The First Known Footage of Marcel Proust Discovered: Watch It Online

in Literature | February 16th, 2017 6 Comments

Ladies and gen­tle­men, we present the first known footage of the French author Mar­cel Proust.

Announced by Pro­fes­sor Jean-Pierre Sirois-Tra­han in the lat­est edi­tion of the French jour­nal, Revue d’é­tudes prousti­ennes, the footage was record­ed on Novem­ber 14, 1904 (nine years before Proust pub­lished the first vol­ume in his clas­sic work, À la recherche du temps perdu/Remem­brance of Things Past). And it shows Proust descend­ing a stair­way at the wed­ding of his close friend, Armand de Guiche. Look for him at the 37 sec­ond mark. He’s dressed less for­mal­ly (in grey, not black) than the aris­to­crats join­ing him at the cel­e­bra­tion. I’ve added a close up pic­ture below.

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via Le Jour­nal de Mon­tre­al

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Lit­er­ary Phi­los­o­phy of Mar­cel Proust, Pre­sent­ed in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

When James Joyce & Mar­cel Proust Met in 1922, and Total­ly Bored Each Oth­er

16-Year-Old Mar­cel Proust Tells His Grand­fa­ther About His Mis­guid­ed Adven­tures at the Local Broth­el

Mar­cel Proust Fills Out a Ques­tion­naire in 1890: The Man­u­script of the ‘Proust Ques­tion­naire’


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Comments (6)
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  • Jonathan King says:
    February 15, 2017 at 10:40 pm

    You say, “the video was record­ed on Novem­ber 14, 1904…” But of course it was­n’t, being in real­i­ty a filmed sequence.

    Reply
  • Kartik Thopalli says:
    February 16, 2017 at 4:10 am

    What was the piano com­po­si­tion that played in the film?

    Reply
  • benjamin silva-pereira says:
    February 16, 2017 at 9:20 am

    much ado about absolute­ly noth­ing, bah! every­thing is news nowa­days. can you tell us some­thing real­ly impor­tant about mon­sieur Proust that we real­ly (real­ly!!!!!) did­n’t know? image? who cares?

    Reply
  • GregH says:
    February 16, 2017 at 10:54 am

    I’ll tell you some­thing: Proust always car­ried a large mag­net, on account of his belief that cer­tain birds, due to the laws of chance, must have ingest­ed some quan­ti­ty of mag­netite, and by bring­ing the mag­net close to each bird he encoun­tered, would find one suf­fi­cient­ly mag­net­ic to be attract­ed and caught by the mag­net. Nev­er­the­less, he was shy about this con­tention, believ­ing (and right­ly so, as it turned out) that his neigh­bours might regard his inter­est in birds as unset­tling, if not dan­ger­ous.

    Reply
  • SLevin says:
    February 16, 2017 at 8:06 pm

    Those corsets!! How did they breath?!

    Reply
  • Colin Wills says:
    February 17, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    Con­grat­u­la­tions sir. Grinch of the Day. :-/

    Reply

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