France launches appeal to acquire Proust's 'madeleine' writings / Photo: © AFP
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France launches appeal to acquire Proust's 'madeleine' writings
France's National Library launched a public appeal for donations on Wednesday to acquire hundreds of unpublished documents belonging to Marcel Proust, including some showing how the famed writer settled on one of his most famous lines.
Some of the roughly 900 documents were put up for show by the auction house Sotheby's on Wednesday morning and are set to be sold by his descendants.
They include manuscripts revealing how Proust developed the line in his seven-volume epic "In Search of Lost Time" about how the taste of an almond-flavoured madeleine cake triggered a flood of childhood memories.
The manuscripts from 1907 to 1909 show how he cycled through several different foodstuffs from "a piece of stale bread, then toasted bread, a biscotte (hard biscuit), and finally a madeleine", the National Library said in a statement.
Proust's musings about different flavours had already been revealed in a major exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of his death in 2022.
Contained in "Swann's Way", the madeleine line is one of the best-known of modern French literature and "Proust's madeleine" has become shorthand for the effect of thinking about fond moments from the past.
The French National Library hopes to raise 7.7 million euros ($9.1 million) by the end of the year with its public appeal to buy the archives, with members of the public encouraged to take part.
"The discovery of this invaluable and hitherto unknown collection is an event for our country," library president Gilles Pecout told AFP.
"With these new pieces, the BnF (National Library of France) will be able to complete its collections and hold the most important Proustian archive in the world."
Proust launched himself into what would become his masterwork "In Search of Lost Time" about memory and the essence of art in 1909.
The project grew from one book to a second in 1912 and a third the following year.
It eventually grew into seven volumes -- four published in Proust's lifetime and three after his death at the age of 51.
In 2018, a copy of "Swann's Way", which Proust had dedicated to his lover, sold for 1.51 million euros ($1.7 million) at Sotheby's, a world record for a French book, according to the auction house.
L.Dubois--BTB
