Les Soixante-quinze Feuillets de Marcel Proust ou la fabrique du masque

Les Soixante-quinze Feuillets by Marcel Proust or the production of the maskIn Search of Lost Time, the narrator is not the writer, and we can find out several models behind one character. In other words, Proust created a mask he put on reality to avoid criticism and problems with his family, but also to look for the essence of beings and things by focusing the truth. Pseudonyms are not a game but a real poetic of the Name. The recent publication of his Soixante-quinze Feuillets (Gallimard, 2021) shows how Proust transformed his autobiography into a fictional world. That preliminary version exposes the methods he used to hide himself and the way he was experimenting the powers of the imagination and composition. It is the writer’s laboratory, an important source for genetic study of Proust’s masterpiece.