Customer Reviews

Against Sainte-Beuve and Other Essay (Classics)

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Contre Sainte-Beuve is an accumulation of Proust's crtical writings prior to and during the time he was writing his novel.

It's so long since I read my own Gallimard version which I lost long ago in a move. I had hoped to find it in Amazon's list and am pleased to know that there is at least an English version.

I forget now whther Proust's intriguing "Pastiches et Mélanges" is included in "Contre Sainte-Beuve", obviously it doesn't make sense to read that in English - his pastiches of influential late 19th century writers formed an important part of his preparation for the novel.

There are so many great joys in the essays - I remember best the little piece on Classicism and Romanticism which lyrically encapsulates much critical ground covered later by many of the most important modernists.

His essays on Nerval are absorbing too as I recall ("Sylvie") but most of all the general theme of the book is so cogent, a relentless rebuttal of Sainte-Beuve's impoverished positivist critical ideology.

"Contre Sainte-Beuve" is astonishingly contemporary avant la lettre, a salutary tonic for contemporary followers of Comte and Gradgrind.