CP 02843/en
Marcel Proust to Daniel Halévy [Monday 7 September 1914]
(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)
Dear friend
I’m writing these few lines to tell you that I couldn’t read Les Trois Croix without crying [2]. In these times when there is so much of the sublime in deeds, and so little in words said or written, when every other person proclaims that the War has transformed minds, but the proclamation is done in such a style that it is evident the war hasn’t transformed anything at all, when the same silly nonsense, same platitudes return, either even worse than before or only appearing so in contrast to those great things they pretend to express, in these times when one cannot read a newspaper without feeling revulsion, and when there hasn’t been yet a decent line written on war, I think that les Trois Croix is the first piece of literature on war (don’t be offended by the word ‘literature’; how I mean it and how you understand it, I hope, it is a noble word indeed) worthy of its name that has been given to me to read. I have so much to tell you at a moment such as this when a complete disarmament of minds has never been as fatal.
Ton bien ému et admiratif
Marcel Proust