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.

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Proustian Olfactory Recollection and Its Influence on a Legendary American Filmmaker

In the past, college film courses have had to get by without referring students to this blog. This resulted in film school graduates who were book-smart yet vaguely aware that their expensive education was still lacking in some essential, unifying component. Now that should be a thing of the past.

Today, blog titles utilizing impressive academic jargon will make it preposterously obvious to even the most entrenched professors that they can save themselves hours of course preparation time by referring motivated students here. For example, the above title is designed to foster meaningful academic discussion regarding Marcel Proust and his narrative use of olfactory sensations which apparently had a profound influence on American filmmaker Mel Brooks.

Madeleine, anyone?

From "Blazing Saddles" (1974)
Mel Brooks, Director

For those tenure track film professors who may not yet be sufficiently familiar with Proust's literary masterpiece to incorporate it into the coursework, here's a quick reference, cleverly disguised as a competition to summarize all seven novels. Any questions?

Monty Python's Flying Circus

"The All-England Summarize

Proust Competition"

(1972, Episode 31)

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Maira Kalman: Remembrance of Things Proust

The January 21 issue of The New Yorker contains a Sketchbook page by Maira Kalman entitled Marcel's Way. This is not a typical stand-alone Sketchbook page, but rather an illustration specifically promoting the Morgan Library's new Marcel Proust show which commemorates the centennial of Swann's Way. This book, of course, is the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past, now often referred to by the new translation's title of In Search of Lost Time.

Ms. Kalman based her illustration on a studio photograph in the Morgan Library show which includes Proust, his mother, and his brother Robert circa 1895. The artist chose the bold colors red, pink, yellow, orange, and green, but she used muted colors to paint Marcel, which lets his figure retain more of the old world feel of the vintage photograph. Marcel is shown with his mother, a pairing of great interest to students of literature and, perhaps, of psychoanalysis. Marcel's younger brother Robert, the one who did not stay in his mother's home and write a great seven-volume masterwork in bed but instead became an eminent surgeon, author, and later the publisher of his brother's posthumous work, suffers the indignity of being replaced by a wooden stand and a potted plant.

The show "Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary" opens on February 15 at the Morgan Library and Museum and will run through April 28, 2013.

Maira Kalman, Sketchbook:  Marcel's Way
The New Yorker, January 21, 2013, Page 45

Marcel Proust and his mother and brother Robert, ca. 1895.
Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BnF), Paris, France
© BnF, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

The Morgan Library & Museum

http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=71

April 27, 2013 Update:  The original artwork (sans lettering) by Maira Kalman is available from the Julie Saul Gallery in New York. Tempting....

http://www.saulgallery.com/artists/maira-kalman/people#12

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