AND PROUST AND AMERICA PROUST The influenCE OF AmeriCan art, Culture and literature ON A la RECHERCHE DU tempS peRDU PROUST AMERICA MICHAEL MURPHY “It’s odd,” Proust wrote in 1910, “how in every genre, however different... there’s no literature that has a power over me comparable to English and American.” While recent studies of A la recherche du temps perdu have focused on Proust’s Anglomanie, this engaging and critical volume offers in the spirit of Proust’s admission the first comparative reading of his novel in the context of American art, literature, and culture. In doing so it takes issue with an aspect of Proustian criticism that looks AND to neutralize the presence of non-French influences in his work. Murphy shows how Proust’s novel is uniquely open to the many and varied American influences in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French society, and how the New World contributed AMERIC to the essential modernity of Proust’s depiction of a world undergoing rapid technological, political, economic, and sexual change. In addition to significant artistic figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and James McNeill Whistler, Proust and America investigates the presence in the book of the American neurologist George Beard and his concept of “American Nervousness.” What Proust captures is a culture in transition. In doing so he gives us a road map to what was in the process of becoming, with all its continuing implications, provocations, and reverberations, the American Way. A “An ambitious and original book… a work of comparative literature in the proper sense” Patrick McGuinness, University of Oxford MICHAEL MURPHY Michael Murphy is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Nottingham Trent University. He has written extensively on modernist fiction and contemporary poetry, and his critical books include Liverpool Writing: Essays and Interviews (co-edited with Deryn Rees-Jones, LUP, 2007). He is the author of two collections of poems, most recently Elsewhere (2003) and his poems are included in The New Irish Poets (ed. Selina Guinness, 2004). www.liverpool-unipress.co.uk Cover image: Paul Joseph Victor Dargaud, The Statue of Liberty, by Bartholdi, in the workshop of the Gayet foundry, Rue de Chazelles, before her departure for New York (1883), Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France, Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library Design by Emily Wilkinson MICHAEL MURPHY proust and america Proust.indd 1 23/11/2007 12:44:20 Proust.indd 2 23/11/2007 12:44:20 Proust and America Michael Murphy Liverpool University Press Proust.indd 3 23/11/2007 12:44:20 First published 2007 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2007 Michael Murphy The right of Michael Murphy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978–1–84631–114–7 cased Typeset by Carnegie Book Production Ltd, Lancaster Printed and bound in the European Union by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow Proust.indd 4 23/11/2007 12:44:20 Contents List of Plates vi Acknowledgments vii Notes on References and Abbreviations ix Introduction: The Spirit of Liberty 1 1 Le Côté de Nev’ York, or Marcel in America 16 2 The Impossible Possible Philosophers’ Man 64 3 A Bout de Souffle 112 4 Exquisite Corpses/Buried Texts 148 5 Proust’s Butterfly 195 Bibliography 242 Index 250 Proust.indd 5 23/11/2007 12:44:20 List of Plates The plates are reproduced between pages 212 and 213 1 James McNeill Whistler, Blue and Silver: Trouville (ca. 1865), 59.3 × 72.8 cm., oil on canvas, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1902.137a-b). 2 James McNeill Whistler, Design for wall decoration at Aubrey House (ca. 1873–74), 13.6 × 10.2 cm., charcoal and gouache on brown paper, photo © Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Birnie Philip Bequest. 3 James McNeill Whistler, Pink Note: The Novelette (early 1880s), 25.3 × 15.5 cm., watercolor on paper, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1902.137a–c). 4 Marcel Proust, Ressemblance de Karlich et d’Anatole Le Roy Beaulieu (1908), Lettres à Reynaldo Hahn (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), p. 163 © Éditions Gallimard. 5 James McNeill Whistler, Note in Green and Brown: Orlando at Coombe (1884), 14.8 × 9 cm., photo © Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Birnie Philip Bequest. 6 James McNeill Whistler, Design for a dress for Miss Cicely H.Alexander (1873), pen and brown ink on off-white laid paper, letter in album, 18.8 × 22.9cm., The British Museum, London (M.503). 