>>37056it's my pleasure! I think if you're into Proust you should definitely read Flaubert, Stendhal, Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval, and Tender Shoots by Paul Morand. The latter two are very short works and very approachable. If you're into theory, I found Deleuze's Proust and Signs to be worthwhile, as well as Walter Benjamin's essay "The Image of Proust." While not directly about Proust, I've found that Bachelard's Poetics of Space can be a very useful tool not only to think about space in literature but also a way to explore our relation to the material world without having to rely on a heideggerian lens.
If you're into the more psychological aspect of Proust's examination of love and jealousy, maybe check out Colette's The Cat, Unica Zürn's Dark Spring, Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, and Casares' The Invention of Morel. And, maybe this is a stretch, but I found the short story "Woven, Sir" by John Berger to be somewhat reminiscent of Proust in the way he weaves art, life, and memory.
Some of my other favorite works are Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, anything by Fleur Jaeggy, Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, and Novalis. Recently, I read The Fear of Losing Eurydice by Julieta Campos, which I adored for both it's construction and it's use of literary history. A truly fantastic book. If you check out anything I've mentioned, I'd really encourage it to be either that or Zürn's Dark Spring, which are both incredibly rewarding reads and, in my opinion, very underrated.
In terms of poetry, my favorite is Rilke's Book of Hours. But I'm also really fond of W. H. Auden, Georg Trakl, Elizabeth Bishop and, as of late, Lorine Niedecker. There are a handful of poems from Wallace Stevens that I've found to be continuous to Proust's sense of the material world being shaped by consciousness, although they differ in approach since Wallace tends to be a very clear poet. I haven't gotten to read a lot of his stuff but "Study of Two Pears" and "A Postcard from the Volcano" are, I would argue, in the vein of Proust's sense of how phenomena are turned and transformed by subjectivity and shaped into something only then effable through art.
I've read a couple of poems from Zürn and, while I enjoy it, I haven't spent much time with it, or read enough of it to fully recommend it. Maybe check it out if you're into more experimental, surrealist verse. (Sorry if this is too long).
