Marcel Proust, a Parisian novel

Dedicated to the relationship between Marcel Proust and Paris, where he spent most of his life, the exhibition Marcel Proust, a Parisian novel will investigate the city’s place in Proust’s novel.

The first section of the exhibition will explore the world Marcel Proust inhabited in Paris. Having been born and died in Paris, Proust’s life unfurled in the very restricted area encompassed by Parc Monceau, Place de la Concorde, Auteuil, Bois de Boulogne and l’Étoile. Paris was of immense importance in the development of Marcel Proust’s literary vocation, from the time of his earliest writings in the late 1890s with his fellow-pupils at the Lycée Condorcet, to his entry into the city’s high society and encounters with people who would be decisive to his life.

The second part of the exhibition opens on the fictional Paris created by Marcel Proust. Following the architecture of the novel In Search of Lost Time and evoking emblematic places in the city, it offers a journey through the novel and the history of the capital, focusing on the book’s central characters. The city of Paris, represented poetically in the novel, is the setting for the quest of the narrator, the author’s alter ego, until the revelation of his vocation as a writer.

Approximately 280 works (paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, architectu-ral models, accessories and clothing), plus manuscripts and documents from public and private collections, both French and foreign, will evoke Marcel Proust’s Parisian universe, alternating between reality and reinvention. Numerous extracts taken from archive films, film adaptations and sound recordings of In Search of Lost Timewill offer visitors a sensorial introduction to the novel and Proust’s world.

In parallel, a special exhibition will be held in the permanent collections with the title “Anna de Noailles, The Shadow of Days”, to introduce visitors to the creative world of one of Marcel Proust’s friends, the poetess Anna de Noailles, née Bran-covan (1876–1933), who lived at 40 Rue Scheffer in the 16th arrondissement during the 1910s. Her room, which was donated to the museum in the late 1970s, will be reconstructed.