Proust’s 1908 Notebook: Facinating New Translation and Insights on Marcel Proust's Proust’s 1908 Notebook

PROUST'S 1908 NOTEBOOK Proust's 1908 Notebook consists of notes he made during the critical year of 1908 when he turned to serious work on his extended masterwork, A la recherche du temps perdu (a.k.a. RECHERCHE, In Search of Lost Time, On Research into Lost Time, etc.) Thus, anyone interested in RECHERCHE, and its genesis, will be interested in the Notebook of 1908. It is the purpose of this project to try to make the contents of that notebook more generally available; and not only because it serves as a source of insight for RECHERCHE, but also because it stands in its own right as a window into the mind of a philosophical and literary genius at work. A comparison to Nietzsche’s Will to Power comes to mind, except that while Nietzsche was focused on pursuing a philosophical project, Proust was still making up his mind. As he writes in the Notebook, “Should we make it a novel, a philosophical study, am I a novelist?” Often these workings seem to appear in an almost poetic form, which adds to their interest. On occasion one may find oneself happily surprised by an encounter with a crisp formulation of his thought, e.g., “a bell tower if it is elusive during the day has more value than a complete theory of the world.” In short, the Notebook of 1908 has much to offer, not only to people who enjoy Proust, but also to people who simply like to read, write, or think.