title: Proust and Three Dialogues
author:  Samuel Beckett 
description: Samuel Beckett's celebrated early study of Marcel proust, whose theories of time were to play a large part in his own work, was written in 1931. It is a brilliant work of critical insight that also tells us much about its author's own thinking and preoccupations. In its own right it is a masterpiece of literary and philosophical creative writing. This edition was published in 1999 - ten years after the writer's death. The volume also contains the equally celebrated dialogues with the art critic Georges Duthuit - written to record their different points of view after the discussions took place. Beckett always let Duthuit win, but his very unusual and often opposite point of view on the nature and purpose of art is all the more forceful and memorable on that account.
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  ![](index-1_1.jpg)
  
  
  ![](index-2_1.png)
  
  
  Other Works By Samuel Beckett
  
  
  Published By Grewe Press
  
  
  Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces Film
  
  
  Endgame
  
  
  Happy Days
  
  
  How It Is
  
  
  Krapp's LastTape and Other Dramatic Pieces More Pricks Than Kicks
  
  
  Murphy
  
  
  Poems in English
  
  
  Proust
  
  
  Stories & Texts for Nothing
  
  
  Molloy
  
  
  Malone Dies
  
  
  The Unnamable
  
  
  Waiting for Godot
  
  
  Watt
  
  
  ![](index-3_1.png)
  
  
  PRO UST
  
  
  SAMUEL BECKETT
  
  
  ' E fango e il mondo '
  
  
  LEOPARDI
  
  
  GROVE PRESS, INC.
  
  
  NEW YORK
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](index-5_1.png)
  
  
  PRO UST
  
  
  THE
  
  
  unknown, choosing its weapons from a hoard of Proustian
  
  
  values, is equation
  
  
  also the
  
  
  is never simple.
  
  
  unknowable.
  
  
  The
  
  
  And the
  
  
  quality of its action falls under two signatures. In Proust each spear may be
  a spear of T�ephus. This dualism in multiplicity will be
  
  
  more closely
  
  
  in relation to Proust's 'perspectivism.' For the purposes of this synthesis it
  is convenient to adopt the inner chronology of the Proustian demonstrat