CP 02812
Marcel Proust to Lionel Hauser - [night of Sunday 2 to Monday 3
August 1914]
1
My dear Lionel,
many thanks for your letter. I know that its kindness is without
indulgence but that its severity is not without friendship. I haven’t
fully understood, not being very well versed in matters of the Stock
Exchange, what you mean by “Take as zero in your portfolio the shares for
which you are the buyer and if there is not enough left to live on,
sacrifice them6”. It goes without saying, but please don’t take
the trouble of writing me a commentary. In these terrible days that we are
going through you have other things to do than write letters and occupy
yourself with my poor interests which I assure you seem to me stripped of
any importance when I think that millions of men are going off to be
sacrificed in a “War of the Worlds”7 comparable to that of
Wells, simply because it is to the Emperor of Austria’s advantage to have
an outlet onto the Black Sea8. I have just driven with my
brother who left for Verdun at midnight9. Alas he has insisted
on being sent right up to the frontier. To come back to my shares, there
is no need to reply to me, especially now that the market is suspended.
When it is reopened I will ask you what I need to do and whether your
prescription meant “don’t hope for any increase and sell them at no matter
what price”. If in that lamentable and enormous list10 (and all
the more lamentable for being enormous) I haven’t included 200 Mexico
Tramways (but I’m sure I did11) it is not to conceal any of my
mistakes from you when I have told you everything. It is just that I
forgot about them. In any case I think I quoted them, but not being
certain, the truth was too cruel to write to you the other day so that I
might still run the risk of not telling you everything. Thank you again
and please thank Messrs Warburg for the co-operation you have given me in
the current circumstances and not knowing where all your loved ones are,
where they are going or what risks they are running in this terrible war,
be assured that my heartfelt sympathies are with them and with you. I am
hoping still, I who am not a believer, for a supreme miracle that at the
last minute will stop the unleashing of the all-murdering machine. But I
ask myself how a believer, a practising Catholic like Emperor Franz-Josef,
convinced that after his approaching death12 he will appear
before God, can take it upon himself to account for the millions of human
lives that depended upon him not to be sacrificed.
With all my heart and with much sadness,
Marcel Proust.
I will keep all the more easily the 30,000 that has come to me today in
the form of a cheque against the Comptoir d’Escompte13
which I don’t suppose will reopen for a long time from now (at least that
is one of the consequences of the moratorium14 I imagine.)
P.S. I’ve received from Messrs Warburg2 1. a cheque for
20,000 francs3 2. a cheque for 30,000 francs4. For
the second they sent me a pre-prepared receipt which I have signed. I
haven’t found a receipt for the first one. So when I sent them the receipt
for the second 30,000 I included a letter5 telling them that
over and above the 30,000 I had also received 20,000 from them.
CP 02823
Marcel Proust to Marie-Marguerite Catusse - [Monday 7 September
1914]
GRAND HOTEL
CABOURG
Madame Catusse
at Malause
Tarn-et-Garonne
1
Dear Madame,
just a few words to ask you for news about Charles. I gave up on going
to Nice because a young man from down there (M. Gautier Vignal (does he
mean anything to you?) assures me that it would take thirty hours. So I
set off for my usual Cabourg2 which is four hours from Paris.
But the train took twenty-two hours and was so packed that you couldn’t
even sit down. I arrived feeling very unwell. But one feels ashamed to
complain about such little things and in any case I’m not thinking about
them. On the journey I thought only of Charles, of you, of my brother, of
my poor friend who was drowned. If you could send me a line to tell me how
Charles is I would be most grateful
Your respectful friend
Marcel Proust.
CP 02830
Marcel Proust to Reynaldo Hahn - [shortly after 24 October
1914]
1
Dear Reynaldo,
thank you from the bottom of my heart for your letter2, an
imperishable memorial to kindness and friendship. But Bize is completely
mistaken if he thinks that a certificate3 will exempt me from
anything whatsoever. Perhaps a certificate from Pozzi, a
lieutenant-colonel at Val-de-Grâce, might do it (but I don’t know). But
with charming manners and perfect protocol he evaded it and refused4.
I shall bring you up to date with my military misadventures as they
happen. My dear little one it is very sweet of you to think that Cabourg5
must have been painful to me on account of Agostinelli. To my shame I must
confess that it was not as painful as I had thought, and that this trip
has rather marked a first stage of detachment from my grief, a stage after
which, fortunately, I have gone back, once I had returned, to my initial
suffering. But finally, in Cabourg, without being any the less heartbroken
nor feeling any less regret about him, there were moments, hours even,
when he had vanished from my thoughts. My dear little one, don’t judge me
too harshly for that (as harshly as I judge myself!). And don’t take that
to signify any lack of loyalty in my affections, just as I was wrong to
assume that of you when I saw that you hardly missed society people who I
thought you cared about a great deal. I assumed that you had less fondness
than I had thought. And I understood afterwards that it was because these
were people who you did not truly love. I truly loved Alfred. It’s not
enough to say that I loved him, I adored him. And I don’t know why I write
it in the past tense because I still love him. Because in spite of
everything, in our regrets there is one part that is involuntary and one
part duty that determines the involuntary and assures its duration. But
this duty did not exist in relation to Alfred who behaved very badly
towards me. I feel regrets towards him that I cannot do other than feel
towards him, but I don’t feel that I am constrained by any sense of duty,
such as the one that binds me to you, which will bind me to you even if I
needed you a thousand times less, if I loved you a thousand times less.
So if I have had a few weeks of relative inconstancy in Cabourg, don’t
judge me as inconstant and blame the person who was incapable of deserving
fidelity. In any case it was a joy to me to see that my sufferings had
returned; but at times they are so strong that I miss a little their
abatement of a month ago. But I also have the sadness of feeling that
however strong they might be, they are still perhaps less tormenting than
a month and a half or two months ago. It is not because others have died
that the grief diminishes, but because one dies oneself. And it requires
great vitality to maintain and keep alive and intact the “self” of a few
weeks ago. His friend has not forgotten him, poor Alfred. But he has
rejoined him in death and his successor, the “self” of today, loves Alfred
but did not know him other than through the reports of the other. It is a
secondhand tenderness6. (Don’t talk about this to anybody I beg
you; if the general character of these truths tempts you to read out any
extracts of this to Gregh or others, you would be causing me a great deal
of pain. If I ever want to formulate such ideas as these it will be under
the pseudonym of Swann. For a long time now life has no longer offered me
anything but events that I have already described. When you read the third
volume of my book7, the one that in part will be called “A
l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs”, you will recognize the
anticipation and the sure prophesy of what I have felt since.) I hope that
what I’ve written to you8 has by now convinced you and that you
will stay at Albi. Moreover I hope that if your absurd whims persist your
dear Commandant will know how to “command” and you to “obey”. I don’t want
to appear to be avoiding your questions about me. Because I know that you
are not just asking them out of politeness; no I am not “eating well” at
the moment. The frequency of my attacks prevents it. You know that as soon
as they lessen, I am capable of climbing back up the slope, remember last
year and my own victory of the Marne9. I rather regret what I
wrote to you about Pozzi. I don’t think he gets on very well with Février,
the director of the Service for Health and the Gallieni side. Besides,
more than likely none of this will be of any importance because I probably
won’t get called up. In any case I have been registered. What gets one out
of it is a visible infirmity, like a missing thumb or something. Illnesses
such as asthma can’t be discerned. It’s true that for my book I was
interviewed in my bed10; but do you think that the Military
Authorities in Paris know anything about that! Bize is mistaken if he
thinks it is a legal exemption.
With much fondness from your,
Marcel.
I have just now received the certificate11 from Bize. I’m
going to write to him and ask him to do it differently12 on
0.60 paper, because even though it is of no use for my exemption, this
certificate might come in useful at some point. But there is no urgency, I
won’t be called any sooner than in a month or two at least. Be that as it
may, I shall still write to him.
P.S. I hope my letter doesn’t give you the idea that I have forgotten
Alfred. Despite the distance in time that, alas, I feel at times, I
wouldn’t hesitate, even at those moments, to rush off and have an arm or a
leg cut off if that could bring him back.
3rd P.S. Above all, dear little one, don’t do anything about my counter
discharge question. What you have done already was exquisitely kind and
was perfect. But to do any more would only cause me trouble. I think that
it will all go quite well. And anyway it won’t be for some time. What does
Commandant C. think about the war? how long will it last? what will be the
outcome? present, past and future?
CP 02843
Marcel Proust to Daniel Halévy - [shortly after Monday 16 November 1914]
1
Dear friend,
just a short note to tell you that I read Les Trois Croix
with tears in my eyes. In these times when there is so much that is
sublime in real events, and so little in words and writing, when everybody
proclaims that the War has transformed minds, but proclaims it in a style
that shows all too clearly that it has transformed nothing at all, in
which the same idiocies, the same banalities are repeated, either worse
still, or seeming so when placed side by side with the important matters
that they imagine they are expressing, in these times when we can't pick
up a newspaper without a feeling of disgust, where probably not a single
decent line has been written about the war, I believe Les Trois Croix2
to be the first example of war literature (please don't balk at the word
literature which in the sense that I use it and in which you understand it
I hope, is something truly noble) that I have ever read. So many things I
would like to say to you at this moment when the utter subjugation of
intellects has never been so disastrous.
Your much affected and admiring
Marcel Proust.
CP 02844
Marcel Proust to Lucien Daudet - [Monday evening 16 November
1914 or shortly after]
1
My dear little one,
if it were not such a joy - as much as we are able to feel any at this
time - to receive a letter like yours, and from someone about whom I have
never stopped thinking for a single day with ever increasing tenderness,
what a relief it is already to read those pages in which there is no
mention of “the Boche”, “their Kultur”, “crying like a little child”,
“little sister”, nor the rest of it. All things that we can easily
tolerate the more we suffer when we think about the martyrdom of the
soldiers and officers, so moved are we by their sacrifice.
