Gate of Lilacs - A Verse Commentary on Proust

Blending the critical essay with poetry, Gate of Lilacs is a collection of verse written by Clive James in response to - and profoundly inspired by - the work of Marcel Proust.'James picks out the characters, the motifs and the moments that set his memory ablaze, just as Marcel was able to conjure such visions from a tisane-infused madeleine' - Literary ReviewOver a period of fifteen years Clive James learned French by almost no other method than reading À la recherche du temps perdu - commonly translated as In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past.
Then he spent half a century trying to get up to speed with Proust's great novel in two different languages. Gate of Lilacs is the unique product of James's love of and engagement with Proust's masterpiece. With À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust, in James's words, 'followed his creative instinct all the way until his breath gave out', and now James has done the same. In Gate of Lilacs, James, a brilliant critical essayist and poet, has blended the two forms into one.
I had always thought the critical essay and the poem were closely related forms .