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Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust


After having written to you, for the fiftieth time I am looking at this beautiful arabesque design, and here are the words Cité de Retiro, an Élysée in Élysée which, being named by you become the "Champs-Élysées", glowing in letters of fire. Tomorrow I shall write to Cité de Retiro <ref name="n12" /> to find out what this mysterious address can relate to. No doubt I shall find a use for my cork there as I won’t be able to put it up in my new lodgings which I am leaving boulevard Haussmann for. (I am leaving because the building has been sold to a banker, who in good M. Josse<ref name="n13" /> fashion wants to turn it into a bank, and to do that he is making all the tenants leave, without understanding that it will be the death of at least one of those who he uproots.) Moreover I believe that fortifications, even those of Liège, have had their day<ref name="n14" />. And it occurs to me that it would be better to apply the means of defence to the ears. Mme Simone spoke to me about some ivory balls<ref name="n15" /> (I would really like to find more details about them!) the Duchesse de Guiche mentioned cotton wool in vaseline. But no doubt these ladies are less sensitive to noise than I, who am terribly ill, dying.
After having written to you, for the fiftieth time I am looking at this beautiful arabesque design, and here are the words "Cité de Retiro", an Élysée in Élysée which, being named by you become the "Champs-Élysées", glowing in letters of fire. Tomorrow I shall write to Cité de Retiro <ref name="n12" /> to find out what this mysterious address can relate to. No doubt I shall find a use for my cork there as I won’t be able to put it up in my new lodgings which I am leaving boulevard Haussmann for. (I am leaving because the building has been sold to a banker, who in good M. Josse<ref name="n13" /> fashion wants to turn it into a bank, and to do that he is making all the tenants leave, without understanding that it will be the death of at least one of those who he uproots.) Moreover I believe that fortifications, even those of Liège, have had their day<ref name="n14" />. And it occurs to me that it would be better to apply the means of defence to the ears. Mme Simone spoke to me about some ivory balls<ref name="n15" /> (I would really like to find more details about them!) the Duchesse de Guiche mentioned cotton wool in vaseline. But no doubt these ladies are less sensitive to noise than I, who am terribly ill, dying.




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<ref name="n2"> Allusion to the Old Testament: "Genesis", III, 24. It is not a question of an Angel, but two cherubim. - In Sodome et Gomorrhe I (RTP, III, p. 32), confusing (deliberately?) the episode of the destruction of Sodom ("Genesis", III, 18-19) with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (ibid., III, 22-24), Proust imagines that at the gates of Sodom were placed two angels with "flaming swords" in order to prevent the inhabitants from fleeing, but that the inhabitants would have scorned them. In the episode about Adam and Eve that he is alluding to in the present letter, on the other hand, the guardians of the Garden of Eden are not at all "redundant", since they do indeed prevent the guilty ones from this now for ever lost paradise. It is therefore possible that Proust was currently working on the pages in Sodome et Gomorrhe I that interweave these two episodes. [PK, ChC, FL] </ref>
<ref name="n2"> Allusion to the Old Testament: "Genesis", III, 24. It is not a question of an Angel, but two cherubim. - In Sodome et Gomorrhe I (RTP, III, p. 32), confusing (deliberately?) the episode of the destruction of Sodom ("Genesis", III, 18-19) with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (ibid., III, 22-24), Proust imagines that at the gates of Sodom were placed two angels with "flaming swords" in order to prevent the inhabitants from fleeing, but that the inhabitants would have scorned them. In the episode about Adam and Eve that he is alluding to in the present letter, on the other hand, the guardians of the Garden of Eden are not at all "redundant", since they do indeed prevent the guilty ones from this now for ever lost paradise. It is therefore possible that Proust was currently working on the pages in Sodome et Gomorrhe I that interweave these two episodes. [PK, ChC, FL] </ref>


<ref name="n3"> As regards this well-known Latin saying, it was a figure of speech frequently used by Proust to thank his correspondents, see CP 05413, note 6. [FL] </ref>
<ref name="n3"> As regards this well-known Latin saying [he who gives promptly gives twice], it was a figure of speech frequently used by Proust to thank his correspondents, see CP 05413, note 6. [FL] </ref>


<ref name="n4"> Proust is thinking of his three books due out in June: Pastiches et mélanges, the reprint of Du côté de chez Swann, and À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. [ChC] </ref>
<ref name="n4"> Proust is thinking of his three books due out in June: Pastiches et mélanges, the reprint of Du côté de chez Swann, and À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. [ChC] </ref>
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<ref name="n6"> See Pastiches et Mélanges, op. cit., p. 76-77. (PM, p. 51-52.) [PK] </ref>
<ref name="n6"> See Pastiches et Mélanges, op. cit., p. 76-77. (PM, p. 51-52.) [PK] </ref>


