How Proust Can Change Your Life

concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of water, without apparent exertion, the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines by its extreme velocity, so that the whole river has the appearance of a deep and raging sea, with only this difference, that torrent-waves always break backwards, and sea-waves forwards. Thus, then, in the water which has gained an impetus, we have the most exquisite arrangements of curved lines, perpetually changing from convex to concave, and vice versa, following every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating grace, and all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps the most beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature can possibly produce

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Aside from landscape, Ruskin helped Proust to discover the beauty of the great cathedrals of northern France. When he returned to Paris after his holiday, Proust traveled to Bourges and to Chartres, to Amiens and Rouen. Later explaining what Ruskin had taught him, Proust pointed to a passage on Rouen Cathedral in The Seven Lamps of Architecture, in which Ruskin minutely described a particular stone figure that had been carved, together with hundreds of others, in one of the cathedral’s portals. The figure was of a little man, no more than ten centimeters high, with a vexed, puzzled expression, and one hand pressed hard against his cheek, wrinkling the flesh under his eye.

For Proust, Ruskin’s concern for the little man had effected a kind of resurrection, one characteristic of great art. He had known how to look at this figure, and had hence brought it back to life for succeeding generations. Ever polite, Proust offered a playful apology to the little figure for what would have been his own inability to notice him without Ruskin as a guide (“I would not have been clever enough to find you, amongst the thousands of stones in our towns, to pick out your figure, to rediscover your personality, to summon you, to make you live again”). It was a symbol of what Ruskin had done for Proust, and what all books might do for their readers—namely, bring back to life, from the deadness caused by habit and inattention, valuable yet neglected aspects of experience.

Because he had been so impressed by Ruskin, Proust sought to extend his contact with him by engaging in the traditional occupation open to those who love reading: literary scholarship. He set aside his novelistic projects and became a Ruskin scholar. When the English critic died in 1900, he wrote his obituary, followed it up with several essays, and then undertook the immense task of translating Ruskin into French, a task all the more ambitious because he hardly spoke any English and, according to Georges de Lauris, would have had trouble correctly ordering a lamb chop in English in a restaurant. However, he succeeded in producing highly accurate translations of both Ruskin’s The Bible of Amiens and his Sesame and Lilies, adding an array of scholarly footnotes testifying to the breadth of his Ruskinian knowledge. It was work he carried out with the fanaticism and rigor of a maniacal professor; in the words of his friend Marie Nordlinger:

The apparent discomfort in which he worked was quite incredible, the bed was littered with books and papers, his

pillows all over the place, a bamboo table on his left piled high and more often than not, no support for whatever he was writing on (no wonder he wrote illegibly), with a cheap wooden penholder or two lying where it had fallen on the floor

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