But all the same had the press, and notably Le Figaro2,
had better standards then victory would be all the more glorious.
Frédéric Masson, whose style in the past I have felt to be that of an
old grumbler, is far too much at the present time the embodiment of French
“culture”. If he is sincere in finding the Meistersingers inept and
inflicted through snobbery, he is more to be pitied than those he declares
to be afflicted with “Wagneritis”3. If instead of being at war
with Germany we had been at war with Russia, what would people have said
about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky? It is simply that, since contemporary German
literature is so dull that we can’t even discover a single name and a
title that the critics of “Foreign Reading” inform us about from time to
time only for us to forget them straight away, and not knowing where to
start, we limit ourselves to Wagner4.
My dear little one, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this and so
stupidly, because through brevity I completely distort my thoughts, which
are not the ones you are going to imagine. In a word, my dear little one,
before all this, you haven’t written to me for two months, since the
outbreak of war, but truly there has not been a single day when I
haven’t spent hours of my time with you. My dear little one, you cannot
believe how my current affection grafted onto that of former times has
taken on a new force; but I’m sure you don’t believe me. You will see, in
the end.
My dear little one, I found out a month afterwards that your
brother-in-law had suffered an automobile accident, but I had no idea that
Léon had been in it and had been seriously injured. Could you ever imagine
that I wouldn’t have written to you! So were you too in the motor car?
(since you say: I’ve got Léon beside me injured). I am in retrospect very
upset to learn this5. I shall write to your brother. I was
going to do so anyway to tell him of my admiration. War, alas, has
confirmed, consecrated and immortalized his “Pre-war”6. Ever
since Balzac, we have never known a man of imagination discover so
forcefully a social law (in the sense where Newton (?) discovered the law
of gravity7). Yes I was going to write to him about that and I
wouldn’t have mentioned the accident! I hope that if his prophesy was not
listened to, we will know how to “apply” his discovery and put it
into practice, you and I, Post-war. But I do not think
(and I think this is also your brother’s opinion even though I didn’t read
it in his articles) that it must consist in making us inferior, depriving,
I don’t say our musicians, but our writers, of the prodigious fecundation
that it is to hear Tristan, and the Ring Cycle, like Péladan who no longer
wants us to learn German8 (which General Pau and General Joffre9,
fortunately speak fluently).
My dear little one, I too was tormented over my brother, his hospital
at Étain was bombarded while he was operating, the shells smashing his
operating table. He was mentioned in despatches in any case, but not for
that, for countless other acts of courage that he never ceases to perform10.
Unfortunately he is moving forward into the most terrible dangers, and
until the end of the war I don’t what news the next day is going to bring
me.
As for me I am to go before a medical board and I shall probably be
taken, because they take everybody. But I have been stupid because I
didn’t need to get myself registered, having been struck off the staff as
an officer11 and these Boards are only for privates, according
to what Clément de Maugny12 told me, when he came to see me one
evening13 as he was passing through Paris; a very nice chap,
having much improved, probably under his wife’s influence. He spoke to me
very kindly about you and with great admiration for your last book14.
I must say that he seemed to me infinitely less enthusiastic about Swann!
And we have even both been sidelined by a book by somebody who he is close
to and which is especially interesting, it appears, because it talks about
“people we know”15. He, [Maugny]16 has written a
book (historical I think17) and has spoken to me about “ready
copies” (?). I don’t really know what that means. Beside that very
“couldn’t give a damn”, “the General said: send me [Maugny]18”,
and also with a simplicity filled with real grace, which even struck my
housekeeper: “Such simplicity for a Vicomte19!”
My dear little one, until my appearance at the review board I shall
look after myself, so that I will be able to go to it. But all the same if
you come to Paris I will be able to receive you (but I won’t get up).
Afterwards, if I’m not “taken”, so much the easier. But I will be.
My dear little one, everything I have to say to you would fill volumes,
and I wanted to reply to you straight away so as not to let myself be
“decimated” by this burst of activity towards you if I were to resist. I
hope that you don’t have too many of your friends “killed in action”, but
one loves even those one does not know, we weep even for the unknown.
And on this subject, my dear little one, I was utterly stupefied by
something I was told: ill-informed as I am about the magnitude and the
steady brightness of the new stars that have been shining for some time, I
thought I owed a lot of respect towards M. [Z…]20 who I have
never read, but who I was told possessed some genius. But I was quoted
these words of his the other day, which made me sick and that I can’t
quite believe are accurate. I am writing them out completely word for word
where they concern people I don’t know and whose names I wouldn’t be able
to invent, even less their first names: “Yes, this war! But in the end it
would have this result at least, of reconciling Célimène and Alceste
(Comte and Comtesse de [X.], née [***]). Oronte told me to tell you that
Valère had done very well”, (these first names stand for M. [de A.] and
the young Duc [de B] don’t they). “What I can’t endure is when I learn of
the death of somebody of good family” (that’s to say fashionable).
“Oh yes! to find out that a [***] has been killed is a terrible blow to
me.” Can it really be possible! I wouldn’t have believed M. [Y.] or any
other buffoon capable, I’m not saying of speaking, but of thinking like
that, but a writer, a philosopher! […] I hope that none of it is true. I
don’t deny anything […] and I think that the “people from good families”
are sometimes very good. But their death can’t cause me greater pain than
that of others. And the chance nature of friendships has meant that so far
they have caused me much less.
As for those killed in the war they are exemplary, even more than can
be expressed. Everything that has been written about poor Psichari, who I
didn’t know but I heard so much about, is completely false21.
And apart from one or two of them, those literary men who now think that
they are “serving” through their writing, talk very badly about it all.
(There are exceptions - have you read “Les Trois Croix” by Daniel
Halévy in the Débats22, a paper in which,
incidentally, there is an article every day by I don’t know who, called
“The Military Situation”, which is remarkable and plainly written).
In any case all these men of importance are as ignorant as children. I
don’t know if you read an article by General Zurlinden about the origin of
the word Boche, which, according to him, only goes back to last September
when our soldiers etc23. He too must never have talked with
anybody who wasn’t of “good family”. Otherwise he would have known as well
as me that servants, the common people, have always said: “a head like a
Boche”, “he’s a dirty Boche”. I must say that coming from them it is often
quite droll (as in the wonderful story about Paulhan’s mechanic24).
But when the academicians say “Boche” with a false heartiness as they
address the people, like grown ups who lisp when they are talking to
children (Donnay, Capus, Hanotaux25 etc.26), it is
excruciating.
My dear little one, I am paralysed with fatigue and I no longer have
the strength to give you all the news about Reynaldo. He was at Melun and
having asked to be sent East he was sent to Albi, from where however,
alas, he will leave for “the trenches” […] Since the start of this war I
can’t tell you all the proofs of moral nobility that he has shown. I’m not
just talking from the point of view of the war, but even indirectly. […]
Truly Reynaldo is a rock of goodness on which we can build and live. And
truly good. He is truly beyond measure […]27
suffering. And I don’t know why I cite that particular example. If you
want to write to him it would be best to write to him at his regiment,
Hôtel du Vigan Albi Tarn. I’m sure that would give him great deal of
pleasure because he has very special feelings for you and quotes you at
his every word, never comparing you other than favourably.
My dear little one, please present my respectful best wishes at the
feet of Madame your mother and Madame your sister, I shall write to your
brother. A thousand tender thoughts from your
Marcel.
P.S. Hôtel Brunswick seems to be a bit “Boche”28. It’s true
that Béranger29 neutralizes it though.
“Odile”30 is also very “Jumilhac”31 as M. Corpechot32
would say, also very “Barrès”33, but above all must be very
nice being as she is your niece34.
CP 02890
Marcel Proust to Louis de Robert - 3 January [1915]
3 January1
102 Bd Haussmann
Dear friend,
in this terrible anguish of war and the anguish that was my “Pre-War”2
(because the whole of last summer was for me the cruellest of my life3),
I have never stopped thinking about you - as a great friend of the mind -
in the midst of misfortunes when I was no longer in possession of my mind.
And then war broke out! On the first day my brother left for Verdun4
as a major, and since then has never ceased ceased to be in the most
terrible danger in the firing line.5 My dearest friends are all
at the front. It gives me some peace of mind at least to know that you
can’t “go”. As for myself I’ve still not passed my exemption review. I
hope that your health does not suffer too cruelly from the repercussions
of these anxieties, and also that your friends haven’t been too much put
to the test. Alas, I already have friends6, even family members7,
who have been killed.
I don’t know if you share my opinion, but I find the newspapers are
greatly inferior to the great matters that they talk about. I think they
take a deplorable tone that risks diminishing the scope for Victory, a
Victory which, alas, is so far off. May it come in 1915, and without our
dearest friends being taken from us. Dear friend, may 1915 also bring a
strengthening of your health and inspiration for great works.
With all my heart, your
Marcel Proust.
CP 02913
Reynaldo Hahn to Marcel Proust - [shortly before 5 March
1915?]
1
[photograph of Reynaldo Hahn in military uniform]
Nothing could be crappier than this portrait. I’m shending it to amuse you2.
I know that the Widow has been to see you3: I am just picturing
to myself everything that surrounded, preceded, marked and followed her
visit. There is a cold here that makes everything more difficult, more
slow - and more sad; I spent two days with Commandant Cuny, five
kilometres away from here, (and at ease as well4)
and have just come back. So many things I could tell you! But it would
take Mirbeau and Courteline both5 to give you an exact
idea. - It seems that Robert is no longer around here6. -
Hasdouen
R[eynal]do.
