Writing in war, writing about war

As early as 1914, Proust began to take notes on the war and very quickly decided to incorporate it into the novel he was writing. In addition to the social upheavals it entails, he is interested in the different discourses it gives rise to and intends to distance himself from them, in particular those of the press. Thus, the novelistic dimension of the event emerges in the eyes of Proust, who sees it as a “turning point” and makes a proper play out of it in a novel drawn from an aesthetics of reversal.