SOURCE: Schmid, Marion. “Ideology and Discourse in Proust: The Making of ‘M. de Charlus pendant la guerre.’” Modern Language Review 94, no. 4 (October 1999): 961-77.

In the following essay, Schmid discusses real historical events which are referred to in Remembrance of Things Past.

Marcel Proust has often been described as apolitical.¹ It is true that apart from a well-known involvement in the Dreyfus Affair and a lesser-known intervention against the separation of Church and State in 1904, he generally refrained from expressing his political opinions in public.² Given the highly politicized and ideologically charged milieux he frequented (amongst his friends were some of the leading ideologists and polemicists of his time: Léon Daudet, Maurice Barrès, and Charles Maurras), Proust managed surprisingly well to keep out of political debates. He cunningly manoeuvred between different political camps and happily used political personae to obtain him social honours, but was highly sensitive...