CP 02915
Marcel Proust to Robert de Billy - [between 8 and 11 April
1915]
1
102 Bd Haussmann
My dear Robert,
I don’t really like to compound feelings with practical questions. Also
I do not want to speak to you about sorrows that have literally destroyed
me since last summer. From the start of the war I have been living in a
state of anxiety for all those I love (that is to say, when it all comes
down to it, for those I do not know but whose suffering I imagine so
vividly), but I can’t stop myself from being even more particularly
tormented over my brother who has experienced terrible dangers in the
Argonne, and I am particularly desperate about the disappearance of
Bertrand de Fénelon2.
Among so many thoughts that I want to share with you (and I also really
want to know your impressions, your thoughts) it pains me to ask you a
business question, which in any case can only be an irritation for you, a
simple request for advice. My excuse for talking to you about business
matters is that if you recall last summer I had a considerable “balance”
come to term and a loan against securities and you can imagine what has
come of it all since the war and in what difficulties it might be. You
might perhaps be able to give me some good advice about a few of them.
But it would take too long to explain and anyway at this moment we don’t
really have the heart to talk about all that, our minds are much more on
other things. The only advice I would like to get from you and that you
have already obtained for me once but in a vague, non-committal way, just
like Maison Mirabaud3 would have given to a man on
the street, concerns Doubowaïa Balka. I would like to know if
their value, which has gone down considerably from the rate at which I
bought them, shortly before the division of shares, is considered by Maison
Mirabaud4 as excellent value, destined to regain the
rates that it had before (I’m not saying the rate it was at before the war
and which was already lower than many) or if on the other hand it would be
wise to sacrifice them. In fact I bought it with a loan on securities5,
which is to say that it cost me 7% in interest, without bringing me
anything. If their rates are sure to rise to any great extent it could be
worth the trouble of persisting with them. I would welcome it if the Maison
Mirabaud could give you precise details in this regard6.
In the next few days I will be going before the military exemption
board and there is every chance in the world that I could be “taken” when
there are so many healthy people walking around7. I don’t want
it to happen because I know how useless I would be and also that what
remains of my health would founder before I able to complete my book. I
have never ceased to be terribly ill since I last saw you and that is
almost a consolation; one feels less ashamed of oneself than if one were
happy and well when so many people are suffering and dying. But I would
still prefer to be well and useful. My brother is at least; for the last
eight months he has never ceased to be so for a second and often in tragic
circumstances which has led to his name being mentioned in despatches8.
Reynaldo is in the Argonne, probably not far away from Robert9.
I would be very pleased to hear your thoughts on all this as far as you
can. But as for the Doubowaïa it is on the contrary explicit advice that I
ask of you, if you can give it, precise and sincere. Let me know how
Madame Billy, your daughters, your parents, have got through these
terrible months.
Give them my respectful regards and believe in the tender affection of
your
Marcel Proust.
Please give my respectful regards to Monsieur and Madame Barrère10.
And to Primoli11 if he’s in Rome. If I don’t get “taken” do you
think I could risk a stay in Venice for my hay fever? assuming I was in a
fit state to leave my bed and travel, which is doubtful.
CP 02929
Madeleine Lemaire to Marcel Proust - Tuesday 6 April [1915]
Tuesday 6 April1
My dear Marcel,
I have discovered you all over again in the long letter2
that you took the trouble to write me, which touched and amused me. I hope
writing it did not cause you too much fatigue and as for me I assure you
it was delightful to read. I felt like I was chatting to you. So I am
replying to what you tell me. I assure you that our melancholies have much
in common, since they likely have the same causes, and that our general
disenchantment comes from the cataclysm that we are witnessing. Do not say
that your moral state is incurable, because you are young, and you can
hope to witness a rebirth, whereas I will not be given the time; I can
only end my days in sadness. In spite of that I try to function still, I
call upon my energies in the belief that I still have a little left, I
work in an effort to convince myself that I am interested in it, but
mostly so as not to think about anything else.
What a shame that I can’t talk to you about all this and how sad that
we can’t chat together like we used to, and share our two melancholies,
which would perhaps give us greater strength to bear them.
Thank you for the offer of your physician3, I will take him
up when I am next ill, because my current illness is drawing to an end I
hope. I’m feeling better and it hasn’t come too soon, after four weeks,
and if good weather comes I shall be fully cured and can finally make my
way back to Réveillon; because I am very unhappy to think of Suzette there
all on her own.
Moving on to the third point in your letter about laxative tablets.
Thank you for that too!!! I have no need of them.
But how you think of everything!
I don’t know if Céleste’s husband has a motorcar that would enable him
to make a long trip4. But I’m still hoping that they are going
to restore the train for the Marne because people have clamoured for it
from the Company. Sorry for talking about myself so much and about things
that are of little interest to you, I am merely replying to you.
Let’s talk about you now. I am very sorry to hear you are in such low
spirits. I had found you to be so well last year when I met you at
Reynaldo’s conference5. You had regained your old appearance.
And yet the year has been a good one for you from the literary point of
view, you have had great success, which you richly deserved. You must have
been pleased, in spite of everything.
When will I be able to see you again? I have to come back in May. I
assure you it would be a pleasure for me to see you again and chat6.
With much love,
Madeleine Lemaire.
Forgive my rambling letter. I am worn out.
CP 02930
From Marcel Delanney to Marcel Proust - [Thursday 8 April 1915]
1
PREFECTURE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SEINE
REVIEW BOARD - SUMMONS
Monsieur Proust Marcel
Rue Bd Hausmann [sic] No 102
Paris 8e
SEINE
No 104572, Adu. H.
ARRONDISSEMENT of 8th
CANTON of
COMMUNE of
Order number : 241
REPUBLIC OF FRANCE Liberty - Equality - Fraternity
MEDICAL EXAMINATION FOR EXEMPTIONS AND THOSE UNFIT FOR SERVICE
CLASS OF 1888
SUMMONS before the Review Board of the Seine Department.
M (1) Proust Marcel Valentin
is requested to present himself before the Review Board which will meet
on (2) TUESDAY 13 APRIL
at (3) 3 30 AM2
at the Town Hall, SALLE SAINT-JEAN (Rue Lobeau entrance)
to be examined in accordance with the provisions contained in the decree
of the Minister of War of 15 September, 19143.
(1) Full name
(2) Day and date
(3) Time
PREFECT FOR LA SEINE, M. DELANNEY.
Paris. New Imp. - Print 8 kil. 50,000 ex. - 77-1-15
NOTE. - The person concerned must be the holder of a certificate of
exemption or military service record.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
Any men who fail to present themselves before the Review Board will be
considered fit for active service.
CP 02950
Marcel Proust to Charles d’Alton - [after 12 May 1915]
1
102 boulevard Haussmann
Dear Monsieur,
I should very much like to hear the news from you. The last time I
wrote to Madame Foucart she was unable to give me any. Madame d’Alton has
not replied to me. And as I will almost certainly not be going to Cabourg
this year (I shall probably be called up anyway) I will be left, if you
don’t write to me, having no news of you at all, you who I think about a
little more every day. I know the fine resolution you have taken and how
bravely you have borne it. How I would have liked, as Bertrand was able to
do, to see you in your uniform in which you must look so charming and
which must match so well with the colour of your eyes. The Breton ladies
must murmur when they catch sight of you (if you are still in Brittany:
“It is a blue to die for Because it is the blue of his eyes”2.)
Alas there is something else that is killing me, the war! Two dearly loved
friends, the first of whom was like a brother to me, Bertrand de Fénelon
and Robert d’Humières, have been killed in the most awful circumstances3.
I name them only because they were particularly close, but how many loved
ones, friends have I lost. And now we even love those we don’t know, we
love all those who are fighting, we weep for those who fall! When I saw
Madame d’Alton in Cabourg4, I was complaining because I had
just been ruined. How I wish it could stay like that and that a creature
like Bertrand de Fénelon was alive. And perhaps you know already, my poor
Agostinelli who I loved so much and for whom I will forever remain
inconsolable, was killed in an aeroplane, drowned in the Mediterranean5.
My friend Reynaldo is in Argonne6, my brother at Arras; my
brother was mentioned in despatches and decorated7, and indeed
from the very first day he has never ceased to display great courage, but
I am often very worried. I spent a month in Cabourg8 and in the
midst of the anguish of war some people managed, though without anybody
being able to imagine where the information came from, to come up with the
most improbable gossip. Which made a horror of this beach resort for me,
even more so because it was largely propagated by people for whom I have
nothing but respect and affection. (This is just between us of course,
because if you aren’t careful you could risk committing a terrible
blunder, whereas when we talk just between the two of us I could perhaps
be very useful to you). It still galls me. But this unhappiness is a very
small thing next to all the others. Night and day we think about the war,
perhaps more grievously still when like me we play no part in it. But if
we think about something else, even if we are sleeping, the suffering
never stops, like those neuralgias that we experience in our sleep. I try
to understand the military operations as best I can, which is hardly at
all. I gorge myself every day on anything that the French or Genevan
military critics think about the war. I have no need to tell you that it
is never without addressing a thought filled with tender respect for the
man with the large heart and charming wit who was happy to chat with me
about the army and strategy in the casino at Cabourg. Since then that man
has realized his dream by becoming an officer once more. I admire him, I
envy him; but most of all I want to know how he is!
And I ask him to accept the homage of my affectionate respect.
Marcel Proust.
CP 02969
Marcel Proust to Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac - [beginning of
July 1915]
1
102 Bd Hausmann [sic]
Dear Sir,
since I received Les Offrandes blessées2, every
day I hope to be well enough the next day to go and talk to you about it
and to express to you my admiration. The more time passes the less
satisfied I feel with a letter. Yet here I am, summoned again by the
military board3; until my situation with them is cleared up one
way or another, I know that for the next few days, the next few weeks
perhaps, I will not be sure about my movements. So I write these few lines
simply to tell you how much I wanted to come and that I shall come soon,
(with La Divine Comtesse for the promised dedication)4.
