45 rue de Courcelles
Sunday evening
[about 15 June 1902]
Monsieur,
My body has most cruelly forced me to atone so much for the little account I took of its exhaustion by going to avenue du Bois yesterday evening, that I had not been able to thank you earlier for the unique pleasure which nobody before you could have given me and which truth to tell nobody after you could; indeed those pleasures are too inseparable from your person, out of which through your playing you create the perpetual and sublime gift: "Hark, this is my body, this is my blood." But also there is not a single phrase, not a touch, not a harmony, not a note that does not contain and offer up the "real presence" of your inspired and charming soul. And we emerge from this artistic Mass almost able to call ourselves your friend, if it is true to say that with every work performed, it is not only with the composer but with you and your musical Holy Ghost that we have taken communion. And then again who can say after the "transubstantiation" of such a perfect trinity, who is the composer and that it is not you? I understand full well that the acknowledgement belongs to the composer. But what of the spirit that unceasingly brings it to life? Who, from a page that might perhaps be a little dry in the material sense of the word, has caused an oceanic wave to surge and to break against the rocks at Biarritz, in an harmonic surge in which you are half soaked, all the notes becoming liquid pearls as they used to say, and the melody widening out along with the whole landscape that you have evoked on the horizon? I guarantee you that not a single moment out of those beautiful few hours has been lost to me and that I saw everything, desired everything, felt everything, attentive to the slightest idiosyncrasy which were so interesting because they were so many features that were personal to you, waiting among those same rocks at Biarritz, for the moment when your foot pounces on the pedal, carried away with such passion. In The Absence, in The Return1, the constant movements of your facial expression seemed to me to have precisely this elegance: the powerlessness of gesture to express immense feeling (when you raise your shoulders, shake your head) which then is no sooner expressed with boundless ease through your supreme art. And besides that you create so completely what you are playing that you give the appearance of not knowing what is going to come next, to be waiting for the question that the phrase is about to ask you in order that you provide, you invent the response that immediately comes to place itself beneath your fingers, one might almost say on your lips, in a new phrase. It appears as though all the most vast and the most delightful sounds on earth are contained in your hands. You allow the streams to flow, you make the forests sing, you loose thunder from the heavens, and the thunder of armies (Chopin's Polonaise run through by the heroic dash of the endless charge) (all of which reminds me of an excellent article about Chopin by Reynaldo in which he talks about "his fiery Polish cavalry". With what chivalrous grace and what untamed passion did you ride them yesterday evening!) And in the Caprice mélancholique2 such a lovely dialogue between you and Reynaldo. You appeared to be replying sincerely to each other, to be listening to each other before responding and understanding each other so well. Unfortunately, Reynaldo is in Versailles, and not being well enough to go and see him I have been obliged to retain for myself alone these impressions a few of which I have been formulating so badly for you, in the horrible handwriting of a bedridden invalid, for whom writing is exhausting. So, Monsieur, I simply ask you to kindly put into your reading of me a little of your divination that can shine light into obscure works, and restore their meaning to incomprehensible works. And in that way you might find in these few words the homage of a deeply affected admiration in which I beg you to accept my sincere respects.
Marcel Proust.
You would be doing me a great service if you could ask Monsieur and Madame Heugel to kindly accept my respectful gratitude for the immense pleasure they afforded me of hearing Planté with them both and in the august company of Watteau, Rubens, Memling and Delacroix.
1. Second and third movements of Beethoven's Piano Sonata no 26 in E♭ major.
2. Caprice mélancholique pour deux pianos, Reynaldo Hahn, 1897.
Created 13.06.20