Proust e Ruskin: il complesso ipotesto della coscienza

Abstract

This article investigates new aspects of the hypertextual connections existing between John Ruskin’s literary production and Marcel Proust’s masterpiece À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. The study focuses on Ruskin’s role in the development of Proust’s style according to the textual evidence lefi by the French author in his translations of The Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies: in his prefaces and footnotes the translator foreshadows crucial points of his future work, acting as if the main text were the cue to test his own style and artistic convictions.
Proust’s ‘digestion’ of Ruskin’s works is a long process carried out in two steps: first of all, he acts as a critic providing quotations of other relevant texts and comments on the author’s linguistic choices, use of rhetoric and ideolog y; thereafier, in his major novel written in the following years, Proust’s reflections inspired by Ruskin come to the surface as the foundations of the literary cathedral represented by À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. This can be witnessed on four levels, which are all fundamental to Proust’s novel: structure, plot, rhetorical pattern and metatextual analysis. In this context, Ruskin served as a model and his concrete presence in Proust’s novel cannot be ignored; nevertheless, our purpose is to emphasize the importance of his texts as a means through which Proust’s artistic consciousness could shape itself in the constant stylistic comparison allowed by the translation. According to this perspective, Ruskin is more a pretext than a master to him.
The conclusions of our study stress the peculiarity of Proust’s hypertextual experience as a translator, a critic and an artist looking for a thoroughly original and effective style.