The political community of memory: Ortega as reader of Proust in Revista de Occidente

Abstract

The influence of Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu, since the publication of its first volume in 1913, on the constellation of Spanish intellectuals, writers, and artists of the early 20th century —particularly those of the Generation of ‘14 and Generation of ‘27— is significant. Proust emerges as a paradigm that defines the new art or the new novel. Ortega y Gasset played a fundamental role in the reception of Proust’s work through its inclusion in Revista de Occidente and through the essays he published on the novel in La Nouvelle Revue Française. This article aims to examine that reception as a way of constructing a political community rooted in the faculty of memory, given that the only moment of human identity lies in the recalled past.