Mariolina Bertini "Pleasures and Days" by Marcel Proust
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Mariolina Bertini
"Pleasures and Days"
Marcel Proust
Oscar Mondadori
https://oscarmondadori.it
Translation by Mariolina Bertini and Giuseppe Girimonti Greco
The transience of beauty, destructive time, the looming threat of death. And then the resurrection of the past thanks to emotional memory, the nostalgia for the childhood symbiosis with the maternal figure, the jealousy that turns love into torture. These are the themes that run through the pages of Pleasures and Days (1896), like musical motifs, giving this composite work of short stories, verses and prose a profound unity characterised by melancholy and disenchantment. An ironic update of Hesiod's poem dedicated to agricultural work, Works and Days, the first book published by Proust, collects texts composed between 1892 and 1894 and describes the Parisian high society at the end of the nineteenth century, alternating biting observations on sophisticated worldly society and its defects (snobbery, hypocrisy, the search for originality at all costs) and general reflections on the fleeting enchantments and inevitable disappointments of every experience of love. These pages contain all of Proust's youth: fleeting visions, dreams, stirrings of the soul, impressions of life, satire of settings, landscapes, atmospheres and characters sketched with a clear and rapid writing. Reread in the light of the Recherche, the 1896 collection reveals an unexpected richness and depth. This edition preserves the original form of the work, with a preface by Anatole France, exquisite illustrations by Madeleine Lemaire, a socialite who Proust frequented, and scores by Reynaldo Hahn, the author's great love and friend. The appendix includes some texts never published or reprinted in a volume by Proust himself.
Marcel Proust (Paris 1871-1922) is one of the greatest writers of all time. His fame is linked to the monumental novel cycle In Search of Lost Time, divided into seven volumes, to which he dedicated his entire life, and which was published between 1913 and 1927. In addition to being a novelist, he was also a distinguished critic of literature, art, and music, and wrote short stories, poems, and essays.
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