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in search of details he would stitch into the fabric of his novel. He attended concerts and theatrical performances, including those of the ‘Ballets russes’, brought to Paris by Sergei Diaghilev. In addition to the sociological and intellectual inquisitiveness that could be sated in the boxes of the Opéra or in the dining rooms of the Ritz, at Albert le Cuziat’s male brothel Proust was also able to satisfy his libidinal curiosities. Le Cuziat’s establishment was a source of gossip, gratification and insights (sometimes voyeuristic ones) into the normally concealed workings of desire. From individuals like le Cuziat, the wide range of men who used his brothel and, as of 1917, Olivier Dabascat, the maître d’hôtel at the Ritz, Proust availed himself of a multiplicity of perspectives on the world that add a persuasive sense of depth and texture to the social landscapes of his novel.

In 1918, Proust was in the streets during a German bombing raid on Paris. Later that year he received further intimations of his mortality when he was struck briefly by facial paralysis and light aphasia (short spells of being unable to recognize language). The following year brought laryngitis but also long-awaited recognition in the form of the Goncourt Prize for Within a Budding Grove, published in June along with the NRF printing of Swann and a volume of collected shorter writings, Pastiches et mélanges. The new laureate, however, was struggling with the mundanity of moving house again. The building in boulevard Haussmann was sold to a bank and Proust had to move out. In October 1919 he moved to what would be his final residence at 44 rue Hamelin.

Proust’s ailments and his long-term enthusiasm for self-administering large quantities of barbiturates, caffeine and other substances had taken their toll on his body. His deteriorating eyesight and respiratory troubles slowed down his corrections to The Guermantes Way and although the award, in September 1920, of the Legion of Honour lifted his spirits he still worried about whether people would actually read his work. The Guermantes Way and the first part of Sodom and Gomorrah appeared between October 1920 and May 1921. The following month, feeble and pale from medication and insomnia, Proust ventured out to an exhibition of Dutch Masters where he saw Vermeer’s View of Delft, a painting he had last seen in the Hague in 1902. Some time between 1916 and 1922, he wrote the word ‘Fin’ [The End] at the foot of the page that brings the novel to its close. When this word was written, his single unstinting task was complete. ‘I’m no longer anxious’, he told Céleste Albaret, ‘my work can appear. I won’t have given my life for nothing.’6

The second part of Sodom and Gomorrah appeared in May 1922, and from about this time Proust’s diet consisted largely of ice cream and iced beer: it was all he could palate after having burnt his digestive tract taking insufficiently diluted dry adrenaline. Eventually he developed bronchitis, which in turn became pneumonia. On 18 November Proust died with his housekeeper and his brother at his side. The latter and Gaston Gallimard edited and published the novel’s remaining volumes, La Prisonnière [The Captive] (1923), Albertine disparue [The Fugitive] (1925) and Time Regained (1927).

The smooth-cheeked artist of Blanche’s painting was no more; on his deathbed Proust’s face was heavily bearded, the searching eyes now closed and darkly ringed. Existence for the artist was over, his form etched by Paul Helleu and photographed by Man Ray for posterity, their respective media pointing symbolically backwards and forwards to the old and new centuries to which Proust belonged. As for his work – the monstrous work that had taken so long to materialize, that tortured him, drained him of his vitality yet equally gave him purpose and fulfilment – life was just beginning.

Chapter 2 Contexts

Politics and society

Science, technology and medicine

Literature, philosophy and the arts

In Time Regained, after long illness and absence from society life, the Narrator returns to one