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PROUST Marcel (1871 - 1922)
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PROUST Marcel (1871 - 1922)
2 L.A.S. "Marcel Proust", [ca. July 3, 1920], to Jacques RIVIÈRE| 12 and 8 pages in-8.
Beautiful meeting on his work and on criticism.
Proust worries about the health of his friend, then confirms that "Jacques
Porel asked Gallimard that I make an article RÉJANE. But this article, for many reasons too long to write and which you and I will discuss, but the main one being my terrible state of health, I will not be able to write it. Even a short one would be impossible.
Now Porel writes me that he expects 26 or 27 pages. Copeau (it's a simple suggestion) would do that much better than me, who can't do it at all. He would like to "speak to him in all freedom about the N.R.F.", whose last number is "superb, varied, full, harmonious"| but he was shocked by certain notes which "have something really scandalous", and he takes it out on Jean de PIERREFEU, to whom he wrote that his "articles were too stupid, this criticism so superficial that it necessarily went from contradiction to contradiction etc. [? [...]
Naturally the superficial and brilliant critic had not asked my opinion. A stupid love of truth made me give it to him myself.
I don't need to tell you that he didn't answer me and that his criticism of Le Côté de Guermantes will, I have no doubt, be influenced by my spontaneous appreciation. I understand very well that not everyone does the same, and in short, he is one of those authors about whom one can, more appropriately, keep silence. And he is astonished to have read in the last issue of the review, under the pen of Roger Allard, "an eulogy of M. de Pierrefeu where he was compared to Velasquez (?) to Tallemant des Réaux, to Bussy-Rabutin". He understands that one can be led to write articles of complacency. "For my part, if I had been less unwell, knowing that members of the Goncourt Academy whom I do not know, such as Mr. Élémir Bourges, have taken a touching and crazy trouble to get me the Goncourt prize, they would have taken a great deal of pleasure in it.
I would not have thought myself dishonored to grant them genius. But if I had done that, I would have done it at the
But if I had done that, I would have done it in the Figaro, or in Comoedia, or in the Gaulois, and not in the columns of the scrupulous N.R.F. where one should only speak of what absolutely deserves it [...] Intelligent people like Léon Blum and many others, when I published Swann, said: "That is not what can give a true idea of Proust. Let him publish his pastiches, they will have forty editions". I insinuated that we could "launch" them. The N.R.F. was of a different opinion. They fell flat. I gave the good sheets of Le Côté de Guermantes to a Belgian and an American magazine, since the N.R.F. did not ask me for them. - This is to tell you the high, almost religious idea I have of your Revue. Your admirable n° of July 1st is certainly not made to shake my faith but to exalt it on the contrary, and that from the first page, from this admirable Antoine et Cléopâtre [translated by Gide] that the daily press made fall in such abject conditions that they make for me Mr. Régis Gignoux without that I know him a real personal enemy, a demolisher of beauty. But to find in this n°, Velasquez, St Simon, Tallemant, Bussy for the kind and absurd Pierrefeu (whose theatrical chronicles in the Opinion are, I recognize it, very superior to what he usually does) that seemed to me not very encouraging"...
The second letter is like a postscript to the previous one, Proust wanting to reassure Rivière "about the 'psychological' side of my work".
As it is a construction, necessarily, there are fulls, pillars, and in the interval of the 2 pillars I can give myself up to meticulous paintings. The whole volume on the separation from Albertine, her death, oblivion, leaves far behind the quarrel with Gilberte. So that there will be three very different sketches of the same subject (Swann's separation from Odette in Un amour de Swann - quarrel with Gilberte in Les J. en fleurs - separation from Albertine in Sodome et Gomorrhe, the best part)". The reviews "French and foreign have not stopped talking about the Jeunes Filles en fleurs", but not the N.R.F.| and if in the next issue, under the heading "Revue des Revues", we have to talk about "Pierre Lasserre's stupid article 'Marcel Proust humoriste et moraliste'" in the Revue universelle, he would like "the few lines of rebuttal to be entrusted to me (anonymously of course, or rather, under the name (if this Revue des Revues is signed) of the person who will do it"...
