Proust Up Close and Intimate.

I just had time to peruse another exhibition I almost literally stumbled upon – ‘Cher Ami…Marcel Proust in the Mirror of his Correspondence’, an exhibition of the Munich Literaturhaus. The Paris Biblitheca Proustiana had lent their treasures and the Institut Francais and the Munich Proust Society had made sure that they were shown tobest effect.

Our reading group had completed ‘Recherche de Temps Perdue' in its entire entirety and were better for it. Early on, we had recognized that Proust was one of the giants of the last century. What we did not know –a blessing perhaps - was that Proust was a manic letter writer. His correspondence was mountenous and he himself decreed that it should be destroyed after his death. But it was not.

From his letters emerges an author who throughout his life was plagued by prejudices and illnesses and to whom fame came late. Therefore we find in the letters constant reference to his work on Recherche. But it is especially the personal relationships and the exuberant and finely crafted assurances of friendship that lend charm to Proust’s correspondence.

The Bibliotheka Proustiana has 80 of these letters, many as yet unpublished and untranslated. These are now shown to the public for the first time.. There are also many manuscripts, rare photographs, portraits and sketches, signed books and documents. Manuscripts and books by the recipients of the letters found among the family, the friends, the colleagues and critics – all are brought together. The show is unique in that all the items are original; but we could hear it in German in an audioguide. It might have been better if they had been printed.

We could see Proust in the context of his time in theme displays such as: parents, childhood, school years; society life; friendships; ’years of reading’; ‘on the way to the novel’; years of writing; and literary life. Period films and commentaries by contemporaries fill the gaps.

I saw photos of Proust at various stages of his life, the famous cork-lined room, and old friends, like the church at Combray, the ‘front’ at Balbec, the opulent restaurants in the Bois du Boulogne, and the fashionable women at the Opera, whom Proust could skewer, but gently, in a paragraph.

But everything was on a small scale, small original photographs, the letters in original size encased in glass vitrines in a fitfully lighted room. There was much stooping and peering and many a wiped brow - no air conditioning.

In contrast, I saw a show on the life and letters of Herrman Hesse at the Leopoldinum in Vienna. It was a light, larger than life exposition; photographs blown up to poster size, copies of letters enlarged with printed copies beside. It was Hermann Hesse all over you. But, perhaps the smaller darker format made you work a little more, concentrate. And just like reading Proust lui meme it’s good for you.

A Haus For Literatur

Munich has a house for books and in it a great café for people who want to talk about them. The city is the publishing metropolis in Germany and even Europe. It is nor surprise then that the three floors of the Literaturhaus on the historic Salvatorplatz in the heart of Munich, have been a haven for all things literary.

This is how the Literaturhaus describes itself: A meeting place for book-sippers and page-nibblers, movie-talkers and flaneurs, penny-a-liners and foehn detectives, frugal feasters and starving artists, radar thinkers and daydreamers, portly poets and docile fools, in short: A retreat in the thicket of the city for all who keep an ear out for jingles or simply wish to wait a little longer for Godot.

The Literaturhaus is a hub for public events centered around the book: a meeting point for writers, publishers, book distributors and journalists, an important facility for training employees in the publishing industry, an electronic document pool for contemporary literature. For all who write and read, it is a lively forum that takes up current issues as often as it addresses the fundamental questions raised within the literary and media scenes.

The Ladies Looking After The Home For Old Men - Frans Hals

An Afternoon With Frans Hals And The Boys From Haarlem.

On my last day, I spent a delightful afternoon with Hals and his pals in Munich’s Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, a long name for a state-of-the-arts exhibition space in a brand new, upscale shopping complex downtown.

That this facility sits cheek-to jowl with the likes of Hugo Boss, Ermenegildo Zegna, and Giorgio Armani is only fitting. Far too often the visual art museums are – is banished too strong a term? – to leafy regions far from the shopping action.

The gallery building was designed by Herzog and de Meuron, Swiss architects whose work on the Modern Tate Gallery in London made their reputation as museum specialists.

The exhibition, worked out with the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, is a German-first showing of masterpieces from the Dutch Golden Age. Haarlem artists played a decisive role in the floswing of 17th-century Dutch painting. More than 120 works by artists like Hendrick Goltzius, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruysdael, Pieter Saenredam, Jan Steen and others tell how a free market in art emerged and how artists began to specialize: portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, marinescapes, still-lifes and genre painting are all present in this show.

The arts in Haarlem went through an upheaval in the period from 1610 to 1630. Artists had to seek out new markets after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church ceased to be a major patron. Instead, city governments and newly rich burghers became the buyers. New subjects grew popular: the city, its countryside, food and utensils became now worthy and saleable subjects. The burghers themselves, from every social class, appeared in portraits and scenes from daily life.
The star of the show, Frans Hals (ca. 1581-1666), grew up in Haarlem and revolutionized portraiture.

His artistic genius set the tone for the entire genre by perfectly expressing movement and the individuality of the sitters. Hals was particularly adept at capturing a fleeting expression of joy and mirth, as in his Merry Drinker.

But the centre pieces of the show are two large collective male and female portraits , the supervisors of a home for indigent old men. Hals here displays his mastery of the sure, swift brushstroke and of the colour black – Van Gogh thought he could detect 27 shades of black. Black predominates in the portraits because it was the favourite colour for Calvinist fashion.

Although the sitters gaze about with serious mien, the portraits burst with life and intimacy, authenticity and immediacy. A beguiling detail is a lady’s hand turned just so to show off her ruby ring - and the lace, the lace!.

There were many other worthy samples of the arts of Haarlem’s Golden Age. The show breathed the optimism, confidence and joi de vivre of this special era of Dutch history. Your editor could not stifle a pang of jealousy, because its neighbor Germany at the time went through the agonies of the Thirty Years War.

Yet, out in Munich’s afternoon sunshine, we reflected that the arts of each country will surely have a Golden Age. Just as Canada’s is sure to come – in time.
Just a note on the Canadian contribution to it all - the large, black, floppy hats were made with our beaver pelts.