The notion of the value of an artistic work is often only reached in posterity. Even more so when the creation takes several years to complete. But every story is different. Just look at Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) and Marcel Proust (1871-1922), major figures in French and universal literature, who met with different fates in terms of public appreciation of their masterpieces. The ‘Fables,’ in the case of La Fontaine, and ‘In Search of Lost Time,’ by Proust.
Jean de La Fontaine was born in Château-Thierry, in the Champagne region, son of a water and forest ranger. His father delegated the position to him in 1652, after Jean had studied theology and law. He married at the age of 14, under paternal pressure, which resulted in a son and unhappiness. His dedication to literature led him to seek the patronage of Nicolas Fouquet, finance minister and patron of artists, and, later, of the Duchesses of Bouillon and Orleans. After writing the novel ‘The Loves of Cupid and Psyche,’ he began, in 1668, to publish his ‘Fables,’ in language intelligible to children but aimed at adults.
Dedicated to the son of King Louis XIV, and strongly inspired by the Ancient Greek tradition of Aesop, to whom the creation of the genre is attributed, La Fontaine’s Fables are populated by animals with human characteristics. Written simply and engagingly, they all had a moral reading and were quick to win over readers, as well as achieving peer recognition. This gained the writer his admission to the French Academy, in 1683, even though he was already close to Moliére and Racine. The first collection, ‘Selected Fables,’ consisted of 124 fables brought together in six books. By 1694, a year before his death, the work was complete, containing 239 fables in 12 volumes. Marcel Proust’s recognition turned out to be slower and more torturous, as the last three of the seven volumes of ‘In Search of Lost Time’ were only published posthumously. Raised in the heart of a rich family, son of Adrien Proust, a famous professor of medicine, Marcel frequented the bohemian salons of Parisian high society from an early age. After carrying out his military service, he studied at the École Libre de Sciences Politiques and the Sorbonne, where he was strongly influenced by the philosopher Henry Bergson (1859-1941). His trip to Venice, in 1900, was another formative period, and there he devoted himself to the study of aesthetics.
Back in Paris, as he wrote tales of everyday life for publication in journals, and after translating the work of English art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), he wrote ‘Jean Santeuil,’ the great unfinished novel. After the death of his parents, Marcel’s already weak physical condition began to deteriorate and he start living in seclusion, devoting himself exclusively to writing. In 1913, at his own expense, he published ‘Swann’s Way,’ the first volume of the saga ‘In Search of Lost Time,’ which he had started writing in 1909. The work is a fresco of French society during the III Republic (1870-1940), a regime born of the political turmoil resulting from the Franco-Prussian War, and the social changes that took place during that time, with the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the bourgeois middle class.
Gallimard Editions reconsidered their initial refusal of Proust’s work and accepted the second volume, ‘In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower,’ for which he received the prestigious Goncourt Prize in 1919. A homosexual and defender of liberal values, the writer did not live to witness the publication, in 1927, of the entire 3,200 pages of his epic work, peopled by more than two thousand characters.
Samuel Alemão
