of Contre Sainte-Beuve take the form of poetic impressions - which later turn up revamped and much expanded in A la recherche.  But what is even more significant is that the last chapter of this section, and the one which immediately precedes the criticism itself, is called simply "Talking to Mama". The critique itself turns out to be addressed to the dominating image of his mother.  In fact all of his writing, just as all of his life, revolved around this central figure.

A la recherche begins with the agony of Mama's denied kiss; it closes with a final evocation of the bell which signalled the departure of the guests and the approaching kiss.  As the last pages make clear, the whole mammoth opus is dedicated to salvaging the lost time and lost paradise of his childhood.  Proust, just like all good journalists, also wrote imagining the approving silences of his reader, but in his case there was only one: his mother. The result could hardly be more personal.

(30.6.86)

See also Moody Sonnets - Pensione Calcina

Index