Different philosophers pondered on Proust’s novel, including those who formulated a subtle hypothesis that philosophical thought that emerged from the novel went beyond the passages of philosophical character that could be found in Proust’s work. It is difficult to determine precisely Proust’s approach towards the novel which he, alternately, favors or disdains. A hypothesis has been formulated that In Search of Lost Time shapes the fiction in the style of Shelling’s and Schopenhauer’s philosophy; it is pointed out that the novelist developed a kind of rivalry between him and his second cousin Bergson. Proust received a thorough education in philosophy yet philosophy is only present in his novel in an anecdotal form. The debate that he starts between idealism and philosophical realism in his prose takes the form of a discussion between symbolism and naturalism. The reconstruction of Proust’s philosophical culture leads to the observation that it is, without a doubt, significantly influenced in different ways by two philosophers: Leibniz and Kant. Still, the writer does not admit to being impacted by any particular thinker; therefore, his narrator’s line of thought is constantly changing in such a way that any school of philosophical thought that appears in the novel is present only for a short while.
Does aesthetics of loss exist? What can we lose when we give vent to our poetic creative activity? These questions are posed by Apollinaire in the three verses of the Calligrammes collection, used to interpret the Alcools collection: "To lose/But to lose truly/ In order to make room for revelation." Accordingly, what does the experience of creative loss consist in? It is about emphasizing all this that can be lost in a poetic text in order to see that loss can become a creative process once it turns out to be impossible, and that poetic revelation can only take place in a situation when we lose something. Apollinaire was distrustful of all explicit poetic manifestos; therefore, the answers full of nuances should be sought in the dim light of Alcools and its interpretations.
The "Speech to the Dead" delivered by Hector in Jean Giraudoux's play The Trojan War Will Not Take Place (1935) exemplifies a cultural adaptation achieved by moving the relevance of the interwar period into the world of antiquity and the world of Homer. In 1935 Hector's speech expresses the protest of the whole generation against the First World War. But a closer look at this famous scene will demonstrate that Giraudoux actually defines the nature of the theatrical word which enables what is absent from the stage to appear on the stage, and which gets addressed to the unknown, mysterious interlocutors. Therefore the explication of these two tirades unveils a peculiar theory of the theatrical language.
In his novel cycle Á la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927), Marcel Proust takes up a long-lasting process of psychological analysis carried on in the first person. This person represents, in a way, human nature and the reader's thought as well. Therefore, it seems that the question of national stereotypes should not have found its place in this kind of work, in which the fundamental psychological project did not allow the author to caricature national particularisms. Yet, they do find their incarnations in the whole series of characters (Poznań archives enable us to show even the hidden source of one of them) in order to subject this stereotypical vision to analysis and more profound criticism. What is peculiar, however, is that in the final analysis, prejudices against foreign nations are positively re-assessed because they help to understand the nature of the novelist's vision and literary activity.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) debuted as a writer when the doctrine of symbolism was prevalent in the French literature. But his relationship with this contemporary trend is difficult to define. The reconstruction of historical and logical facts connected with this issue seems to indicate that Proust distanced himself from the poets and writers of symbolism; the word “symbol” itself would often be used in negative contexts in "In Search of Lost Time" which Proust started to write in 1908. At that time Proust was also impressed by the work of Émile Mâle entitled "L’Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France" (Religious Art of the 13th century in France, 1898). Thus, it is through the contact with architecture, more than with literature, that the author of "In Search of Lost Time" explores the notion of symbolism when, based on consciously adopted rules, he gives his work the exact structure of a cathedral.
The name of Jean Schlumberger. the founding member of «Nouvelle Revue Française», which appears at times in Marcel Proust's letters, illustrates well the possibilities that the writer's correspondence opens up for a researcher, who wants to recreate his line of reasoning and creative process. Jean Schlumberger and his cousin Gustave at first seem to appear in literary circles known to Proust as quite negative figures, whose views on almost every subject he did not share. Gradually, however, the author of La Recherche revises his stance and as a result of his contact with Schlumberger he rewrites different fragments of his novel cycle, especially one episode of Sodome et Gomorrhe and some theoretical passage of Temps retrouvé. Only the reference to the letters enables us to perceive the mysterious way leading from sociological surface to the depth of creative process.
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