Two recent issues of The New Yorker had articles featuring Proust: “Imaginary Concerts: The Music of Fictional Composers” by Alex Ross in the August 24, 2009 issue and “Dutch Touch: A Visiting Vermeer at the Met” by Peter Schjeldahl in the issue of September 21, 2009.

Alex Ross tells us that in creating the fictional composer Vinteuil, “Proust ventured into an esoteric subcategory of fiction—stories about composers who exist only in the pages of books.” Referring to the many brilliant passages about music from In Search of Lost Time,” Ross lauds Proust’s ability to capture “the imaginary dimension of musical experience—the ability of the mind to conjure inner worlds under the influence of charged sounds.” Beginning in 1911, Proust subscribed to the théâtrophone, a new device that brought opera, concerts, and plays into the home via the telephone line. In his cork-lined room, Proust “listened to [Debussy’s] ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ night after night, placing it beside Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’ in his gallery of transcendent works.”

Peter Schjeldahl begins “Dutch Touch” with a description of the death of Proust’s fictional writer Bergotte, who expires while visiting the Louvre to see Vermeer’s “View of Delft.” As Bergotte views the painting, he “weighs the value of his life against that of a ‘little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof.’” After Schjeldahl points out that the picture does not actually contain such a wall, although “there is a yellow sloping roof,” he acknowledges the important position that Vermeer has occupied in the art world since the publication of Proust’s novel: “by keying his account of Bergotte’s passion to a Vermeer, Proust installed a milestone of art criticism, displacing Raphael as Europe’s cynosure of artistic perfection.” Perhaps some of those visiting the Met to see “The Milkmaid” will have epiphanies similar to Bergotte’s, although, as Schjeldahl reminds us, “dying is optional.”Europe’s cynosure of artistic perfection.”