7 James McNeill Whistler, Blanchissage à Cologne (1858), 15.1 × 9.8 cm., pencil on white paper, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1898.201). Proust.indd 6 23/11/2007 12:44:20 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for its generous award of a period of research leave that made the writing of this book possible. I am particularly grateful to the two anonymous AHRC assessors and Patrick McGuinness for supporting my application. My thanks, too, to Professor Kenneth Newport, Dr. Terry Phillips, and Ms. Lucy Kay at Liverpool Hope University for the award of several shorter periods of teaching relief. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Mike Glenday, whose advice at an early stage in the development of this book pointed me in the right direction. More recently, I am grateful to my new colleagues at Nottingham Trent University, in particular Dr. Lynne Hapgood, Professor Claire Jowitt, Professor Tim Youngs, Dr. Catherine Byron, and Mahendra Solanki for helping me to find my feet. Thanks are due to the editors of Women: a cultural review, European Journal of American Culture, and Comparative American Studies for permission to reprint material that appears in Chapters 2, 3 and 5. Last but not least, my gratitude to Anthony Cond, commissioning editor at Liverpool University Press, for his tireless enthusiasm and support. I first read Proust when I was nineteen, ostensibly employed as a Claims and Insurance clerk by a Merseyside bus company. The origins of Proust and America date back to 2000 and a conference paper I gave at the Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris. Over the past two decades, then, Proust has become an integral part of my reading and writing life. He is one of the family, and like all family members he has tested the goodwill and patience of many. For their generosity of spirit, sense of humor, offerings of food and wine, beds for the night, holiday homes-from-home, intellectual vigor, sound counsel, le grand crack, sagacity, and general willingness to listen, my heartfelt thanks are due to: Miriam Allott, Nick Benefield, Brenda Proust.indd 7 23/11/2007 12:44:20 viii proust and america Breen, Simon and Jenny Craske, Bob Hornby, Hester Jones, Paul Leahy, John and Pauline Lucas, Alison Mark, Terry and Gladys Murphy, Judith Palmer, Ralph Pite, David and Angela Rees-Jones, Maurice Riordan, Matt and Monika Simpson, Merilyn Smith, Alan Wilson, and Pam Windsor. Above all, my thanks go to Deryn and Eira for their infinite kindness and joie de vivre. Proust.indd 8 23/11/2007 12:44:20 Notes on References and Abbreviations I have opted for the Gallimard one-volume edition of A la recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Gallimard Quarto, 2004), edited under the direction of Jean Yves-Tadié. My reason for doing so is that I anticipate readers will find this edition more accessible than Tadié’s admittedly exhaustive but extremely expensive four-volume Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition. References in my text are therefore to page number, followed by volume and page number from In Search of Lost Time, 6 vols. (London: Penguin, 2002), translated under the general editorship of Christopher Prendergast. This is the first completely new translation of A la recherche since the 1920s, and therefore the only English-language edition to be able to take advantage of the 1954 and 1987 Pléiade editions. List of abbreviations ASB Against Sainte-Beuve and Other Essays, trans. with an introduction and notes by John Sturrock (London: Penguin Books, 1988) C 1908 Le Carnet de 1908. Établi et présenté par Philip Kolb. Cahiers Marcel Proust nouvelle série 8 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) Corr. Correspondance de Marcel Proust (1880–1922), ed. Philip Kolb, 21 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1970–1993) CSB Contre Sainte-Beuve, preceded by Pastiches et mélanges, and followed by Essais et articles, ed. Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1971) FSP “Filial Sentiments of a Parricide”, trans. Barbara Anderson, in Great Short Stories of the Masters, ed. Charles Neider (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002) Proust.indd 9 23/11/2007 12:44:20 x proust and america JS Jean Santeuil, preceded by Les Plaisirs et les Jours, ed. Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1971) JS English Jean Santeuil, trans. Gerard Hopkins, with a preface by André Maurois (London: Penguin Books, 1985) PJ Les Plaisirs et les jours, included in Jean Santeuil, 3–178. PR Pleasures and Regrets, trans. Louise Varese, preface D.J.Enright (London: Peter Owen, 1986) OR On Reading (“Sur la lecture”), preface to Sésame et les Lys, trans and ed.