Proust against degradation: the genesis, misfortunes and redemption of a book

Abstract

This article traces the paths and deviations of Lost Time. Lecture on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp, by Joseph Czapski (1896-1993), and the difficulties of its writing, transmission and publication. This book transits between memory, essay and historical testimony, and transcribes a series of lectures given between 1940 and 1941, in a Siberian gulag, about Proust, his novel, and his “saving” power (according to the author himself). A book that mirrors, to a certain extent, its author, survives losses and forgetfulness. The author, who is a writer, artist and art critic, intended "to pay tribute to French literature", but his beautiful essay is eclipsed by ideological imperatives. Written (in manuscript) in 1941, lost, rewritten (in tapuscripts) between 1943 and 1944, partially published in a French newspaper in late 1943, translated and published in Poland in 1948, and finally published in full by a Swiss publisher in 1987 - to be forgotten again, for a quarter of a century, until its redemption in 2011. We invite you to read the saga of a book, which reflects its time and context.

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