Proust on Style

In a pocket notebook here from 1910, Proust calls artistic reality "a relation, a law joining differnt facts." An artowrk establises connections between different worlds. That kind of reality, Proust writes, requires style, which is itself a series of connections in the material, an "alliance of words."

Style is not something extraneous to an artwork, but part of its essence: "A work of art only begins to exist from the moment that style appears."

Review of "Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Aniversary" at the Morgan Library and Museum  in NYC, from the New York Times.