CP 05359/en

From Corr-Proust Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page is a translated version of the page CP 05359 and the translation is 100% complete.
Other languages:

Marcel Proust to Jean Ajalbert [shortly after 10 December 1919]

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

[1]

44 rue Hamelin

My dear Collegue and Maître[2],

I was very touched by the kind mention you made of my books[3]. As I read these lines, which were valuable to me because they came from you, and feeling[4] your weariness to read these pages, which seem interminable to you, I realised what a mistake I had made in calling the work[5]: "À la Recherche du Temps perdu". As this title won't be explained until the last volume ("le Temps retrouvé"), it will perpetuate the misunderstanding between me and my readers, even the most eminent ones, who believe my work to be a flow of memories, something rather like "Memoirs"[6]. However, this book is so "composed" that when M.[7] Francis Jammes begged me to remove a three-page episode from the first volume that he considered appalling[8], I was about to do so, when I realized[9] that this insignificant "cut" in this first volume would cause the collapse of volumes 4 and 5, which depend on this episode[10]. I could give a thousand examples of this veiled composition, to which I sacrificed everything[11], but that would mean talking too much about myself when I only wanted to thank you for your kindness, from the bottom of my heart.

Marcel Proust

[12] [13]

Notes

  1. ↑ Philip Kolb dates this letter to 'shortly after 10 December 1919', as it was probably shortly after receiving the Prix Goncourt, on 10 December 1919, that Proust wrote to all the members of the jury to thank them. The letter is certainly later than 1 October 1919, the date on which Proust moved into rue Hamelin. Jean Ajalbert was one of the eight members of the Académie Goncourt who signed the letter of 10 December 1919 announcing to Proust that he had received the Prize (see CP 03973; Kolb, XVIII, no. 293). [PK, PW, NM]
  2. ↑ This letter from Proust to Jean Ajalbert is the only one found so far, but the catalogue of the sale of Ajalbert's library reveals that there were at least three, which were inserted in works by Proust (Jean Ajalbert, Ma Bibliothèque (Deuxième partie), 4-6 April 1935, lots 194, 196 and 1289). Ajalbert owned all the volumes of La Recherche, some in duplicate, from different years of publication, five with an inscription by Proust (ibid., lots 195-199). Ph. Kolb, who had not seen this catalogue, has however published one of these inscriptions in a copy of Sodome et Gomorrhe II, which appeared in a later sale catalogue (CP 04963; Kolb, XXI, no. 102. We have seen this copy in a private collection, the inscription was in the first of the three volumes, printed 10 April 1922, bearing the ex-libris of Edward Wasserman). Our letter was included in the exhibition "Un millier de livres modernes", at the Galerie de Paris, by Paul de Montaignac, from 29 March to 3 April 1935, just before the second part of the sale of Jean Ajalbert's library. An anonymous author saw this exhibition, copied the inscriptions and published it in the journal Toute l'Édition (6 April 1935, p. 3). The sale caused a controversy because Ajalbert was still alive and some of the authors of the autographed works were also alive (see Les Treize, "Les Lettres. Vendre ou ne pas vendre" (To sell or not to sell)? "L'Intransigeant, 2 March 1935, p. 6; and "De-ci de-là... ", Paris-Soir, 15 March 1935, p. 12; or "Vendre ou ne pas vendre", Les Nouvelles Littéraires, 16 March 1935, p. 4). [PW]
  3. ↑ Letter not found. [PW]
  4. ↑ The text of the Kolb edition begins with this word. Ph. Kolb could not have seen the original letter and was not aware of its unabridged publication in 1935 in Toute l'Édition. [PW]
  5. ↑ The Kolb edition says 'my work', but the text of Toute l'Édition is correct here. [PW]
  6. ↑ This is a leitmotif in Proust's writing in the autumn of 1919: 'Vandérem and others [...] are unaware of the tight composition of my work, and seem to say that I am writing my Memoirs and just follow the course of my memories! "(CP 03922; Kolb, XVIII, no. 241; cf. ibid., nos. 202, 230, 266, 319...). Proust takes up with this idea again in early 1920 in 'À propos du 'style' de Flaubert' (EA, pp. 598-599). [NM]
  7. ↑ In Kolb's text and that of Toute l'Édition the 'M.' before the poet's name is omitted. [PW]
  8. ↑ Already in January 1914, in a letter to Henri Ghéon, Proust quotes at length from Francis Jammes' letter in which Jammes supposedly asked him 'to delete in the next edition the sadism scene between two women' (CP 02655; Kolb, XIII, no. 3). In the autumn of 1919, Proust recalled the anecdote and the structural importance of the episode to other correspondents, in very similar terms (Kolb, XVIII, no. 230, 266, 308...) [PK, PW, NM].
  9. ↑ In earlier editions this is corrected to "I understood". [PW]
  10. ↑ The Kolb edition gives "contained", but the text of Toute l'Édition is correct here. According to the plan that appeared in the original edition of À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (completed in print on 30 November 1918 and put on the market on 20 June 1919), volumes IV and V that were planned at that time are Sodome et Gomorrhe - I (a volume that would go up to the episode "Why I abruptly leave Balbec, with the desire to marry Albertine") and Sodome et Gomorrhe - II - Le Temps retrouvé. [PW, FP]
  11. ↑ Proust had used the same words in response to Abel Hermant's article in Le Figaro of 24 August 1919: 'I have sacrificed everything to a veiled but inflexible composition' (CP 03897; Kolb, XVIII, no. 216). He associates the epithet 'veiled' regularly with the composition of the book: see ibid, nos. 266, 318 and EA, p. 598. [NM]
  12. ↑ Translation notes:
  13. ↑ Contributors: Lverstraten
Retrieved from "https://corrproust.web.illinois.edu/wiki/index.php?title=CP_05359/en&oldid=7277"