Although there is something almost oxymoronic about its title, The Irish Proust makes a strong case for the existence of such a mythical creature in a fascinating collection of essays that map the connections between the author of In Search of Lost Time and modern Irish literature.
Early essays discuss Celtic influences on Proust – from Wilde, whom Proust may have met in Paris, and whose spectral presence certainly informs the character of Charlus in In Search of Lost Time, to his fascination with aithghen, the Celtic belief in metempsychosis, but the greater part of the collection is given over to the influence of the great French modernist on authors ranging from Beckett and Brendan Behan to Elizabeth Bowen and John McGahern.
In Revivalist Proust, Barry McCrea directly deals with the apparent contradiction when he points out that Proust’s influence “is less obviously discernible on Irish fiction than on most European literary traditions”, not least, as he argues, because one of the defining aspects of modern Irish literature is the rejection of a high-register linguistic standard in favour of embracing the vernacular, and the spoken traditions of rural and proletarian life. It is Proust’s concept of time and memory that have proved transformative. Involuntary memory – the madeleine moment – influenced by the philosopher Henri Bergson, challenged the notion of time as a sequence of quantifiable moments, insisting that real time is experienced internally and shaped by consciousness: an event is finite; a memory of that event is infinite.
Proust’s influence is most evident in the work of Bowen, whose writings also engage with themes of art, time and identity but Richard Robinson makes a compelling case for echoes of Proust’s themes and styles in the novels of McGahern, and especially in his Memoir. Deirdre McMahon contributes a touching, revelatory essay on Proust’s influence on Behan, especially in the story Bridewell Revisited, which would in time become Borstal Boy.
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The Irish Proust is what Proust would call a “livre de chevet” – a book to keep on a nightstand, to be read slowly and thoughtfully as a strange but enthralling exploration of the unexpected origins of modernism in Ireland.
