'A Rose-Colored Light': Reanimating in Search of Lost Time in a Soviet Prison Camp

• In Event: The Ascent: Modes of Creative, National, and Spiritual Expression in the Gulag

Abstract

Polish writer and artist Józef Czapski (1896-1993) famously lectured on Proust from memory while a Soviet prisoner at Gryazovets. When unable to work due to illness, he would return to his memories of In Search of Lost Time to “escape,” however briefly, the realities of camp life and be transported to the Paris of Proust–and of his own youth. In his lectures, and his scant drawings and writings that survived the camp, Czapski found “the happiest of hours” amidst devastating circumstances, and the intellectual labor that not only helped him survive, but became the force of his postwar work as a dissident and émigré, once again returned to Paris.

Author

• Monika Zaleska, CUNY Graduate Center