CP 02969/en

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This page is a translated version of the page CP 02969 and the translation is 100% complete.
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Marcel Proust to Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac [beginning of July 1915]

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

[1]

102 boulevard Haussmann

Dear Sir

Since I received les Offrandes blessées[2], 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 board[3]; 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 much[6]. 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

[8] [9]

Notes

  1. ↑ The allusions to the book he has just received (see note 2) and to a new military summons (see note 3) allow us to date this letter as [beginning of July 1915]. [PK]
  2. ↑ Proust must have received this book around 5 June 1915 or shortly after: see his letter to Mme Catusse [shortly after 5 June 1915] (CP 02960; Kolb, XIV, no. 71). [PK, FP]
  3. ↑ Most likely an allusion to the summons that Proust had received for 7 July 1915 (CP 05642). [PK, FP]
  4. ↑ Proust had asked Montesquiou to sign his copy of La Divine Comtesse in [January 1914] (CP 02662; Kolb, XIII, no. 10). [PK, FP]
  5. ↑ Approximate quotation of the line "Through my mind, to re-enter into their thoughts". [PK, FP]
  6. ↑ Approximate quotation of the line "The god to whom we have too oft prayed, 'tis Wagner" ("Offrande mélodique", Les Offrandes blessées, 1915, p. 97). At this period Proust was frequently critical of the jingoism of war correspondents towards German artists. See for example his letter of [11 April 1915] (CP 02932; Kolb, XIV, no. 43), in which he congratulates Paul Souday for having defended Wagner. [PK, FP]
  7. ↑ Approximate quotation of the line "At the hour when Virtue becomes Truth" ("Offrande dissidente", Les Offrandes blessées, 1915, p. 207). [PK, FP]
  8. ↑ Translation notes:
  9. ↑ Contributors: Yorktaylors
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