Marcel Proust, a Parisian Novel at Carnavalet Museum, Paris

The first section of exhibition explores the very restricted area encompassed by Parc Monceau, Place de la Concorde, Auteuil, Bois de Boulogne and l’Etoile where the writer grew up. Here Marcel Proust began his earliest ventures into writing in the late 1890s with his fellow pupils at Lycée Condorcet, followed by his entry into high society and encounters with people decisive to his life.

Proust’s awareness of his vocation as a writer was strengthened by his discovery of artistic and social circles together with the friendships and loves experienced in the city. Maps of the city underline his networks and favorite places. The central feature of the show will evoke the writer’s bedroom together with objects and family furniture recreating the writer’s space where he developed his ideas and novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’. Marcel Proust suffered from asthma attacks throughout his life.
 

The second part of the show concentrates on the fictional Paris created by the writer. Following the architecture of the novel, it offers a journey through the history of the capital, focusing on the book’s central characters. The city of Paris, represented in the novel, is the setting for the alter ego of the author, the narrator, in his quest until the revelation of his vocation as a writer.

Approximately 280 works (paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, architectural models, accessories and clothing) plus manuscripts and documents from public and private collections, both French and foreign, evoke Proust’s Parisian universe, alternating between reality and reinvention. Visitors are thus offered a sensorial introduction to the novel and Proust’s world.
 

Furthermore, a special display will take place in the permanent collection entitled ‘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, (1876-1933) who lived at 40 Rue Scheffer in the 16th arrondissement during the 1910s where her room donated to the museum in the late 1970s, has been reconstructed.
 

Exhibition at Carnavalet Museum from December 16, 2021 until April 10, 2022
Carnavalet Museum – History of Paris
23 Rue de Sévigné, 75003 Paris
Tel. 0144595858
www.canavalet.paris.fr
open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10h until 18h
Tickets range from €11 to reduced €9
Also accessible to people with reduced mobility
 
 

 

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