CURTIUS AS THE PROUST’S READER

Abstract

This essay examines a book by the German philologist, researcher of European and French literature Ernst Robert Сurtius (1886–1956), dedicated to Proust’s poetics. Almost unknown to Russian readers, the essay “Marcel Proust” appeared in 1925 to be the first in-depth German study of Proust’s style, his epistemological and aesthetic ideas. In its insights and precision, this essay by Curtius is on a par with the critical writings of Proust’s early critics, such as Ortega y Gasset, Benjamin, and Nabokov. It is an analytically transparent exploration of Proust’s world and style, which reveals itself like a prophecy today. What is striking is the calmness and firmness with which the German philologist identifies, at such close quarters, the “topoi” of Proust that we today bring into the arsenal of Proustianism with a certain irony.