The great park on the western edge of Paris, and the fashionable place to be seen in the late nineteenth century. Marcel Proust walked its Allée des Acacias — now the avenue de Longchamp — and turned it into a social arena in his novel. It is also where the outing happened after which, aged nine, he suffered the asthma attack that began his lifelong illness.
The Bois de Boulogne is enormous — a former royal hunting forest on the western edge of the city, landscaped into a public park under Napoleon III as part of the same programme that produced the Parc Monceau and Parc Montsouris.
In the late nineteenth century one stretch of it mattered more than the rest. The Allée des Acacias, which the city identifies with the present-day avenue de Longchamp, was where fashionable Paris went to be looked at: carriages at a walking pace, an unwritten timetable, and a precise understanding of who could be greeted by whom.
Marcel Proust frequented it, and turned it into one of the central social arenas of In Search of Lost Time. The promenade suits his purposes exactly, because it is a place whose entire function is display and observation — people arranged in public in order to be assessed, which is the novel's subject rendered as a physical space.
The Bois carries a second, heavier association for him, and it is not social. Returning from an outing here at the age of nine, Proust suffered the severe asthma attack that marked the beginning of his lifelong illness. Everything that follows — the inverted hours, the cork-lined room, the decades largely spent indoors — proceeds from a condition that announced itself on the way back from this park.
That double meaning is why it belongs on his map twice over: the arena where his society displayed itself, and the place his body first stopped him.
It is free, open, and far too large to do in one go. The avenue de Longchamp is the stretch to walk if you are here for Proust.
The former royal forest is landscaped into a public park under Napoleon III.
The Allée des Acacias is the fashionable promenade of Paris society.
Returning from an outing in the Bois aged nine, Proust suffers the asthma attack that begins his lifelong illness.
In Search of Lost Time uses the promenade as one of its central social arenas.
Two things. He frequented the Allée des Acacias — the fashionable promenade, now the avenue de Longchamp — and made it one of the central social arenas of In Search of Lost Time. And returning from an outing in the Bois at the age of nine, he suffered the asthma attack that began his lifelong illness.
The stretch of the Bois where fashionable Paris went to be seen in the late nineteenth century — carriages moving at walking pace, an unwritten timetable, and a precise etiquette about who could greet whom. The city identifies it with the present-day avenue de Longchamp.
Because everything about how Proust worked follows from it. The inverted hours, the cork-lined bedroom, the decades largely spent indoors and the novel written from memory rather than from motion all proceed from a condition that first announced itself on the way home from this park when he was nine.
Pick a section — it is far too big to walk whole. If you are here for Proust, the avenue de Longchamp is the stretch that was the Allée des Acacias. It is free and open, on the western edge of the 16th.
Frequented by
Proust frequented the Allée des Acacias — the fashionable promenade the city identifies with today's avenue de Longchamp — and made it one of the central social arenas of In Search of Lost Time. The Bois carries a second association: returning from an outing here aged nine, he suffered the asthma attack that began his lifelong illness.
The Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
