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Lecture

Professor David Peimer
Marcel Proust

Saturday 14.08.2021

Summary

In this lecture, Professor David Peimer discusses Proust’s life, his monumental novel “Remembrance of Things Past”, and his significance in 20th-century literature. The focus is on Proust’s exploration of the bourgeoisie and their intricate relationships, capturing the day-to-day inner workings of the mind. The concept of the “Proustian moment” is introduced, describing intense memories triggered by seemingly mundane sensory experiences.

Professor David Peimer

head and shoulders portrait of david peimer looking at camera, smiling

David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.

He certainly didn’t believe in a saviour,and he wasn’t religious in the conventional sense. But he inherited enormous amount of that Jewish irony, wit and outsider stuff from his mother.

He took the experiences because he delved into such detail like Monet’s lilies. He tried to mine the gold inside their imagination and the minds of the people he met.