PROUST MARCEL (1877-1922)

Lot 216
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Estimation :
3000 - 5000 EUR
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Result : 7 878EUR
PROUST MARCEL (1877-1922)
Les plaisirs et les jours, illustrations by Madeleine Lemaire, preface by Anatole France (Paris, Calmann Lévy, 1896). In-4, brown half-maroquin with corners, spine gilt on witnesses, covers and spine preserved (G. Mercier Sr de son père 1926). First edition, one of thirty copies on China paper (n°22) enriched with an autograph manuscript by Marcel Proust on the painter WATTEAU (1 small page in-4 with erasures and corrections), of which a different and longer version was published in 1954 in the Nouveaux Mélanges following Contre Sainte-Beuve (Pléiade, p. 665): "I often think with sympathy, with pity, of the life of the painter Watteau, whose work remains the allegory, the apotheosis of Love and Pleasure, and who was, according to his biographers, of such a weak constitution that he could hardly know the pleasures of love. Also in his work love is melancholic and pleasure itself. And if it has been said that he was the first to paint modern love, this is probably taken to mean a love in which the pleasures of conversation, of snacking, of strolling, take up more space than pleasure itself, a sort of ornate impotence. I think that there is no artist today who does not recognize his life in other features of Watteau's life. It is said that he had many friends who almost all became enemies." Attached are 2 l.s. from Gaston Calmann Lévy to Marcel Proust (May 15 and June 29, 1918) on the poor sale of Les Plaisirs et les Jours, of which 1171 copies (of which 26 on Chine) remain out of an edition of 1500; and a typescript leaf (paginated 131) corresponding to pp. 111-112 of "Mélancolique villégiature."
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