PROUST (Marcel).

PROUST (Marcel).

L.A.S. ""Marcel Proust"", sl, sd (""samedi"") [1919] of 12 pp. small in-8, addressed to Léon DAUDET, a very fine, long letter dealing with several literary subjects specific to La Recherche (memory, characters) and to Léon Daudet's work (heredospheres, personimages, etc.) as well as his strong political opinions, Proust's nomination for the Prix Goncourt, etc. : "Dear friend, It would interest me much less to make a voyage to the Moon or the planet Mars than to the Heredospheres [...]". He goes on to praise his friend's thinking (most likely following the publication of his essays L'Hérédo, Essai sur le drame intérieur, in 1916 and Le Monde des Images in 1919). "[...] and from a short sentence, of an immeasurable radius, clarity is cast on the medicine, literary criticism, philosophy of life that must be deduced from this. (Descartes was thus indicating certain consequences of his method.) Perhaps I will displease you by saying that your phrase, when quoting writers, often bears some relation to Shopenhauer's [...] If I had the misfortune in life to think of myself, the Heredo, and especially the World of Images, would be for me a source not of joy, as they are, but of constant despair. As I now see nothing but from the point of view of personimages, I would weep to think that my books must appear to be (the opposite of what they really are) a derangement of personimages not subject to self-control. And yet, the administration of my personimages is so strict that what happened to Jammes often happens to me. He asked me to delete an extremely short episode from my 1st volume, which shocked him. My refusal may have seemed strange to him, because this episode seems unnecessary in the 1st volume. But it is the pillar on which rests [...] the 4th and 5th volumes [...] What you say about the omission of memories is exactly what I think, and so much also what you say about their reappearance that it is almost one of the words from one of my as yet unpublished volumes that you use when you say that you are losing your Father a second time. The same thing happens to me with my grandmother, when I rediscover her memory in Balbec. The big difference is that it's only then that I actually lose him, because I didn't feel any grief at the time of his material death. I'm afraid you'll classify me as one of those people who follow the 'tragic comets' and who judge others only in relation to themselves [...]" He then thanks him for his kind words: "'first of all, the charming dedication of Le Monde des Images [...] Then the words you said (which Raynaldo repeats to me) that you'll vote for me for the Prix Goncourt [...]" which takes his joy to Wagnerian heights. He is happy to learn of the happy outcome of the illness of his friend's sister (Edmée Daudet, Mme André Germain), before continuing his praise of this "terrible man", Léon Daudet, who knew how to regulate the play of his characterimages "with such magical power that while remaining a novelist, the unrivalled painter of the Judets, the Meyers, the D'Avenels, the Faguets, and so many others, author of books such as Le Monde des Images, which ushered in an era with incalculable consequences, and where, even before the ascension, the "take-off", has occurred, an image like that of the yesterday-lit window that we see again with our eyes closed synthesizes our entire mental life, you are also the politician who leads France. May the forthcoming elections give us the opportunity to hear this furious eloquence in the Chamber, which in one fell swoop will shake all the rotten pears on the parliamentary tree. Dear friend, once again I offer you all my gratitude, all my friendship and all my admiration. [...]"" In a postscript, he greets Mme Léon Daudet (he "adores the style of 'Pampille', the pseudonym she uses for her columns in Action Française).