The deuce of it! at the very moment of adding my signature I saw at the bottom of the page that of the Conte de Ségur, who has declared that we have no natural gift. But the noble academician who has moreover written some fine books, is not perhaps always the most trustworthy of writers, for example when quoting after a remark about us by Gautier, a much less severe remark by Sainte-Beuve, he said "added Sainte-Beuve going one step further".1 So it is that even in a visitors' book I must be pursued by adverse fortune which follows us relentlessly, brought out again on every unfortunate occasion and all in league together for the crushing of a work simply because it is not the work of just anybody. And in my enfetterment at the idea of this Injustice, this crucifixion that we have been forced to endure, I find that I have nothing more to put into the album, having come to regret not telling myself what was told to that friend of the Daudet's, Marcel Proust, who, after a dinner at some aristocratic château or other, upon being invited to sign his name, found himself the subject of this recommendation, this entreaty, in which one can sense all the aversion, all the timidity of the aristocracy and money in the face of literature: "Your name, Monsieur Proust; but... no thoughts!"2
1. Proust is quoting from Pierre de Ségur (Parmi les cyprès et les lauriers). "In the end - a final peculiarity - when they made their appearance on the literary scene there was, I believe, scarcely any example of an association between two writers as rigorous, as perfect, as indissoluble, in such an absolute fusion of two souls and two minds. 'A single person in two volumes' is how Théophile Gautier describes them. 'Twin brothers eight years apart', Sainte-Beuve goes on to say going one step further." "Their books,to all appearances, will not endure as long as their name. They represent, in the history of literature, a worthy attempt, an unselfish effort that has only been moderately successful. Because what is missing in the Goncourts is that which can not be acquired, the spark of genius, or at least some natural gift, without which no lasting masterpiece can be created."
2. Pastiche written in an album belonging to la Marquise du Riveau
de Lauris, c.July 1912.
Created 03.11.17