At last, thanks to you, Art and War have coincided! We are told about
the poetry that the War will give birth to, but I don’t really believe
that. In any case what has come out so far has been far unequal to
Reality. I think rather that it is within you yourself, in that atavistic
reflection like the one that places you among the pools of Versailles,
that you have “read into the thoughts”5 (to take up your
expression in Les Perles rouges), of our modern day d’Artagnan,
our contemporary Louvois. Everybody will have their favourites from your Offrandes,
just as they had from your “Prières”, which is to say all of them
one after another, then they will come back to the one they have chosen
especially. The negro’s prayer, the hairdresser’s prayer, the coachman’s
prayer, the actor’s prayer, the servant’s prayer. Now it will be the
agrarian offering, the strategic offering, the triple offering, the
artistic offering. I can’t understand why you say that we have loved
Wagner too much6. But what I find wonderful is the
justification of art, more evident than ever “when Virtue becomes Truth”7.
How many times through the course of this book does Truth express itself
with such beauty and such strength. Which is what I shall soon be coming
to tell you as your respectful and grateful friend,
Marcel Proust.
CP 02970
From Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac to Marcel Proust -
[beginning of July 1915]
1
Dear Marcel,
I do not think I need to contradict you when you write “everybody will
have their favourites”2.
I do not know what my “Offerings” are equal to; but I am starting to
think that they are equal to each other, since everyone tells me,
in fact, that they like one of them which is one that has not been
mentioned to me by anyone else. Is that not something of a justification
for all of them?
Then I take out just one, replace it, add a dozen more, and the book is
reprinted3 like that, brought, as I wanted, up to two hundred
pieces by this addition.
But the source is not dry, and I will compose more of them for those
who love them.
I do not believe in your visit, not that I say, like Madame
Valmore:
To feel such happiness, I have waited too long…4
But, so long postponed, such an event would take on, today, the
proportions of a “sign in the heavens”; there are many of those already5.
I do however hold dear the wish to believe probable, imminent even,
that which is not to be, even though we know that that is the case; it is
the only way to tolerate the fact that life can come to an end without
consultation, and can terminate without warning.
We are not, alas! “people who see each other” as those people say who
we should never have chosen to give such a label.
I have often suggested that I come and see you6; you never
seem to have heard.
Similarly for the book7, which I have offered to send you8.
When one is anxious for something there is no need to credit their
existence in order to allow time for them to happen; we must repeat, like
in the story about Stevens: “If you were to die this very night!9”
There is between us, from now on, a wall of ice. It contains, keeps and
preserves fresh and coloured flowers; we see them, but without being able
to touch them.
Robert de Montesquiou.
1915.
CP 02992
Marcel Proust to Lionel Hauser - Friday [27 August 1915]
Friday1
My dear Lionel,
I actually wrote to you straight away to express my deep gratitude but
my letter has had no luck. Taken straight to Boulevard Flandrin2
because it was too late for the rue de la Victoire3, they said
you no longer lived there. So the next day I sent it to the rue de la
Victoire, you weren’t there4. Today (which makes it forty eight
hours without you having any means of knowing that I am not ungrateful,
which makes me feel ill) I sent back to the rue de la Victoire to ask for
your new address (which should have been done in the first place) and they
refused to give it out5. So I am going to send this note back
again to rue de la Victoire in the hope that one day or another you will
know of my gratitude.
You are very kind (and I fear a little mocking), when you say you read
my letter with interest; because there is nothing more boring, except on
the part of the questioner, than these requests for advice. But you can
easily understand that in my case I read your reply with great interest,
because in it you deal with general questions, such as the exchange rate,
which I read as it it were an article in the Revue de Paris,
only better written. In the meantime the director of the Agence du
Crédit Industriel has come back from three months’ leave and sent
me a detailed table of gains and losses. I should just say losses because
nothing has risen. On taking a closer look at the Rothschild account (I
wanted to send you it but I was afraid of boring you to death) I see that
the Jutland and the Dutch have too little presence to be of any use. On
the other hand might large groups of Bank of Spain, Rio, La Plata, Santa
Fé, Chilean 5%, Russia, perhaps benefit from the point of view of exchange
rates? Don’t trouble yourself writing back to me. I’ll ask the Crédit
Industriel and tremble that he tells me it is for sale. Because
then I will have to confront Monsieur Neuburger. As for the shares that
are not giving any interest, such as the Doubowaïa Balka, I would
naturally prefer to sell them. But the capital has fallen too much. As for
the Gold Mines, I don’t know if the war will profit them. But then they
provide a good income.
I didn’t understand what you told me about my broker, but as I am not
obliged to raise the securities6 it is all the same to me.
Moreover those shares are lower than in June. Nevertheless I’m going to
write to him that he can put a stop to the gamble7, if he
wishes. You have been of course kind, clever, delightful,
in all of your advice and giving it to me so quickly and in so much
detail. But it seems to me (and I say this very affectionately), that you
have been a little less so when you said you were happy that I had been
assigned into the armed services because you know very well that in my
current state of health it would be the death of me in forty eight hours.
To be sure there is nothing pleasant about the life I lead and even
knowing that I can be of no use whatsoever to the army, I am making myself
useful by allowing myself to be excluded. But I very much want to finish
the book I have started and put into it the truths that I know will give
many people sustenance and which otherwise will perish along with me. But
anyway (and this is my primary reason for my delay in thanking you) just
after I received your letter I was unexpectedly informed of the visit of
some new military doctors, to my great astonishment because I had been
deferred for six months (no doubt due to the Dalbiez act8). The
consequence was that on the contrary I am being put forward for Discharge.
I hope I am not causing you any distress by telling you this. Please don’t
take this last part of my letter other than how it was written, which is
to say “cum grano salis”, and rather in the fullness of its
meaning that you believe me to be your grateful and affectionate,
Marcel Proust.
Please don’t tell anybody what I told you about my brother9
because he hasn’t told anyone, I only found out about it indirectly, it
has never interrupted his work and I hope he will get over it fully.
P.S. Now that I have been reviewed again I shall try to make one or two
tentative efforts to go out. The first will be to come and thank you, if I
am able to join you. And then ask you if you possess a copy of my book
illustrated by Madame Lemaire (Les Plaisirs et les Jours). If not
I’ll be happy to send it to you, it is pretty enough to look at so even
without taking the trouble to read it you might at least take some
pleasure in looking at the drawings. Perhaps I have already given you it.
I no longer remember.
I have discovered (I’m jumping back to the first matter) that the
Egyptian Bonds, the Swiss Federal Rail, the Tunisian, the Revenue, the
Suez have fallen too low to sell. Provisionally I have stopped at the
Nitrates and the Water Company.
CP 02993
Lionel Hauser to Marcel Proust - 28 August 1915
28 August 1915
My dear Marcel,
I have just received your long letter which I just read again with
great interest even though that ruffles you.
I’m really sorry to hear about all the trips your domestic servants
have been making backwards and forwards with the sole purpose of
demonstrating your gratitude to me before I even had time to doubt it.
As regards your zealous messenger1 to whom you have
entrusted the pains of discovering my address, I don’t know who he asked,
but if he came to rue de la Victoire he must surely not have come up to my
office because none of us has seen him here for quite some time.
This will explain the allusion you make to my absences from the office,
when I have not missed a single day since April.
If your messenger asked the concierge, he has only got himself to
blame, I hope in any case that he doesn’t do it again.
My new address is 18, avenue de l’Observatoire where I hope to have the
pleasure of one day or another of a visit from you, in spite of the five
floors and the absence of a lift.
That said, I grant you in the future a minimum of forty eight hours to
express your gratitude so you do not need to fall over yourself for that,
but between you and me let it be said that the act of answering you
immediately, having nothing else to do, and with all the sincerity due to
our close and ancient friendship bestows to me a new title to your
gratitude, being the occasion for a new manifestation of appreciation.
Passing on now to the part of my letter2 which almost made
you doubt the purity of my feelings towards you, you must understand that
it is very difficult for me to have a clear idea of your exact physical
state. Which is why, after a major in the French army has examined you and
declared you fit for military service, I am required, until proven
otherwise, to bow to his diagnosis. I hoped therefore that it was he who
was correct and you who were wrong, but your new communication removed me
of all hope in that regard. It remains for me then to hope that following
the example of your erstwhile confrère, Voltaire, you succeed in spite of
your wavering health, to outlive all of your generation.
In reply to the P.S. to your aforesaid remarks, I hasten to say that I
don’t possess your book: Les Plaisirs et les Jours, and if you
are happy to send it to me I will be more glad still to receive it. I
shall not confine myself to merely looking at the pictures but I shall
take pains even to read carefully what your natural modesty prevents you
from recommending the reading of. I send you my sincere thanks in advance
and beg you to believe, my dear Marcel, I am your most devoted
CP 02996
Marcel Proust to Antoine Bibesco - [about 9 September 1915]
1
Dear Antoine,
I say to you as people say idiotically: “I was so pleased to see your
handwriting”. Even though yours (not quite so much as mine though) is
frightful. But the sight of it delighted me. It’s one of those mysteries
of friendship.
I am useful (because I do a rare thing which is to reconcile two rather
common qualities: clairvoyance and abnegation) only as a go-between and as
a doctor. I am useless as a strategist. In any case your question is
strangely put. You say: “For how long will the Russians withdraw?” Which
it seems to me means: “For how long will the Germans advance?” It amounts
to the same thing, but it is an unexpected way of saying it. I would
prefer you to tell me when the Roumanians will be on the march5.
If I don’t dare speculate on the future (except like everybody else on
the certainty of final victory) I am happy to justify myself about the
past. When you told me6 that the Courlande expedition7
was an eccentric whim on the part of the Germans I replied8
that in the case of a people who prepared meticulously for something that
they could not foresee (munitions for the duration of a war which they
alone believed would be short and were the only ones to be fully equipped,
retreat at Lens9 in order to take it from us and to help
themselves to it when they did not think they would retreat, taking the
Dardanelles10 to cut off Russia who they thought defeated
etc.) one should not imagine that it is a disorderly whim and that the
Courlande expedition was, in the long term, be it a pincer movement
against the Russian army or at least against Warsaw11, be it a
counterpart to the Dardanelles (but Bardou who said12 two weeks
ago that events in Riga were a proof, has written a marvellous article13
since then pointing out the symmetry between the Dardanelles, the shutting
down of Russia, in imitation of the War or Secession). If Emmanuel is with
you give him my best wishes.
