This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Proust and the Avant-Garde Perception, Knowledge, Representation Brook, Katherine Eliza Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 Proust and the Avant-Garde Perception, Knowledge, Representation Katherine Brook Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy King’s College London December 2017 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. Abstract This thesis compares Proust’s Recherche with the work of the Cubists, Futurists, and Surrealists. Few scholars have considered the novel’s engagement with avant-garde ideas and aesthetics, despite Proust’s geographical and temporal proximity to avant- garde activity. Without arguing extensively for direct influence or even significant interaction between the two, my research focuses on a broader pool of ideas and cultural-historical developments, around which Proust’s work can be brought into dialogue with both the collective aims of particular groups within the avant-garde, and with the paintings and (to a lesser extent) writings of individual artists. Throughout the thesis, I use their work as a means of shedding light on the conflict and crossover between states of ‘insidership’ and ‘outsidership’, and on the manner in which these states define relations between perceiving, acting subjects and the external objects and spaces they encounter. Chapter 1 focuses on the artistic perceptive faculty and the relation it enables between the artist and the external world, using Bergson’s opposition of ‘analysis’ and ‘intuition’ as a theoretical framework. Chapter 2 is centred around the metaphor of the work of art as a ‘window on the world’ and its implication that a painting is primarily a representation, rather than an object in its own right. Chapter 3 investigates the influence of mechanised transport technologies both on perceptions of space and on relations between people, while Chapter 4 uses Didier Anzieu’s theory of the Moi- peau to argue that the self is defined not only by bodily but by architectural boundaries, which also shape the subject’s relationships with other people. Ultimately, the thesis asks whether the work of Proust and the avant-gardes conceives of the subject’s interaction with the world as a function of surface or of depth, or as a more complex troubling between the two. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 4 Abbreviations 5 List of illustrations 6 Introduction 7 1. The Artist in the World: Epistemology, Optical Technologies, and the Limits of Perception 30 2. Modes of Engagement: Windows, Vision, Representation 97 3. Technologies of Speed: Moving Observer, Moving Observed 143 4. Human Boundaries: Walls, Skins, Self, Other 190 Conclusion 232 Works cited 239 3 Acknowledgements This thesis, and the experience of writing it, would not have been what they were without the intellectual, emotional, and financial support of many individuals and organisations, all of whom have my heartful gratitude. Thanks, first and foremost, must go to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, who generously provided the funding that made the project possible. The project in question would, I am certain, have floundered in intellectual no-man’s-land for far longer than it did, were it not for the rigorous, clear-sighted, and constructive guidance of my supervisor, Dr. Johanna Malt, to whom I am particularly indebted. I am also very grateful to Emma Bielecki, Patrick ffrench, Simon Gaunt, Nick Harrison, Matt Lampitt, Milan Terlunen, and Claire White, all of whom read and gave invaluable feedback on chapter drafts at various stages of completion. My time as a PhD student has been shaped in unquantifiable ways by friends both new and old. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been surrounded throughout by a community of thoughtful, kind-hearted colleagues, whose friendship has been a priceless source of intellectual and emotional nourishment. Ben Dalton, Tom Gould, Alice Hazard, Nikki Ikani, and my fellow Proustian Igor Reyner have my particular thanks. I am hugely grateful, too, to Mira and Alex Athanassouli, whose hospitality enabled me to write much of Chapter 3 surrounded by stunning Kefalonian countryside, and Abigail Yandell, most recently for the loan of her beautiful house during a crucial phase in the evolution of Chapter 4, but more importantly for several decades of jubilant, mischievous friendship. Most of all, I thank Margaret and Tim Brook for their unerring support, belief, and love, and Roberto, for everything. 4 Abbreviations References to Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu are taken from the Pléiade edition in four volumes, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié (Paris: Gallimard, 1987-89), and are given in the text, using Roman and Arabic numerals to signify the volume and page numbers, respectively. Other references to Proust’s work are from the following editions: Contre Sainte-Beuve, précédé de Pastiches et mélanges et suivi de Essais et articles, ed. by Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre (Paris: Gallimard [Bibliothèque de la Pléiade], 1971) (referred to in the text as CSB). Jean Santeuil, précédé de Les Plaisirs et les jours, ed. by Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre (Paris: Gallimard [Bibliothèque de la Pléiade], 1971) (referred to in the text as JS). 5 List of Illustrations 1. Georges Braque, Broc et violon, 1910 24 2. Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion, 1878 34 3. Etienne-Jules Marey, Image of a pelican in flight, ca. 1882 34 4. Umberto Boccioni, Matter [Materià], 1912 59 5. Giacamo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912 62 6. Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Waving, 1911 64 7. Juan Gris, Nature morte à la nappe à carreaux, 1915 74 8. Robert Delaunay, La Tour aux rideaux, 1910 119 9. Robert Delaunay, Les Fenêtres simultanées sur la ville, 1912 121 10. René Magritte, La Condition humaine I, 1933 126 11. Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 174 12. Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913 175 13. Jean Metzinger, Au vélodrome, 1912 176 14. Dorothea Tanning, Birthday, 1942 198 15. Dorothea Tanning, Children’s Games, 1942 208 16. Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst in Sedona, Arizona, 1946 (I) 227 17. Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst in Sedona, Arizona, 1946 (II) 227 6 Introduction This thesis is a comparative study of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu and the visual works of the Cubist, Futurist, and Surrealist movements. Proust and the historical avant-gardes are two immeasurably important strands in Western cultural history, and they overlap both chronologically and geographically. Yet the possibility for a comparison between the two has often been shunned, whether directly or indirectly. Roger Shattuck, for example, who has specialised in both Proust and avant-garde studies without ever attempting to reconcile them, writes in his study of the origins of the avant-garde, The Banquet Years, that Proust belongs in a ‘family group’ with Renoir and Ravel, whose ‘rich, beautifully orchestrated masterpieces portray la belle époque at its ripest and never lose control of its sensuous plenitude.’1 All three, he claims, ‘gaze fondly back toward the waning century and tell us not so much what has changed since 1885 as what can be made to survive. Their very technical mastery makes them the old guard who will never die.’2 The scholarly landscape has changed since Shattuck wrote these words. For some time, the consensus has been that Proust was an innovator and a modernist, not a passéiste.3 But avant-garde? The lack of academic enquiry into this area suggests that such a comparison might be a step too far. A handful of studies, it is true, have compared Proust’s work to the Cubists and Futurists; one or two have speculated on his dealings with the French Dadaists, André Breton and Philippe Soupault. But while the role of the visual arts in Proust’s novel has quite rightly been explored in detail, generally speaking, as Luzius Keller writes, ‘on se tourne plutôt du côté de Giotto, Carpaccio, Botticelli ou Vermeer, de Degas, Manet, Renoir ou Monet, de Turner ou Whistler, de Moreau ou Redon que vers Boccioni ou Carrà, Gleizes ou Metzinger, Delaunay, Braque ou Picasso.’4 The importance of older artistic currents for Proust’s novel is not in doubt. But we can no more deny the importance of cultural modernity for Proust’s novel 1 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France: 1885 to World War I (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), p.