In terms of Proust's reception, was 1966 a year like any other, or a turning point? After the purgatory of the 1930s and 1940s, when Mauriac, Malraux, Céline, Aragon and Sartre occupied the literary scene, Proust emerged from the shadows in the 1950s. Jean Santeuil and the Contre Sainte Beuve, previously unpublished, were published in 1952 and 1954 by Bernard de Fallois, and the first Pléiade, procured by Pierre Clarac and André Ferré, appeared in 1954. Proust gradually emerged from the ghetto and the sect, no longer associated with the homosexual, aristocratic and Jewish coterie. The moderns seized on him: Bataille and Blanchot, then Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute and Butor. The new novelists placed Proust in a new triad, associating him with Joyce and Kafka. These were the beginnings of a long march towards consensus. In 1955, an exhibition entitled "Proust and his time. 1871-1922", in which the writer was still presented in an icy, hieratic light. The first turning point came with the remarkable "Portrait-Souvenir" broadcast on January 11, 1962 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of his death.
1966 marked the last hours of a high-culture television model ("Lectures pour tous" 1953-1968, "Cinq colonnes à la une" 1959-1968, "Plaisirs de la lecture", "En français dans le texte", "Portrait-Souvenir" 1960-1964). At the time, radio and television were still a den of former Resistance fighters, young men for whom the Resistance had served as a university: such was the case with Gérard Herzog, the director of "Portrait-souvenir", and Roger Stéphane, theinterviewer.
The program includes interviews with Daniel Halévy, the Duc de Gramont, the Comtesse Greffulhe, and witnesses from recent years: Mauriac, Morand, Jacques de Lacretelle, Cocteau, Emmanuel Berl, Philippe Soupault, Mme Paul Morand, Mme André Mauroix, and Céleste Albaret. The documentary also looks at Proust's modernity: Robbe-Grillet and Butor are alluded to, and manuscripts are shown.
But the real revolution comes from Céleste, who evacuates Boulevard Saint-Germain and becomes Proust's mediator. It's an inversion of high and low, making Proust more democratic, more populist and more adapted to mass society; you can now enter Proust's home by the back staircase. The novelist now finds himself at the crossroads of mass culture and coterie.
