Chapter 25 - Early critical responses, 1922 to 1950s

Summary

Reflections and studies on Proust's early critical reception are (almost) as old as the reception itself: as early as the mid 1920s, critical overviews were published on Proust's success in France. Another specificity has to do with the posthumous publication of most volumes, for the debate surrounding À la recherche du temps perdu took place while the last three parts of the Recherche were being published: La Prisonnière (1923), Albertine disparue (1925), Le Temps retrouvé (1927), as well as the Chroniques volume (collected articles, also published in 1927), collections of letters and the Correspondance générale (1930–6). This concomitance explains both the interest and the limits of many articles and books which have followed Proust's death. Moreover, the post-war publication of Jean Santeuil (1952) and Contre Sainte-Beuve (1954) decisively changed the perception of the birth of his work, and shed new light on early analyses.

It is often said that whilst À la recherche is now considered as the masterpiece of modern French literature, Proust was not acknowledged before the 1960s; but a look at the early reception shows how simplistic this conception is. À la recherche was a commercial success in 1919, when Proust received the Goncourt Prize for À l'ombre des jeunes filles, and critics were unanimous in paying homage to him when he died in November 1922. Nevertheless, his fortune dipped somewhat in France, in the 1920s and 1930s, while Proust was slowly discovered in other countries; after the war, his work came again to the fore, and was widely translated. Proust's early reception might therefore be symbolized by a spiral, combining moments of favour and periods of oblivion or negative critique.