David Levine: Marcel Proust

Yesterday, I came to the end of Marcel Proust's seven-volume masterwork Remembrance of Things Past, as I still tend to call it. Nevertheless, by the last book it seems clear that In Search of Lost Time is truly a better and more meaningful translation of the title. So today I celebrate the author of this longest of novels about whom so much has been written. At least two essays on his work appeared in The New York Review of Books of January 9, 1964, and April 6, 2006. Four decades apart, both were illustrated with the same caricature by David Levine, dated 1963. It shows a weakened if not bedridden Proust raising a cup of steaming hot tea, smelling its essence, and, behind glassy eyes, no doubt recalling and reinterpreting some aspect of the life he has lived. 

I think it is an extraordinary drawing, capturing Proust in a setting we have all read about but haven't been able to actually see. The original art was sold Thursday in Swann Galleries's Illustration Art sale. Its estimate before the sale was $500 to $700, but understandably there was quite a lot of bidder interest in the piece.

David Levine
Swann Galleries Illustration Art sale of December 4, 2025

https://www.swanngalleries.com/auction-lot/_F6618C2C9A

David Levine
Swann Galleries Illustration Art item description

Note:  My reading is now moving on to Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon, whom I'm quite certain David Levine never drew.

05147