Marcel Proust: His Life and Work: Translated by Hamish and Sheila Miles and Kurt Weinberg

by Léon Pierre-Quint, Kurt Weinberg (Translator), Sheila Miles (Translator)

Marcel Proust, Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre was originally published in 1925 by Simon Kra in Paris. In 1927 Alfred A. Knopf published an English translation by Hamish and Sheila Miles in New York. Pierre-Quint augmented the French edition in 1928 and 1936, and this was published by the Editions du Sagittaire, who retain the French copyright. The present edition reprints the Miles translation together with the author's later additions, translated here for the first time by Kurt Weinberg, and a new preface by Germaine Brée, placing the biography in its historical context. An archive of Pierre-Quint's papers and books was established in 1981 at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
Not for sale in the British Commonwealth, excepting Canada.

386 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1986

Reviews

[Petra De Sutter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Léon Pierre-Quint fut le premier à consacrer un livre à Marcel Proust, en 1925, soit trois ans après la mort de l’écrivain. Auteur, critique littéraire et proche de Proust comme de Gide, il dresse un portrait à la fois intime et intellectuel du romancier, mêlant vie personnelle et exploration de son œuvre. Dans cet ouvrage, Pierre-Quint analyse avec finesse le style proustien, la construction de ses personnages, ainsi que sa conception novatrice de la psychologie et du subconscient, tels qu’ils s’expriment dans À la recherche du temps perdu.

Pour qui aime Proust, ce livre est une lecture incontournable : il permet de découvrir l’écrivain à travers le regard de l’un de ses contemporains, témoin direct de son époque. Si Proust a parfois l’image d’un esthète mondain, conservateur et dépassé, Pierre-Quint nous révèle, au contraire, l’ampleur de son influence et l’étonnante modernité de son œuvre — pour la littérature française comme pour la littérature mondiale.

Lire Proust, c’est apprendre une langue nouvelle, se laisser guider dans un univers à la fois complexe, sensible et profondément révolutionnaire. Et une fois ce monde ouvert, on n’en revient jamais tout à fait. Merci, Pierre-Quint, de nous en avoir offert la clé.

[Lisa of Troy]

Unannotated Book in F. Scott Fitzgerald's College of One

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, for a start, let me make it clear that I haven't read the Kurt Weinberg reprint but the original translation by Hamish and Sheila Miles from 1927 (the 1st USA edition). This is a bit of a curiosity as it is a book that is the closest to contemporaneous with Proust and Léon Pierre-Quint was allegedly a BFF. In any case, the insight he has into Proust's life and philosophy, plus the great writer's method of work, is tremendously well documented. However, the translation is really ghastly and I am hoping that Weinberg has improved this. Things such as mentioning that a friend 'disappeared'. In French that would have been 'disparu' which means that the friend died. Different impression entirely. There are many of these errors throughout and it was distracting from this warm and interesting (and metaphysically detailed) book. Thus, only 3 stars though it could have been 5!