Yours,
Marcel.
P.S. I received your second letter2. You know quite well
that I would have been very happy to get acquainted with Monsieur Morand3
when you asked me, but, remember, he wasn’t free, leaving for London and
at a time when I feared I would be unwell. I would be delighted if you
sent me his letter4 because I had been so eager to know him.
My fondest regards to Henri Bardac14 who I like very much.
CP 03007
Marcel Proust to Nicholas Cottin - 22 October 1915
22 October 1915
My dear Nicholas,
I am very late with my reply to you1. So late that I was
worried that my note would no longer reach you at Belley2. But
Céline3 told me to risk it all the same. If I am so late it
isn’t my fault. Griefs and cares have never ceased. I have spoken to you
about my young Meyer cousins who have been at the front since the
beginning. The youngest one has been killed4 and I had to try
to be at the service of their poor mother who is expecting the same fate
for the others. And secondly, what nobody had foreseen, the liquidation of
the Bourse, which we thought would be restored after the war, when shares
had risen again slightly, happened at the end of September5. We
have ten months to pay6. But to pay a hundred and fifty
thousand francs it will still be necessary to find fifteen thousand francs
every month and as the old saying goes money doesn’t grow on trees.
Fortunately with regard to my advance on securities, the liquidation
doesn’t affect it, and the moratorium delays the repayment. But the
moratorium itself could soon come to an end! I’m sure that even beyond the
consequences for you and our allies, you sympathize with the untold
sufferings of the Serbs7. The massacres in Belgium were child’s
play next to what is taking place in Serbia. It is not only the soldiers,
but civilians too, all of them being wiped out. Clearly, when not a single
Serb is left in Serbia, the Bulgarians will have all the cards in their
hands to claim that there are only Bulgarian populations in Serbia, which
they will then be obliged to annex. It makes one shudder to think that
human beings can behave towards other human beings with such ferocity.
I hope you are completely cured8 and that I will soon have
the pleasure of shaking your hand.
Your devoted
Marcel Proust.
CP 03011
Lionel Hauser to Marcel Proust - 26 October 1915
Paris, 26 October 1915
My dear Marcel,
I have received your letter1 and I have paid close attention
to its contents.
There is no need to tell you that we are deeply immersed in studying
your accounts and I hope, in two or three days’ time, to send you a report
which will allow you to review your situation as exactly as possible.
As regards the tip you have had on the subject of Steel2, I
will confine myself to telling you that its stock, which is known as
advantageous by every speculator, is as it were the “Rio” of the New York
market, only with this difference, that Rio Tinto, being a copper mine, we
know pretty well what it contains; what one extracts from it in less than
a year remains with the mine, and one is certain of recovering it, whereas
Steel is a collection of metallurgical factories that follow the ups and
downs of American industry.
Those stocks that have already been quoted at 7% have jumped to almost
100, only to fall back to below 60. Ever since the Americans have been
manufacturing for the Allies3 they have again risen reasonably
well and today are worth above 80.
Currently they are not distributing dividends.
I don’t have any advice to give you, but if you decide to acquire these
shares you risk losing the little you have left. In this regard allow me
to disabuse you of a false impression of which you are unfortunately
victim. You imagine, along with many others, that the gains one realizes
on the stock market are dependent upon the stocks that one buys. Well,
paradoxical as it might seem, I can assure you that that depends in the
first place on the person who is managing them. I have known individuals
who have enriched themselves on the stock market by managing tenth rate
shares and others who have been ruined with premium rate shares. It is
very much a question of the individual. There are people who are born to
do this job, and others who are born to get their fingers burned by it. I
don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that you belong to the latter,
but if you are not convinced, you are at liberty to continue the exercise,
I ask only to be convinced to the contrary.
Very sincerely yours
CP 03024
Marcel Proust to Marie Scheikévitch - [shortly after 3
November 1915]
1
To Madame Scheikévitch,
Madame, you wanted to know what became of Mme Swann as she got older.
It’s quite difficult to summarize for you. I can tell you that she became
more beautiful: “This was mainly the result of what happened during her
mid-life, Odette had at length discovered, or invented, a physiognomy of
her own, an unalterable “character”, a style of beauty, and on her
uncoordinated features - which for so long, exposed to the dangerous and
futile vagaries of the flesh, putting on momentarily years, a sort of
fleeting old age, as a result of the slightest fatigue, had composed for
her somehow or other, according to her mood and her state of health, a
dishevelled, changeable, formless, charming face - had now set this fixed
type, as it were an “immortal youthfulness2”. [RTP I,
p.664] You will see the company she kept renewing itself3;
yet (without knowing the reason until the end) you will still find Mme
Cottard4 there exchanging words with Mme Swann such as: “You’re
looking very elegant today”, Odette said to Mme Cottard, “Redfern fecit5?”
“No, you know I always swear by Raudnitz6. Besides, it’s only
an old thing I’ve had done up.” “Well, well! it’s really smart!” “Guess
how much… No, change the first figure!”7 [RTP I,
p.644] “Oh! it’s very bad of you to give the signal for flight
like that, [RTP I, p. 649] I see that my tea party
hasn’t been a great success.” “Do try one of these little horrors, they
are really quite good”8. But I would prefer to introduce you to
some characters that you don’t yet know, one above all who plays the most
important role and determines the turn of events9, Albertine.
You will see her when she is still only a “young girl in bloom” in the
shadow of whom I spend many happy times in Balbec10. Then when
I become suspicious of her over trifles, and have my confidence in her
restored by trifles - “it is the property of love to make us at once more
distrustful and more credulous11” [RTP II, p.862]
- I should have left it at that. “The wiser course would have been to
consider with curiosity, to appropriate with delight, that little particle
of happiness failing which I should have died without ever suspecting what
it could mean to hearts less difficult to please or more highly
privileged. I ought to have left, to have shut myself up in solitude, to
have remained there in harmony with the last vibrations of the voice which
I had contrived to render loving for an instant, and of which I should
have asked nothing more than that it might never address another word to
me; for fear lest, by an additional word which henceforth could not but be
different, it might shatter with a discord the sensory silence in which,
as though through the presence of a pedal, there might long have survived
in me the throbbing chord of happiness12.” [RTP II,
p.864] Yet little by little I tire of her, the idea of marrying
her is no longer attractive to me; when one evening on our return from one
of those dinners at “the Verdurins’ in the country” at which you will
finally come to know the true personality of M. de Charlus13,
she tells me as she is bidding me goodnight that the childhood fiend whom
she had often mentioned to me, and with whom she still kept up an
affectionate relationship, was Mlle Vinteuil. You will see the terrible
night that I then spend, at the end of which I come in tears to ask my
mother’s permission to get engaged to Albertine14. Next you see
our lives together during our long engagement, the slavery to which my
jealousy reduces her, and which, successfully calming my jealousy, causes
to evaporate, or so I think, any desire to marry her15. But one
day when the weather is so fine that, thinking about all the women who
pass by, all the journeys that I could take, I am intending upon asking
Albertine to leave, Françoise comes into my room and hands me a letter
from my fiancée who has decided to break it off with me and has left that
very morning. It was what I thought I had wanted! but I was under so much
suffering that I was obliged to promise myself that by the same evening a
way would be found to make her come back16. “A moment ago I had
thought that that was what I had wanted. And seeing how much I had
deceived myself, I understood how suffering can reach much deeper into our
psychology than the best psychologist, and the knowledge that the elements
from which our soul is formed is given to us not through the subtle
perceptions of our intelligence - hard, glittering, strange, like a
suddenly crystallized salt - but by the abrupt reaction of pain17”.
[RTP III, p.426] The following days I can barely take
more than a few steps in my room, “I tried not to brush against the
chairs, to not notice the piano, nor any of the objects that she had used
and all of which, in the secret language that my memories had taught them,
seemed to be seeking to give me a new translation of her departure. I sank
down into an armchair, I could not remain in it, because I had only ever
sat in it when she was still there; and so at every moment there was one
or more of those innumerable and humble “selves” that compose our
personality which was still unaware of Albertine’s departure and which
must be made to hear the words that were as yet unknown to it: “Albertine
has gone.”18 [RTP III, p.436-437] “And with
each of my actions, even the most trivial, since they had all been steeped
beforehand in the blissful atmosphere which was Albertine’s presence, I
was obliged, at renewed cost, with the same pain, to begin again my
apprenticeship in separation. Then the competition of other forms of
life… As soon as I was conscious of this, I was panic-stricken. This calm
which I had just enjoyed was the first apparition of that great
intermittent force which was to wage war in me against grief, against
love, and would ultimately get the better of them.”19 [RTP
III, p.455] This is all about the act of forgetting but the
page is already half filled up so I will have to pass over all that if I
want to tell you about the end. Albertine does not come back. I begin to
wish for her death so that no one else can possess her. “How could Swann
have believed in the past that had Odette perished, the victim of an
accident, he would have regained, if not his happiness then at least some
calm by the suppression of suffering. The suppression of suffering! Can I
really have believed it, have believed that death merely strikes out what
exists.”20 [RTP III, p.484] I learn of the
death of Albertine. - “For the death of Albertine to be able to eliminate
my suffering, the shock would have had to have killed her not only outside
of myself, as it had done, but within me. There, she had never been more
alive. In order to enter into us, another person must first have assumed
the form, have adapted himself to the framework of Time; appearing to us
only in a succession of momentary flashes, he has never been able to
reveal to us more than one aspect of himself at a time, to present us with
more than a single photograph of himself. A great weakness no doubt for a
person, to consist merely of a collection of moments; a great strength
also; he is a product of memory, and our memory of a certain moment is not
informed of everything that has happened since; this moment which it has
recorded endures still, lives still, and with it the person whose form is
outlined in it. And moreover, this disintegration does not only make the
dead one live, it multiplies him or her. When I had succeeded in bearing
the grief of losing one of those Albertines, it all began again with
another, with a hundred others. So that what had constituted the sweetness
of my life until then, the perpetual rebirth of those moments from the
past made a torture out of it.”21 [RTP III, p.487-488]
(Different times, seasons). I wait until summer is over, then autumn. “But
the first frosts recall other memories so cruel that then, like a sick
person (who sees things from the view point of his body, his chest and his
cough, but in my case mentally) I felt that what I had still to dread most
for my grief, for my heart, was the return of winter. Linked as it was to
all the seasons, in order for me to lose the memory of Albertine I should
have had to forget them all, only to learn them all over again like a
stroke victim learning to read again.” [RTP III, p.493-494]
“Only the actual death of my own self would have consoled me for hers.
