CP 05409/en
Marcel Proust to Samuel Pozzi Sunday[4 October 1914]
(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)
102 boulevard Haussmann, Sunday[1]
Dear Sir
I would like to ask you for advice and perhaps a service (the advice will already be a very precious service), concerning the fact that I, as a discharged officer, may be called upon to appear before the review board[2]. But I have recently had such terrible asthma attacks that I do not know yet what day I will be able to see you[3]. This letter has only one purpose: to ask you not to think me ill-mannered if, on the day I feel fit to get up, I take the liberty of telephoning you to ask if you could possibly see me. It is infinitely probable - with so much work, carried out with the ease of Hercules (who also had, according to a beautiful myth, Eternal Youth[4]), but which finally takes up all your time[5] - that you will not be able to receive me on that day. But then another day I will take the liberty of telephoning again. And as the already very old classification to which I belong will only be called last, it will be no inconvenience, even if you cannot receive me several times in a row. Besides, I have just been so violently ill that a period of calm will perhaps follow and it will be possible for me to get up quite often, especially for such a short time as required to go to your house. Don't bother to answer me, my letter has only one purpose, to announce my phone call, to explain it, to excuse it, so that you won't find it "cavalier".
Please accept, dear Sir, the expression of my respectful and grateful attachment.
Marcel Proust
Notes
- ↑ The postmark on the envelope bears the date 7 October, 1914, so Proust must have written this letter on Sunday, 4 October, 1914.[FL]
- ↑ After serving a year of military service in Orleans as a volunteer enlisted man from 15 November 1889, until 14 November 1890, Proust had been appointed a reserve officer in the administration with an posting to the Service de Santé du Gouvernement militaire de Paris, and then he was transferred to the armée territoriale on 1 October 1908. But thanks to the influence of his friend Gaston Calmette, director of Le Figaro, brother of Dr. Émile Calmette, Medical Inspector, Director of the Service de Santé du Gouvernement militaire de Paris, he had been crossed off from the reserve officers' ranks on 30 August 1911 "by presidential decision" without appearing before a medical board: see his military file and the letter of the Medical Inspector Émile Calmette of 6 September 1911 to Proust (CP 02225; Kolb, X, no. 168). See also the letter to Léon Bailby of [9 December 9 1914] in which he summarizes his military situation (CP 05405 and the notes 5, 6, 9 and 10). On 16 September 1914, he could have read in Le Journal des Débats dated the 17th, p. 2, in the article "Les réformés et exemptés" (The discharged and exempted), that by virtue of a decree taken on the 15th by the Ministère de la Guerre, that the discharged or exempted men of the classifications that were still under military obligations had to report to the town hall of their place of residence and would be summoned from 7 October to be examined by a Review Board. (Information also provided by Le Figaro of 17 September 17, p. 1). Proust seems to have returned from Cabourg at the beginning of October in fear of this summons: see the letter to Mme Catusse of around [15 September 1914] (CP 02824; Kolb, XIII, no. 173). [LJ, FP, FL]
- ↑ Presumably, this refers to the violent asthma attacks he suffered on his return from Cabourg in early October 1914. In the letter to Mme Catusse of mid-October 1914, he recounts an "attack of breathlessness infinitely more violent than [his] daily attacks" that occurred on the train as he left Cabourg, an attack of such severity that his servants thought he was going to die, and he states that he "remained for a few days quite unable to write" after his return (CP 02827; Kolb, XIII, no. 176).[FL]
- ↑ Heracles (Hercules, in Latin), son of Zeus and a mortal woman (Alcmene), is most famous for his "Twelve Labors" and a varying number of other adventures and exploits. As for his "Eternal Youth", in some versions of the myth he is married to the Olympian Hebe, the goddess of youth (see notably Hesiod, Theogony, v. 950-955: "The noble son of the beautiful Alcmene, Heracles [...], is united on the snowy summit of Olympus with a modest wife, Hebe, daughter of the great Zeus and of Hera of the golden sandals; a fortunate mortal who, after having accomplished great works on earth, dwells eternally among the gods, without ever knowing pain or old age.").[FL, AE, FP]
- ↑ The activity displayed by Doctor Pozzi was indeed impressive. Volunteering at the age of 68, Samuel Pozzi was a senior physician with the rank of lieutenant colonel, assigned to the Direction du Gouvernement Militaire in Paris. In addition to his service at the Broca Hospital, he worked in several military hospitals, including the Saint-Martin Hospital, the Val de Grâce Hospital and its annex at the Pantheon at 18 rue Lhomond, where he was in charge of the first division for the wounded, with about 100 beds. He received his private clients at his home at 47, avenue d'Iéna.[LJ]
- ↑ Translation notes:
- ↑ Contributors: LVerstraten