Correspondence, vol. XIX, nos. 160 and 161.
2 L.A.S. "Marcel Proust", [ca. July 3, 1920], to Jacques RIVIÈRE| 12 and 8 pages in-8.
Beautiful meeting on his work and on criticism.
Proust worries about the health of his friend, then confirms that "Jacques
Porel asked Gallimard that I make an article RÉJANE. But this article, for many reasons too long to write and which you and I will discuss, but the main one being my terrible state of health, I will not be able to write it. Even a short one would be impossible.
Now Porel writes me that he expects 26 or 27 pages. Copeau (it's a simple suggestion) would do that much better than me, who can't do it at all. He would like to "speak to him in all freedom about the N.R.F.", whose last number is "superb, varied, full, harmonious"| but he was shocked by certain notes which "have something really scandalous", and he takes it out on Jean de PIERREFEU, to whom he wrote that his "articles were too stupid, this criticism so superficial that it necessarily went from contradiction to contradiction etc. [? [...]
Naturally the superficial and brilliant critic had not asked my opinion. A stupid love of truth made me give it to him myself.
I don't need to tell you that he didn't answer me and that his criticism of Le Côté de Guermantes will, I have no doubt, be influenced by my spontaneous appreciation. I understand very well that not everyone does the same, and in short, he is one of those authors about whom one can, more appropriately, keep silence. And he is astonished to have read in the last issue of the review, under the pen of Roger Allard, "an eulogy of M. de Pierrefeu where he was compared to Velasquez (?) to Tallemant des Réaux, to Bussy-Rabutin". He understands that one can be led to write articles of complacency. "For my part, if I had been less unwell, knowing that members of the Goncourt Academy whom I do not know, such as Mr. Élémir Bourges, have taken a touching and crazy trouble to get me the Goncourt prize, they would have taken a great deal of pleasure in it.
I would not have thought myself dishonored to grant them genius. But if I had done that, I would have done it at the
But if I had done that, I would have done it in the Figaro, or in Comoedia, or in the Gaulois, and not in the columns of the scrupulous N.R.F. where one should only speak of what absolutely deserves it [...] Intelligent people like Léon Blum and many others, when I published Swann, said: "That is not what can give a true idea of Proust. Let him publish his pastiches, they will have forty editions". I insinuated that we could "launch" them. The N.R.F. was of a different opinion. They fell flat. I gave the good sheets of Le Côté de Guermantes to a Belgian and an American magazine, since the N.R.F. did not ask me for them. - This is to tell you the high, almost religious idea I have of your Revue. Your admirable n° of July 1st is certainly not made to shake my faith but to exalt it on the contrary, and that from the first page, from this admirable Antoine et Cléopâtre [translated by Gide] that the daily press made fall in such abject conditions that they make for me Mr. Régis Gignoux without that I know him a real personal enemy, a demolisher of beauty. But to find in this n°, Velasquez, St Simon, Tallemant, Bussy for the kind and absurd Pierrefeu (whose theatrical chronicles in the Opinion are, I recognize it, very superior to what he usually does) that seemed to me not very encouraging"...
The second letter is like a postscript to the previous one, Proust wanting to reassure Rivière "about the 'psychological' side of my work".
As it is a construction, necessarily, there are fulls, pillars, and in the interval of the 2 pillars I can give myself up to meticulous paintings. The whole volume on the separation from Albertine, her death, oblivion, leaves far behind the quarrel with Gilberte. So that there will be three very different sketches of the same subject (Swann's separation from Odette in Un amour de Swann - quarrel with Gilberte in Les J. en fleurs - separation from Albertine in Sodome et Gomorrhe, the best part)". The reviews "French and foreign have not stopped talking about the Jeunes Filles en fleurs", but not the N.R.F.| and if in the next issue, under the heading "Revue des Revues", we have to talk about "Pierre Lasserre's stupid article 'Marcel Proust humoriste et moraliste'" in the Revue universelle, he would like "the few lines of rebuttal to be entrusted to me (anonymously of course, or rather, under the name (if this Revue des Revues is signed) of the person who will do it"...
Correspondence, vol. XIX, nos. 160 and 161.