Armen Zakharyan: «Reading Proust may be of no use at all. But it can be lifesaving»
Today marks the 155th anniversary of the birth of the great French writer Marcel Proust. On this day, literary scholar Armen Zakaryan (YouTube channel «Armen and Fyodor») is publishing, with the Parisian publishing house Éditions Tourgueneff, the book «Conversations About Marcel Proust’s Novel ‘In Search of Lost Time.’» The closest analogue to this work is Vladimir Nabokov’s «Lectures on Foreign Literature»: they are even more interesting to read than the books Nabokov was telling American students about. Zakharyan’s guide to the universe of Proust also grew out of a series of his video lectures. They were prepared for publication by producer Roma Liberov, for whom they served as «great consolation in those dark years into which, like cold murky water, we all stepped». We spoke with Armen Zakharyan about what Proustian prose can console us with today.
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