08-05-2025
Proust fans fight to restore his muse's grave
Devotees of Marcel Proust are banding together to save the grave of an airman who drowned aged 25 when his plane crashed in the Mediterranean just off Antibes on the Côte d'Azur in May 1914.
Alfred Agostinelli, a Monaco-born chauffeur who stirred unrequited passion and jealousy in the author, has long been recognised as a pivotal figure in the creation of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu ('In Search of Lost Time').
Albertine, the enigmatic young woman in Proust's monumental seven-volume opus, is a symbol of elusive love and jealousy and a feminised version of the man Proust recruited first as his driver and then as his live-in secretary at his home on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris.
Agostinelli was seen for decades by Proustiens
