Table Of ContentIn Looking Back One Learns to See:
Marcel Proust and Photography
FAUX TITRE
393
Etudes de langue et littérature françaises
publiées sous la direction de
Keith Busby, †M.J. Freeman,
Sjef Houppermans et Paul Pelckmans
In Looking Back One Learns to See:
Marcel Proust and Photography
Mary Bergstein
AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK, NY 2014
Photography cover: Otto Wegener, Countess Greffulhe, 1899 (detail).
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Table of Contents
Preface, Acknowledgements,
and Notes on the Text 9
Introduction:
“Pleasure… is like photography” 13
1 Photography and Memory 27
2 Photography and the Cultural Archive 47
3 The Enigma of Character 89
Illustrations chapters 1-3 111
4 Long Ago and Far Away: Jews, Orientals, and Ghosts 149
5 Odette “En Abyme” 173
6 Botticelli/Vermeer/Leonardo 183
Coda: “In Looking Back One Learns to See” 219
Illustrations chapters 4-6 223
Bibliography 275
Index 295
Preface, Acknowledgements,
and Notes on the Text
In Looking Back One Learns to See: Marcel Proust and Photography is a
study in visual culture born from a close reading of Proust’s In Search of Lost
Time and his letters, combined with an abiding interest in the history of pho-
tography. The rather newly defined field of inquiry called “visual culture” not
only expands the boundaries of traditional art history to include the reception,
circulation, and function of images, high and low, it is also by nature inter-
disciplinary. In this book I have positioned various images and texts as re-
combinant entities in cultural history.
Along the way I have been reminded that interdisciplinary research is a
rewarding but perilous adventure. I have tried to write in such a way that
photographic images are not considered illustrative or ancillary to written
texts. Neither is literature held up merely as a “background” against which to
contextualize (or textualize) images as objects of study. Psychologists and
social scientists have long proclaimed that photography is a cultural phenom-
enon. This approach to photography as cultural history has evolved from the
way that I have explored the social history and historiography of art in my
previous work.
In matters of visual culture I favor a method of interpretive anthropology
such as that expounded by Clifford Geertz in his Local Knowledge: Further
Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (1983). Photography, literature, and art
are among the systems by which people construct their own existences and
identities. Geertz’s approach to cultural anthropology is not scientifically
reductive, but rather visually descriptive, expansive, and speculative. I have
attempted to work in this mode. The speculative (and at times digressive)
tenor of certain passages of the present book were composed according to the
overarching themes of representation, memory, and imagination.
The literature and images under discussion in the chapters that follow
have afforded me great pleasure. As a process of archival bricolage, both
photographic and literary, this project has truly been a labor of love. Alt-
hough my book is directed primarily toward historians of art, photography,
and visual culture, I hope that it may appeal to people who are generally
interested in the Belle Époque or Proust.
Norberto Massi (1940-2008) first introduced me to Proust’s novel, and he
encouraged me in this research project with a great sense of humor and cama-
raderie throughout the years until his passing. Among the friends and col-
10 In looking back one learns to see
leagues who have assisted and inspired me along the way are Len Bowers,
who inadvertently gave this book its title; Paul Barolsky, Christian Kempf,
Roy Lacoursiere, Maurizia Natali, Maureen C. O’Brien, Andrew Raftery, Jeff
L. Rosenheim of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Agnieszka Taborska,
Pierre Saint-Amand, and Graham Smith. Psychoanalyst Linda Carter advised
me on the concept of “implicit” memory in contemporary psychoanalytic
theory. Susan L. Ward very kindly helped me to understand the history and
historiography of Romanesque and Gothic sculpture in Normandy. I am in-
debted to Caroline Elam for having read a version of Chapter Six, hoping my
revisions are up to the quality of her critique. In a personal conversation for
which I am extremely grateful, Dr. Eric R. Kandel spoke about unconscious
memory and cognition. David M. Slater has contributed many helpful sug-
gestions as well his good spirits and loving companionship.
Valérie Sueur’s essay “‘Impressions et réimpressions’: Proust et l’image
multiple” of 1999 is an important contribution to the study of visual culture
and was a fundamental inspiration for this book. Gabrielle Townsend’s excel-
lent study of the way surrogate images ignited Proust’s imagination in
Proust’s Imaginary Museum: Reproductions and Reproduction in À la re-
cherche du temps perdu (2008) came to my attention as I was finishing my
research on the same topic, and I hope to have done it justice in my review in
History of Photography (2010) and in my observations here.
The following institutions have facilitated my research: Columbia Uni-
versity Libraries; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Frick Art Refer-
ence Library; Harvard University Libraries; New York Academy of Medi-
cine; and New York Public Library. A grant from the American Association
of University Women (2002-03) allowed me to undertake the early research
for this book. Barbara von Eckardt and Daniel Cavicchi supported my studies
at Rhode Island School of Design, where I received aid from the Liberal Arts
Humanities Fund and a RISD Faculty Development grant.
I have used English translations of Proust’s works, including In Search of
Lost Time ( À la recherche du temps perdu) wherever possible. Any other
brief translations quoted in the text from French, German, or Italian are my
own unless otherwise credited in the footnotes as being from a secondary
source or indicated as “quoted by.” In Search of Lost Time (formerly known
in English as Remembrance of Things Past) consists of seven volumes print-
ed as six actual books. The first volume, Swann’s Way, was published in
1913, and the second, Within a Budding Grove, followed in 1919. The other
volumes are The Guermantes Way (1920-21), Sodom and Gomorrah (1921),
The Captive (1923), The Fugitive (1925) and Time Regained (1928). Marcel
Proust died in 1922, and the last three volumes were published posthumous-
Preface 11
ly. I have employed the C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin transla-
tion, revised by D. J. Enright, throughout (7 vols. in 6, New York: Modern
Library, 1998): citations in the notes are abbreviated as ISLT, followed by
volume number and pages. The time settings for all volumes of the novel are
retrospective but never clearly demarcated. Swann’s love story with Odette
takes place around the 1870s, and the entire novel extends through World
War I. The final scene in Time Regained happens after 1920.
The abbreviation Corr. followed by volume and page numbers refers to
Correspondance de Marcel Proust, edited by Philip Kolb (Paris: Plan, 1971-
93), in twenty-one volumes. Selected Letters [1880-1903], edited by Philip
Kolb and translated by Ralph Mannheim (New York: Doubleday, 1983) is
cited as SL. The abbreviation GBA refers to the journal Gazette des beaux-
arts. Proust’s unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil is abbreviated as JS. The Works
of John Ruskin (Library Edition, 1903-12) is cited as Ruskin, followed by
volume number and pages.
Last but not least I would like to thank Dr Sjef Houppermans for includ-
ing this book in the Faux Titre series for French studies. I am especially
grateful to Dr Christa Stevens of Éditions Rodopi for her help in bringing this
manuscript to publication. All reasonable efforts have been made to ascertain
the status of rights for reproduced images; any queries should be addressed to
the author directly.
