Marcel

(courtesy of wikipedia)The son of well-to-do bourgeois parents, Proust was born in Auteuil (the southern sector of Paris's then-rustic 16th arrondissement) at the home of his mother's uncle, two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. His birth took place during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and corresponds with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Much of In Search of Lost Time concerns the vast changes, most particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes, that occurred in France during the Third Republic and the fin de sicle.Proust's father, Achille Adrien Proust, was a famous doctor and epidemiologist, responsible for studying and attempting to remedy the causes and movements of cholera through Europe and Asia. He was the author of about 20 books on topics throughout medicine and hygiene, as well as countless articles; as such, he was a model to Marcel. Jeanne Clmence Weil, Proust's mother and the daughter of a rich and cultured Jewish family, was highly literate and well-read. Her letters demonstrate a well-developed sense of humor, and her command of English was sufficient for her to provide the necessary impetus to her son's later attempts to translate John Ruskin (Tadi).By the age of nine Proust had had his first serious asthma attack, and thereafter was considered by himself, his family and his friends a sickly child. Proust spent long holidays in the village of Illiers which became the model, when combined with aspects of the time he spent at his great-Uncle's house in Auteuil, for the fictional town of "Combray," where some of the most important scenes of In Search of Lost Time take place. (Illiers was renamed Illiers-Combray on the occasion of the Proust centenary celebrations).Despite his poor health, Proust served a year (1889-90) as an enlisted man in the French army, stationed at Coligny Caserne in Orlans, an experience that provided a lengthy episode in The Guermantes Way, volume three of his novel. As a young man Proust was a dilettante, and a successful social climber, whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of application to work. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an aesthete, contributed to his later troubles getting Swann's Way, the first volume of his huge novel, published.Proust was quite close with his mother, despite her wishes that he apply himself to some sort of useful work. In order to appease his father, who insisted that he pursue a career, Proust obtained a volunteer position at the Bibliothque Mazarine in the summer of 1896. After exerting considerable effort, he immediately obtained a sick leave which was to extend for several years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he didn't move from his parents' apartment until after both were dead (Tadi).Proust was homosexual, and is supposed to have had a long-running affair with pianist and composer Reynaldo Hahn. His life and family circle changed considerably in the first five years of the twentieth century. In February of 1903 Proust's brother Robert married and left the family apartment. His father died in September of the same year. Finally, and most crushingly, Proust's beloved mother died in September of 1905. In addition to the grief that attended his mother's death, Proust's life changed due to a very large inheritance (in today's terms, a principal of about $6 million, with a monthly income of about $15,000). His health throughout this period continued to deteriorate.Proust spent the last three years of his life largely confined to his bedroom, sleeping during the day and working at night to complete his novel. He died in 1922 and is buried in the Pre Lachaise cemetery in Paris.