But one’s own death is nothing so extraordinary, it is consummated every
day in spite of ourselves22. Since, merely by thinking of her,
I brought her back to life, her infidelities could never be those of a
dead woman, the moment at which she had committed them becoming the
present moment, not only for her but for that one of my various “selves”
thus suddenly evoked who happened to be thinking of her. So that no
anachronism could ever separate the indissoluble couple, in which each new
culprit immediately manifested themselves as a still contemporaneous
jealous lover23.” [RTP III, p.500] “After all
it is no more absurd to regret that a dead girl has no idea that she has
failed to deceive us, than it is to hope that our name will be known in
two hundred years’ time. What we feel is the only thing that exists for
us, and we project it into the past, or into the future, without allowing
ourselves to be stopped by the fictitious barriers of death24.”
[RTP III, p.539] - “And when my strongest memories no
longer brought her back to me, it was the small insignificant things that
could do so. Because memories of love are no exception to the general laws
of memory, which themselves are governed by Habit which weakens
everything. And so what best reminds us of a person is precisely what we
had forgotten, because it was of no importance25.” [RTP
I, p.692] - “Little by little I began to submit to the forces
of forgetting, that powerful instrument of adaptation to reality, that
destroyer in us of this surviving past which is in constant contradiction
with it. Not that I no longer loved Albertine. But already I was no longer
in love with her as I was during the latter period, but as in the very
earliest days of our love. Before forgetting her altogether, I should have
to traverse in the opposite direction, like a traveller who returns by the
same route to his starting point, before attaining my initial
indifference, all the sentiments through which I had passed. But these
stages do not appear to us as immobile. While one is halted at one of
them, one has the illusion that the train is setting off again, but in the
direction of the place from which one has come, as on the former occasion.
Such is the cruelty of memory26.” [RTP III, p.568-569] -
“Albertine had no cause to reproach me. We can only be faithful to what we
remember, and we remember only what we have known. My new self, while it
grew up in the shadow of the old, the old that had died, had often heard
the other speak of Albertine. Through the stories of that moribund self,
it believed that it knew her, loved her. But it was only a love at second
hand27.” [RTP III, p.608-609] - “Like certain
strokes of fortune, there are strokes of misfortune that come too late,
and can no longer assume the magnitude they would have had for us a little
earlier28.” [RTP III, p.614] - “By the time I
learned this I was already consoled. And there was no reason to be
surprised by it. Regret really is a physical malady, but between the
physical maladies it is necessary to distinguish those that only act on
the body by the intermediary of memory. In the last case the prognosis is
generally favourable. At the end of a given period a patient who is
attacked by cancer will be dead. It is very seldom that the grief of an
inconsolable widower is not healed29.” [RTP III,
p.659] - Alas Madame, I have run out of paper just as it was
getting rather good!
Your Marcel Proust.
[RTP: Remembrance of Things Past, 3 vol, Penguin Classics, 1983,
C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation revised by Terence Kilmartin.]
CP 03189
Marcel Proust to Lionel Hauser - Tuesday evening [29 August
1916]
Tuesday evening1
My dear Lionel,
I have just this moment received your letter but as I am having a lot
of pain in my eyes I shall provisionally limit myself to a very incomplete
reply. If the three young men (not all that young, rather I myself, alas,
am very old - and in any case considerable their elder) are the ones I
think they are, I won’t hide from you that for a long time, long before my
financial losses, I had advised one of them to place his money with you2.
But here’s the difficulty, which doesn’t make the plan impossible but very
awkward. You know that Israel is often at the source of the fortunes and
that that is most often forgotten about. But if d’Albufera is due to
inherit a considerable fortune from his parents3, 4
the most evident of what he currently has comes from his wife, the
daughter of Princesse d’Essling5, that is to say the young
daughter of Mme Furtado Heine6. But that fortune is deposited
with the Heine Bank and I don’t even know if the testamentary arrangements
won’t make it very difficult to withdraw; I vaguely remember that a
similar obstacle came up when d’Albufera wanted to deposit some money in
Brussels with M. Lambert.
On first appearances Gabriel de La Rochefoucauld seems to have no
connection with d’Albufera. But his wealth (currently at least) came from
his marriage with the daughter of the Princesse of Monaco, herself the
daughter of the other Heines7, not Furtado but relations8
and extremely rich, but bankers. Finally, Guiche owes his wealth to the
fact that his mother, the Duchesse de Gramont, was born a Rothschild (same
bank)9. It is true that one day his wife Mlle Greffulhe will be
worth more than him, but at present the parents of the said lady are in
perfect health10. These explanations which are of little
interest to you are to demonstrate that it is not through any lack of
desire for something I have thought about a great deal (and I must stress
in the interests of the depositors rather than yours) (the word depositors
is not quite correct but you understand what I mean) even if I have done
nothing about it yet. But the fact that I haven’t seen any of these people
for so many years is also a consideration. But now I know that the idea is
not disagreeable to you, as soon as I am able to receive anybody I shall
convene the ones who haven’t been mobilized and if I can convince them I
believe I will be doing them a very great service. But however agreeable
it might be for me to do them a very great service, it doesn’t quite seem
like a disinterested way of showing you my gratitude. So, getting back to
my little lambs, it would be a great satisfaction to me if you raised your
derisory brokerage fee to a satisfactory sum. On the day I succeed in
establishing with you two or three multimillionaires imploring you for
advice, that is the day I will consent to you once again charging me at
the current going rate. But until then I beg you to be mindful of my
entreaty and believe in my affectionate gratitude.
Marcel Proust.
For the Crédit Industriel I think that you told me some time
ago that I should have been in credit to the sum of approximately 2,000
francs. As I haven’t requested any money (cheques) from them for eight
months, seeing that those 2,000 francs have evaporated (I’m not talking
about the fall of the Mexico which was before then) I had assumed that
they had calculated the interests after the reimbursement. Since that
never happened I have no claim to make against them11.
CP 03190
From Lionel Hauser to Marcel Proust - 1 September 1916
Paris, 1 September 1916
My dear Marcel,
I received your letter Tuesday evening and its contents interested me
deeply.
I am hurrying to write back in order to clear up the misunderstanding
that your reading of my last letter might have given you1.
I have no aspirations at all for your friends to place their money and
even less their securities with me. As you can see that simplifies the
matter greatly. The only thing to which I aspire is to have as clients
those people who possess a large fortune and do not regard themselves as
the issue from Jupiter’s thigh.
As you are not unaware, when a City or a State takes out a bond, the
institution that has issued it allocates a commission to the banker who
procures a subscription to it, which is why the more clients one has who
are subscribers to the said bond the more the commission that one receives
from it provides interest.
I do not believe therefore that the difficulty you point out is
unsurmountable, because even when the fortune comes from the wife and is
governed by the rules of the dowry, any interests arising from that
capital are at the disposal of the husband.
So as I do not believe that the friends you mention are expending the
totality of their revenues they must be in a position to invest anew the
sum of their savings.
So first of all it would be a case of getting acquainted with the
persons in question and then to have the certainty that when they receive
a circular or a letter from our firm they don’t throw it in the wastepaper
basket but follow up on my proposal to the extent that is available to
them, provided of course that my proposal is agreeable to them. But if
your friends are such elegant gentlemen that they think they are doing me
a service by giving me an audience, and if they feel the need to consider
me as a person of inferior quality because I don’t have a penny. I assure
you that it would please me just as much not to make any effort to acquire
their clientele2.
Now that you know my considered opinion and that of your friends, I
leave you free to act as you think fit.
You will have seen from our letter of yesterday3 that we
have encashed a dividend of 5.80 francs per unit on your Banco del Rio de
la Plata shares. So we have done the right thing not to sell them at 320
because after the ex-dividend they are valued at 321 which makes a total
of 326.80 with the dividend.
If, as I hope, they soon reach 323 it is possible that I decide to sell
since that amounts to 330 taking the dividend into account.
Believe me my dear Marcel,
your very sincerely devoted
4
CP 03292
Marcel Proust to Jean Cocteau - [shortly after 21 May 1917]
1
Dear Jean,
had I not been in the middle of a terrible attack today I would have
liked to tell you - and Monsieur Picasso - of the sneezing fits and bouts
of despondency that have been unrelentingly provoked in me by the
dominical blue and the astringent whites of the misunderstood acrobat2,
dancing “As if hurling reproaches at God”3. I live with such
nostalgia. The other ballets4 were so-so. This one was
heart-rending, and continues to unfold in me I can’t tell you what
regrets. I still see the mauve horse5 like the Swan “with mad
gestures, Like ridiculous and sublime exiles”6. “And then I
think of you”7. Of you Jean, and I think too of the little
girl’s “tartan”, so touching, of the little girl who stops and starts so
wonderfully. What concentration in all that, what nourishment for the
times of famine and what sorrow when I still had the use of my legs not to
have frequented the sawdust of circuses and all that is left to me tonight
is heart-rending regret. Thank you dear Jean for helping me in so many
ways8 to make the effort in the state I was in to go to the
Châtelet and seek “The only such delectable bread That is not served at
his table By the world we follow”9. How handsome
Picasso is!
