CP 02890/en

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This page is a translated version of the page CP 02890 and the translation is 100% complete.
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Marcel Proust to Louis de Robert 3 January [1915]

(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)

3 January[1]

102 boulevard 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 life[3]), 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 Verdun[4] as a major, and since then has never 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 friends[6], even family members[7] 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

[8] [9]

Notes

  1. ↑ The New Year's wishes for 1915 that Proust sends to his correspondent at the end of the letter allow us to date it as 3 January 1915. [PK]
  2. ↑ Allusion to the title of a work by Léon Daudet (L'Avant-Guerre. Études et documents sur l'espionnage juif-allemand en France depuis l'affaire Dreyfus, Paris, Nouvelle édition nationale, 1913). It was Daudet who created the concept of the "Pre-War", and his book that popularised it. In a letter to Lucien Daudet written around [Monday evening 16 November 1914, or shortly afterwards] (CP 02844), Proust expresses his admiration for this prophetic work and for the power of Léon Daudet's imagination that allows him to discover "social laws". [PK, FL]
  3. ↑ Allusion to his continued mourning over the death of Alfred Agostinelli in an accident that happened unexpectedly on 30 May 1914. [FL]
  4. ↑ See the letter written by Proust to Lionel Hauser [during the night of 2 to 3 August 1914] (CP 02812), in which he mentions that he had just been to the station to see off his brother who was leaving for Verdun that evening. [FL]
  5. ↑ After having been stationed in a military hospital at Étain (in the Verdun sector) up until November 1914, where he operated on the wounded even while under enemy bombardment, Robert Proust was seconded as a surgeon in an ambulance where he treated and operated on the most seriously wounded close to the trenches. (See his movements and his citations in his military record.) [FL]
  6. ↑ Notably Adolphe Edme Jean Bénac (1 August 1891 - 15 December 1914), son of M. and Mme André Bénac, long-standing friends of the Proust family; sergeant in the 46e régiment d'infantrie, wounded by shell fire he died of his injuries in hospital at Thann, in Alsace (Haut-Rhin): see his death certificate. His death was announced in Le Figaro, 20 December 1914, in the "Monde et la Ville" column, and the circumstances were described on the 24th in the "Monde et la Ville" column.
  7. ↑ One of these relations was Adolphe Louis Jean Cruppi (17 November 1891 - 4 November 1914), son of Jean Cruppi and his wife, née Louise Crémieux; sergeant-major in the 27e régiment de dragons, he was killed in action during the fighting at Messines in Belgium: see his death certificate. Another of his relations may have been Victor Maurice Ramillon (26 June 1880 - 25 August 1914), lieutenant in the 67e régiment d'infantrie, died from his injuries in field hospital no. 1 at Verdun: see his death certificate. In 1911 he had married one of Proust's cousins, Jeanne Boeuf (1877-1950), daughter of Mme Francis Boeuf, née Jenny Weil (1846-1922), eldest daughter of Mme Baruch Weil, née Amélie Berncastel (1821-1911), Proust's great aunt. [PK, Dr Jacques Bréhant, FL]
  8. ↑ Translation notes:
  9. ↑ Contributors: Yorktaylors
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