Proust’s automobile chronicle

“impressions of the road seen from an automobile”

Abstract

We present and translate here into Portuguese an unpublished chronicle by Marcel Proust, “Impressions de route en automobile.” This article appeared on the front page of the newspaper “Le Figaro” on November 19, 1907, just a week after the opening of the Exposition décennale de l’automobile at the Grand Palais in Paris. It is thus inserted into the context of the events that come to celebrate the advancement of technology and progress in the Belle Époque, particularly of the automobile industry. The chronicle can be seen as Marcel Proust’s answer to this debate: would the technical-scientific advances that revolutionize our daily life also be capable of modifying our sensitivity, that is, our way of seeing and feeling? As we will see, the chronicle configures a series of “impressions” or fragments that reproduce the writer’s “feelings” during a car trip through Normandy.