Marcel Proust (1871-1922) is a famous French writer, essayist, critic, who gained world recognition as the author of the seven-volume epic novel "In Search of Lost Time", one of the most outstanding works of world literature of the 20th century. Proust's literary activity began at the Condorcet Lyceum, after which he entered the Polytechnic School, received a law degree in 1893, and a philosophy degree in 1895. Chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor (1920).
Marcel Proust, who is considered the founder of modern psychological prose, devoted almost 20 years to the multi-volume work "In Search of Lost Time", writing which he considered the main task of life. "On the Swan Side" (1913) is the first novel of a seven-volume epic, the last books of which were published after the author's death.
The hero of the novel is the boy Marcel, in whose life there are many facts from the writer's biography: an early illness, love for his mother, an atmosphere of aristocratic refinement and artistry in the house. A child's imagination recreates a suburban house in Combre, where parents, grandmother, Aunt Leonia, several maids live... Main and secondary, modernity and memories, events and feelings - everything was mixed up in Proust's novel. The author sought to create an epic not of external events, but of the inner world of a person, whose consciousness consists of sensual movements and momentary impressions. It is the attention to sounds, tastes, colors, smells, which awaken forgotten impressions, that connects the work with the aesthetics of impressionism.
