Gate of Lilacs

Blending the critical essay with poetry, Gate of Lilacs is a collection of verse written by Clive James in response to – and profoundly inspired by – the work of Marcel Proust.

'James picks out the characters, the motifs and the moments that set his memory ablaze, just as Marcel was able to conjure such visions from a tisane-infused madeleine' – Literary Review

Over a period of fifteen years Clive James learned French by almost no other method than reading À la recherche du temps perdu – commonly translated as In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past. Then he spent half a century trying to get up to speed with Proust's great novel in two different languages. Gate of Lilacs is the unique product of James's love of and engagement with Proust's masterpiece.

With À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust, in James's words, 'followed his creative instinct all the way until his breath gave out', and now James has done the same. In Gate of Lilacs, James, a brilliant critical essayist and poet, has blended the two forms into one.

I had always thought the critical essay and the poem were closely related forms . . . If I wanted to talk about Proust's poetry beyond the basic level of talking about his language – if I wanted to talk about the poetry of his thought – then the best way to do it might be to write a poem.

In the end, if À la recherche du temps perdu is a book devoted almost entirely to its author's gratitude for life, for love, and for art, this much smaller book is devoted to its author's gratitude for Proust.

Clive James (1939–2019) was a broadcaster, critic, poet, memoirist and novelist. His acclaimed poetry includes the collection Sentenced to Life and a translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy, both Sunday Times bestsellers. His passion for and knowledge of poetry are distilled in his book of criticism on the subject, Poetry Notebook, and, written in the last year of his life, his personal annotated anthology of favourite poems, The Fire Of Joy.

Praise for Clive James:

'He will be seen, I think, as one of the most important and influential writers of our time' – Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

'Wise, witty, terrifying, unflinching and extraordinarily alive' – A.S. Byatt, critic and author of Possession: A Romance

'Clive James is a true poet' – Peter Porter, London Review of Books