A “professor of beauty”: The role of Robert de Montesquiou in training Marcel Proust

Robert de Montesquiou’s role in Marcel Proust’s training was that of a social mentor and a romanesque role model, who was also a negative example. This “professor of beauty” nevertheless exerted a decisive influence on the development of the Recherche. In an uglier and disguised form, the poet embodies the figure of the sterile amateur and the dilettante aristocrat. The vocation of the narrator could, however, be the product of the fruitful misalliance that is the foundation of modernity, that of the poet and the novelist.