Oscar Wilde, Reader of Balzac, Proust’s Character: The Intertwining of Life and Work

Abstract

This article analyzes the interconnections between the live and work of writers Marcel Proust and Oscar Wilde based on a quote by Wilde, present in the essay “The Decline of Lies: An Observation” (1891), about a scene from Honoré de Balzac’s novel Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans (1847), then revisited by Proust at two moments of his writing. Through this analysis, we investigate the transition of Proust’s writing from the short form, in fragmented texts of the literary-critical essay Against Sainte-Beuve (1954), to the long form, in the continuous narrative of the novel In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927), focusing on Proust’s writing movements in relation to the Balzacian scene highlighted by Wilde.