Affectionately yours,
Marcel.
CP 03584
Marcel Proust to Mathilde Hecht - [about September 1918]
1
Dear Madame,
I received your letter2 and I comply, of course, with your
negative instructions3. All it means is that it spares me a
great deal of tiredness as well as much pleasure. I say much pleasure
because I am by no means certain that I would have succeeded. But in the
end as I was only on the point of doing it, and as in short the necessary
consent did not depend on me, I hadn’t wished to present to you as a
certainty a few lines which may well not have appeared4. I
preferred (had you been favourable towards it) to surprise you with my
success, rather than boast in advance about something I was almost certain
of, but in the end not absolutely. And since now the matter has been
settled negatively, would you allow me, absurd as it might seem to be for
me, with the terrible state of my eyes5, to write a pointless
letter when I have more than fifty which would be to my advantage to reply
to but couldn’t, to tell you in all frankness and sincerity what I think
about all this. More than anything I beg you not to interpret my letter as
in any way suggesting blame which would be stupid and supremely improper.
I know that you are of delightfully noble character, and if there were
anyone who does not need to be given advice about the form of veneration
due to our dear departed it is you! But precisely because you are so good
hearted and have such an elevated understanding of questions of morality,
I can’t stop myself from conversing with you by letter in spite of the
fatigue it causes me, to tell you how astonished I am to see in those that
live on, meaning the most pious, the most nobly and painfully attached to
their memory, them thinking, in all matters of posthumous homage, not of
the dead but of themselves. Believe me I am far from suggesting
selfishness or forgetfulness. But those that live on feel “reticence”,
that it would be “painful” to them, all very elevated emotions, but in the
end ought they not to tell themselves: even though I am suffering in every
sensitive fibre of my being, it is not me I should be thinking about, it
is about the poor departed who if he could reply would desire only one
thing - life! I was certainly not trying to exaggerate the value of those
few lines of eulogy in my preface. It is wretched. But as the book is
delightful, that it stands out most advantageously against the “Cahiers
d’un Artiste” by the same author6, which are rather mediocre,
my preface would have been read extensively and since I don’t mention
anybody in it, not even the most renowned artists whose eulogies I was
begged (this is between you and me) to cut7, the name of
Monsieur Hecht8 would have stood out clearly. It is even very
strange I admit that I did not rather wish to talk about Charles Ephrussi9
of whom I was very fond, rather than about Monsieur Hecht who I never
knew. But I think that that is because Charles Ephrussi, having written
certain books on art, is quoted in some parts of the book10.
Whereas, so far as I know, Monsieur Hecht has not left us any books, and
this was a unique opportunity to revive his memory in a setting worthy of
him. If I speak to you retrospectively about these things, now that in all
practical ways they are pointless, it is because the noble feelings that
you have already obeyed, and which to be absolutely frank I disapprove of
as much as admire, seem to be shared by the best people. I know, or at
least knew in the past, two excellent parents11. They had the
misfortune to lose their son12 at almost the very beginning of
the war, and they had printed for about twenty close friends, the letters
that their son had written them from the front13. I had never
seen this young man14, but his letters were so full of life,
exuded so much goodness, courage, desire, quite innocently, to “succeed”
that I could not read them without weeping. I advised the parents to have
them published, and, despite the terrible sate of my health that I was
already in, I offered to ask Barrès, Hermant, and a few others to quote
some passages from them15. Without a doubt this young man,
exuberant with life and hungry for glory, would have been filled with joy16.
His parents absolutely refused, on account of that self-same “reticence”
etc.17 I did not insist but I had the strong feeling that they
had placed their grief (which was of a sincerity and an inconsolable
intensity there is no doubt) before the one who was its object. Perhaps
they decided that they would make this young man’s name known by
publishing the novel that he had begun before the war. But there they were
surrendering to their blindness as parents, because the young man had no
“talent”. His delightful nature as revealed in his letters, his interest
in episodes of the war in which he had been involved, “all in all” all
this put together in an agreeable arrangement and style, even if
insufficient in themselves, such a book would have been charming. I might
add that already today it would no longer be so publishable, because too
many books about the war would have already taken away some of its charm18.
Who was right, the parents or me? Heaven only knows. And I’m sure that
Mama would have thought the same as me. Since it was Manet who was the
occasion for all this correspondence19, would you allow me, one
evening when I am not excessively ill, to come and look at yours, if you
were alone (I mean alone, or alone with your children20, my
aunt21, or Adèle22). Unfortunately I hardly ever
have any warning about when my attacks will come on, it would only be on
the same day - on the off chance that it doesn’t inconvenience you - that
I could have you telephoned to ask if I could come after dinner. It’s
twenty years since I’ve looked at a painting23! Since you are
at Madame Cruppi’s24 please would you pass on to her my
respectful best wishes as well as to her husband. She is a link to my
dearest past, the evenings when as a child I would listen to her singing
Mozart in the house - now those evenings sing in my memory25. I
can still hear her voice in Les Fourberies de Nérine26
that she performed (was it at Madame Baignère’s or at Madame Aubernon’s,
I’ve forgotten the surroundings, but how well I remember her27).
More fortunate than me she must often see the dear Princesse de Chimay.
But in solitude friendships endure, without being renewed by company. And
when I last corresponded with the Princesse de Chimay about an anguish28
that lacerated us both equally, it seemed to me reading her letters,
writing mine, that I had seen her just the day before.
Please accept Madame my most respectful tribute of ardent affection,
Marcel Proust.
CP 05405
Marcel Proust to Léon Bailby - [9 September 1914]
102 bd Haussmann1
My dear Léon2,
if it isn’t too much of a nuisance to you I would like to ask your
advice, not as Director of L’Intransigeant3 but as a
reserve officer and above all as a friend4. In a word, after
having completed my military service in the infantry5 (and at
present having pulled more “strings” to avoid being discharged than many
others have done in order to be), and being too ill I was later appointed
as an administrative officer6. But as my health worsened I have
never exercised any of those duties (even though I have been promoted in
seniority!) , so that four years ago7 after a visit from a
major8, I was struck off the lists on health grounds by
presidential order9.
When I was told this summer that all discharged men would have to
appear before a review board and would have to register at the Town Hall10,
I was very ill, not at all well informed, and so as not to risk disobeying
the rules I had myself registered at the Town Hall11. I told
the person who was taking care of this task12 to provide the
information that was asked of them, but as there was no mention of the
question of being an “officer”, I judged that it was pointless to flaunt
my rank, not being familiar with the procedures. So now I’m going from one
day to the next thinking that I’m about to be summoned before a review
board. But a friend of mine who is a reserve officer13, passing
through Paris and coming up to see me the other day and who I informed of
all this, told me (I don’t know how well informed he is) firstly that this
counter discharge only applied to privates and not to officers. Secondly
that when the review board saw that I was an officer they wouldn’t make me
undergo an examination and that I would have tired myself unnecessarily.
As for the second point I think that I should just wait to be summoned and
then immediately ask at H.Q.14 to forestall my recruitment so
that instead of going to the review board I would report to H.Q. What I
would like best would be to not make any visits at all, my medical
certificates establishing my total incapacity15, and in any
case when I published my book Le Temps and other papers came to
interview me16, and their reporters said that they came to my
bedside and that I hadn’t left it for years17. But at that time
nobody could foresee what was to come and it couldn’t have been a
preventative measure for a “cushy number”18! But in the end, if
I have to be seen I would prefer to put myself out and report to H.Q.
rather than letting a major suffer my fumigations where the chances are
that he would find me in the middle of one, and which make the atmosphere
in my room unbreathable. Then again maybe there won’t be any need for them
to make a visit at all if the counter discharge doesn’t apply to officers.
And this is where you can perhaps advise me, because I seem to recall that
at Versailles when you were such a fine cavalryman, you were a reserve
officer19. If you can’t answer this please don’t bother to ask
at H.Q., because d’Albufera is going to give me a letter20 for
Commander de Sachs21 who is there, and plus I know Reinach who
is bound to be there too22. (Which of them would be best?) Your
intervention will only be valuable to me (and very much so) if you are
well enough acquainted with the officer I am depending upon, who is
Director of the Department of Health (Inspector M. Février I think) to
settle everything with regard to my certificates. But that’s not really
likely. Although perhaps you can tell me in any case if the counter
discharge would apply to officers.
Dear Léon, I am deliberately confining myself to practical advice that
I need to ask you. Otherwise there would be too much to say! I wrote to
you23 last summer I think, after my terrible sorrow24,
before the thunderbolt of war. Since then I have been trembling for the
lives of dear ones just like everybody else. You have no doubt heard that
my brother’s hospital at Étain was bombarded while he was operating and
since then he has never stopped putting himself in terrible danger - and
staying at the front. At the moment he’s in the Argonne25 but
I’ve had no news for a month. I hope that you don’t have too many
anxieties and sorrows on your part. If you reply I would be very pleased
to hear your news about Albert Flament26. As an unimportant
detail I’d like to know which idiotic windbag you were alluding to
yesterday, talking about the “synthesis of courage”!
To you my dear Léon with all my heart, united together in the same
terrible anguish and the same great hopes.
Your,
Marcel Proust.
