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On the occasion of the centenary of the Prix Goncourt awarded on December 10, 1919 to Marcel Proust for his novel In the shadow of the young girls in flowers , second volume of his work entitled In search of lost time , spotlight on an unprecedented essay by the Mexican scholar Ruben Gallo, recently translated under the title Proust latino by Buchet-Chastel. The book traces the links between the French writer and South America. An interview broadcast in "Le Café Gourmand" on RFI.
" Marcel Proust was the intimate of several Latin American figures who settled in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. Could it be that these friendships have influenced the author of the Research and that this opening to a distant, exotic world has shaped his imagination?
To this daring question, the academic Rubén Gallo responds with a tasty book in the form of cultural and literary inquiry. Through the portraits of Latinos closest to Proust, his lover, the Venezuelan Reynaldo Hahn; the fantastic Argentinean secretary of the Count de Montesquiou, model of Charlus, Gabriel de Yturri; the Cuban poet José Maria de Heredia and the sulphurous Mexican literary critic Ramón Fernández, Gallo strives to establish the strong presence of Latin America in Proust's life and in the construction of his work. Far from the Parisian dandy, we discover a more spontaneous Proust, more tropical.
In attempting to unravel the bonds of these two worlds, their reciprocal contributions, Rubén Gallo also delivers a beautiful text on otherness in art, and a powerful reflection on the ambiguous relationship of France, at the time incontestable cultural lighthouse, to his strangers, brilliant though they are. " (Presentation of the publisher Buchet-Chastel)