![]() ![]() ![]() The country is governed by the Republic founded in 1871, a regime despised by the more traditional half of the country. The France of A la Recherche is already riven by inherited quarrels even before the Affair erupts. (The historic Proust was the son of a Jewish mother and Catholic father.) The narrator's father refuses to speak to him for a week when he discovers his son has the "wrong" views - and is in turn outraged when a village neighbor refuses to speak to him. People sever relationships with old friends over the affair. The narrator casually mentions that he fought duels over the Affair.* Anti-semitism - to this point an unspoken social force - abruptly emerges as a central organizing principle of Paris society. The Affair in Proust is as much a social conflict as a political conflict, and of the most desperate kind. In his third volume of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Proust dives deep into the great political controversy of his early life: the Dreyfus Affair. People don't usually credit him for it, but Marcel Proust has quite a lot to say about politics. ![]()
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