Il ‘tono’ Proust

Overview & Synopsis

According to the advocates of Proust therapy , Proust’s writings also have the power to help us improve and understand our lives. In recent years, studies, biographies and research on his family and friends have multiplied, in addition to crime novels and comics variously inspired by La Recherche, arguably the twentieth century’s greatest novel. In the light of recently uncovered materials, this new and original book, conceived and edited by Anna Dolfi, with the participation of researchers of different generations and backgrounds, moves in search of Proustian tonality, of the unmistakable timbre of a writing that the author pursued by continually correcting his texts, and of the methods of development and diffusion to which his work has been subjected by critics and translations that have inevitably altered his voice. This work, on the centenary of Proust’s death, provides an unprecedented and polyphonic reading of the great Marcel, seeking out lost traces and forgotten pages, and investigating the causes of desire and illness. We even discover a Proust who foresaw our pandemic fears and reclusiveness, by exploring every path of memory, despite having come to us “in pieces” due to those who have not read him in full, forgetting the advice of his great interpreters, and the marks left on Italian and foreign writers, poets, and thinkers. The structure of this book allows the reader to move freely among the various proposals, recreating in a paradoxical unity that dissemination of themes, figures, emergences, and intermittences typical of Proustian poetics and work.