CP 05633
Marcel Proust to Gaston Gallimard - [second fortnight? in
December 1916]
1
Dear friend,
I am so sorry, I have been very clumsy. My only wish was that you
forget for a while that I had written a book. So much so that, as I told
Copeau2 a few days ago, if it could relieve you from fatigue
and worry, I would take the book back to Grasset. And because I made such
a bad job of making you realize all this you have tired yourself by
writing to me3. Dear friend, don’t think about me, and further
more don’t think about it as publisher. Everything will be the way you
want, when you want, I don’t say where you want because Copeau told me
that what you want is that the book stays with the N.R.F. If that is the
case I will definitely leave it with you. And of course since it was
already agreed previously I would only have taken it back if that was what
you wanted. It goes without saying that the requests I made the other day
for my proofs had nothing to do with all this. I asked for them for
several reasons of which these are the two principal ones. I thought that
as long as they were doing nothing, the counting up of words4
not taking too long, I could correct a few little things which would speed
things up a bit. On the other hand I thought that as an over scrupulous
publisher you were still worrying about the care of your authors. So it
seems to me that while I have the proofs here with me there will be no
need for you to worry about a task that, for my part, to all intents and
purposes can’t be accomplished, and that might put your mind at rest and
free you from worry.
I misunderstood. So I will send you back the proofs shortly. I say
shortly rather than tomorrow, because I still haven’t looked at them, and
since Mme Lemarié has kindly taken such pains to bring me them5,
it would be best if I make the most of things by at least making two or
three changes even though they are of little importance.
Take good care of yourself dear Gaston. I hope that my book which is
without any shadow of impatience though without any shadow of pride (it
isn’t “patiens quia aeternus”!), will not be a too tiring
distraction for you when you are recovered. It is more of a “novel” than
the one you know already, and because of that it might perhaps be, I don’t
say more “accessible” but more in accord with the tastes manifested by the
particular public it hopes to reach, it seems to me.
Dear friend, I don’t want to tire you. Please thank Madame Lemarié for
me. I am embarrassed and respectfully grateful for the trouble she has
taken for me. Get plenty of rest my dear friend,my very dear friend, take
good care of yourself, get yourself better, I think about you constantly
with the strongest feelings of friendship.
Marcel Proust.
CP 05634
Marcel Proust to Gaston Gallimard - [between 12 and 14 October
1917]
1
Dear friend,
here is the end of my manuscript, along with corrected proofs 1 to
183. As you can see it consists of a thick exercise book and a
thinner one. The thin one, having been taken out of a thicker one and
stitched back together for better or worse, is a little fragile I think.
As for the material state of the pages in the exercise books (which is all
I’m talking about in this letter) I think that those in the thin one are
in a less sorry state than those in the thick one, which will probably
require the wonderful cartographic care that your typist has shown4.
The corrected proofs have been sent to you with the manuscript5.
The way your printer reads my writing is staggering. On the other hand
when he had to do the Grasset imprint, he changed or skipped words, whole
phrases. The printed characters won’t be as small as on the proofs will
they? because that would make them unreadable. I am at your command as
regards Grasset6. Nevertheless, given that in regard to Grasset
right now I am in a rather ill-defined position and that he is only
looking for a way to change things, I think it would be better not to make
it easier for him by making me write, and it seems to me, on this
incidental point and which goes without saying, it would be only natural
that you write to him: “Having now become M. Proust’s publisher I would
like, with his agreement, to compensate you etc”7. Besides he
has great respect for the N.R.F. I still haven’t received a response from
Montesquiou. Perhaps your friend went to his house armed with my letter?
If he was well received let me know, so that I can thank Montesquiou. I
think that your new (clean shaven) appearance suits you wonderfully. I
like you from all aspects but this one seemed especially pleasing to me.
Dear friend, out of discretion, lack of energy, fear of abusing your
people, I haven’t mentioned in this letter the subject that is most on my
mind, your trip (which I only found out about recently by chance) and the
effect it could have on your health.
As for Grasset, the more I think about it the more advantageous my idea
(which I am quite prepared to give up) seems to me to be. As soon as you
are gone, I shall be left to his solicitations, and of course I will not
give in. But by your writing to him, as my publisher, and a publisher for
whom he has great respect, you will be cutting all ties. I think that
would be best.
Yours most affectionately my dear friend,
Marcel Proust.
Last minute: I was told that Madame Lemarié (at least I assume it was her)
came while Céleste, who never goes out, had gone to her sister-in-law’s on
rue Laffitte. I can’t tell you how upset I am if it was Madame Lemarié2.
I won’t delay the despatch of the proofs that you have me describe as
“very urgent”3 by prolonging this note.
In these proofs, and there will be in some others, there are certain
pages (out of the four volumes maybe four or five pages) which I’m not
sure, before I have corrected them all, if they will need to be moved to a
different part. For a start in such a long work passages risk being
inserted twice, and as my book isn’t an Iliad, repeated passages would be
inexcusable. On the other hand there is the question of balance, which I
can only begin to see once I’ve seen the whole thing in its entirety. But
I think these transfers, even if I carry them out, won’t entail anything
more than swapping round five or six pages9.
I told you that in my corrected proofs there was only one “bis”
page, there are actually two or three of them, and even a “ter”
page, 152ter on which the small cut out doesn’t signify anything.
CP 05638
Maurice Bize to Marcel Proust - 23 October 1914
I the undersigned Doctor of Medicine certify that Monsieur Proust
Marcel of 102 boulevard Haussmann suffers from very violent, daily
asthmatic attacks, combined with severe physical decline and nervous
weakness. For several years Monsieur Proust has been confined to his
bedroom, only going outdoors for a few hours at very rare intervals and
under exceptional precautions.
Monsieur Proust has always been exempted from performing his periods of
military duty and has been unable to attend any Medical Board. There is
absolutely no possibility of his performing any military service.
23 October 19141.
Dr M. Bize.
Dr Bize head of the laboratory of the Faculté de Médecine de Paris,
currently acting physician 35th Territorial.
CP 05639
Maurice Bize to Marcel Proust - 4 November 1914
I the undersigned Doctor of Medicine certify that Monsieur Proust
Marcel suffers from very violent, daily asthmatic attacks, along with
generalized emphysema. These circumstances have resulted in cardial
dilation. Additionally symptoms of renal failure have necessitated a very
restricted lacto-vegetarian diet.
For many years Monsieur Proust has been bedridden and in a state of
such pronounced physical decline that it would be impossible for him to
appear before a Medical Board.
Albi, 4 November 19141.
Dr Bize.
Dr Bize, 60 avenue La Bourdonnais, currently physician with 35th
Territorial (Albi).
2Examined for material certification of the signature of M.
Doctor Bize affixed above, PARIS, 1 December 1914, The Commissioner of
Police.
[Signature illegible]
CP 05640
Maurice Bize to Marcel Proust - 10 April 1915
I the undersigned Doctor of Medicine certify that Monsieur Proust
Marcel suffers from very violent, daily asthmatic attacks, along with
generalized emphysema. These circumstances have resulted in cardial
dilation. Further to which symptoms of renal failure have resulted in a
very restricted lacto-vegetarian diet.
For many years Monsieur Proust has been bedridden and in a state of
such pronounced physical decline that it would be impossible for him to
appear before the Medical Board.
Paris, 10 April 19151
Dr Bize.
Dr Bize, 60 avenue La Bourdonnais.
CP 05641
Léon Faisans to Marcel Proust - [25 October 1914?]
I the undersigned1, being a doctor at Beaujon Hospital2,
certify to having given repeated medical attention3, over
fifteen years, to Monsieur Marcel Proust, for an asthma that gave rise to
bouts of dyspnoea of such violence, severity and persistence in duration,
that he is obliged to spend most of his time in bed or in his bedroom, and
which preclude him from engaging in regular occupation. As a consequence
of his illness and the medications to which he is subjected almost
continually, M. Marcel Proust has furthermore been subject to perennial
nervous disorders and has demonstrated most notably a state of asthenia,
sufficient to require complete immobility. I consider that he is incapable
of withstanding the slightest fatigue and that he is unfit for any form of
military service.
Paris, 25 November 19144.
L. Faisans.
CP 05642
To Marcel Proust - [shortly before 7 July 1915]
M[ilitary] S[service]
Monsieur Valentin Proust1 102 boulevard Haussmann, Paris.
2
6th Recruitment Office, La Seine - Commandant
No 20
Name: Proust Valentin
Summons before the Special Discharge Commission held at 6th
Recruitment Office, Porte Champerret, Paris 17, 7 July 1915 at 14:00
CP 05643
Marcel Delanney to Marcel Proust - [Saturday 10 April 1915]
1
PREFECTURE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SEINE
REVIEW BOARD - SUMMONS
Monsieur Proust
Bd Hausmann [sic] No 102
Paris 9e
SEINE
No 104572, Adu. H.
8 ARRONDISSEMENT of Paris
CANTON of
COMMUNE of
Order number : 241
REPUBLIC OF FRANCE Liberty - Equality - Fraternity
MEDICAL EXAMINATION FOR EXEMPTIONS AND THOSE UNFIT FOR SERVICE
CLASS OF 1888
SUMMONS before the Review Board of the Seine Department.
M (1) Proust Marcel Valentin
is requested to present himself before the Review Board which will meet
on (2) TUESDAY 13 APRIL
at (3) 8 30 AM3
at the Town Hall, SALLE SAINT-JEAN (Rue Lobeau entrance)
to be examined in accordance with the provisions contained in the decree
of the Minister of War of 15 September, 19144
(1) Full name
(2) Day and date
(3) Time
PREFECT FOR LA SEINE, M. DELANNEY.
REVOCATION OF PREVIOUS SUMMONS
Paris. New Imp. - Print 8 kil. 50,000 ex. - 380-2-15
NOTE. - The person concerned must be the holder of a certificate of
exemption or military service record.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
Any men who fail to present themselves before the Review Board will be
considered fit for active service.
Letters published online Corr-Proust
https://proust.elan-numerique.fr/letters/all
Note indicators refer to notes in Corr-Proust not translated here.
Created 08.08.19
Updated 07.07.20