<ref name="n7"> In fact there are two complimentary references to the Comtesse de Noailles under the "Mélanges" section in the essay "John Ruskin", taken from chapters III and IV if Proust's preface to his translation of La Bible d'Amiens (1904): see Pastiches et Mélanges, op. cit., p. 165, note 1 at the foot of page 164, and p. 195, note 2 at the foot of page 194. (See PM, p. 118, note *, and p. 140, note **.) - Given the resetting of parts of this article as well as the changes made to other sections of text (see the Notices to PM in the Pléiade edition, p. 722-726, p. 756, etc.), it is difficult to believe that the "selection" of texts for Mélanges would have been carried out by the editors at the NRF without Proust's active participation. [PK, ChC, FL] </ref>
<ref name="n7"> In fact there are two complimentary references to the Comtesse de Noailles under the "Mélanges" section in the essay "John Ruskin", taken from chapters III and IV of Proust's preface to his translation of La Bible d'Amiens (1904): see Pastiches et Mélanges, op. cit., p. 165, note 1 at the foot of page 164, and p. 195, note 2 at the foot of page 194. (See PM, p. 118, note *, and p. 140, note **.) - Given the resetting of parts of this article as well as the changes made to other sections of text (see the Notices to PM in the Pléiade edition, p. 722-726, p. 756, etc.), it is difficult to believe that the "selection" of texts for Mélanges would have been carried out by the editors at the NRF without Proust's active participation. [PK, ChC, FL] </ref>


<ref name="n8"> The imprint date of Pastiches et Mélanges being 25 March 1919, it was not "a month earlier" but more than two months earlier when Proust could have inserted some complimentary references to Anna de Noailles. As for À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, the imprint date was 30 November 1918. [PK, FL] </ref>
<ref name="n8"> The imprint date of Pastiches et Mélanges being 25 March 1919, it was not "a month earlier" but more than two months earlier when Proust could have inserted some complimentary references to Anna de Noailles. As for À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, the imprint date was 30 November 1918. [PK, FL] </ref>
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<ref name="n13"> Allusion to L'Amour médecin by Molière, act I, scene 1. Sganarelle says: "You are a goldsmith, M. Josse, and your advice has the whiff of a man wishing to rid himself of his wares." [PK]</ref>
<ref name="n13"> Allusion to L'Amour médecin by Molière, act I, scene 1. Sganarelle says: "You are a goldsmith, M. Josse, and your advice has the whiff of a man wishing to rid himself of his wares." [PK]</ref>


<ref name="n14"> On the subject of the fortifications of Liège, see the allusion that Anna de Noailles makes to them in her telegram of Monday [26 May 1919] (CP 03786, note 3; cf. Kolb, XVIII, no. 105) to which Proust is replying here. But whereas her correspondence stresses their "heroic" resistance, Proust underlines more pertinently here the point at which these fortifications had become redundant in the First World War, in which aerial was first pioneered. [FL] </ref>
<ref name="n14"> On the subject of the fortifications of Liège, see the allusion that Anna de Noailles makes to them in her telegram of Monday [26 May 1919] (CP 03786, note 3; cf. Kolb, XVIII, no. 105) to which Proust is replying here. But whereas her correspondence stresses their "heroic" resistance, Proust underlines more pertinently here the point at which these fortifications had become redundant in the First World War, in which aerial bombardment was first pioneered. [FL] </ref>


<ref name="n15"> This no doubt refers to boules Quiès [natural wax earplugs]. In Le Côté de Guermantes Proust describes his experiences with these earplugs. See the famous episode about silence being created artificially by means of boules Quiès: "Indeed it sometimes happens that an invalid whose ears have been hermetically sealed can no longer hear the noise of a fire like the one that was crackling away at that very moment in Saint-Loup's chimney [...]; to no longer hear the passage of the trams whose music rose at regular intervals over the main square at Doncières. And then, if the invalid reads, the pages turn silently as if being leafed through by a god. The deep rumble of a bath that is being run becomes weaker, softer and more distant like the celestial babbling of a brook [...] [W]e have only to thicken the plugs that close the aural passages, they compel to a pianissimo the boisterous tune being played by a young girl above our heads; if we smear one of these plugs in grease immediately its despotism is obeyed by the whole household, and the same laws are extended out of doors. Pianissimo is no longer sufficient, the plug instantaneously closes the piano and the music lesson is abruptly curtailed; the gentleman who is pacing the room above our head ceases his round in one fell swoop; the traffic of carriages and trams is interrupted as if a head of state were about to pass." (RTP, II, 374-375.) [PK, ChC] </ref>
<ref name="n15"> This no doubt refers to boules Quiès [natural wax earplugs]. In Le Côté de Guermantes Proust describes his experiences with these earplugs. See the famous episode about silence being created artificially by means of boules Quiès: "Indeed it sometimes happens that an invalid whose ears have been hermetically sealed can no longer hear the noise of a fire like the one that was crackling away at that very moment in Saint-Loup's chimney [...]; to no longer hear the passage of the trams whose music rose at regular intervals over the main square at Doncières. And then, if the invalid reads, the pages turn silently as if being leafed through by a god. The deep rumble of a bath that is being run becomes weaker, softer and more distant like the celestial babbling of a brook [...] [W]e have only to thicken the plugs that close the aural passages, they compel to a pianissimo the boisterous tune being played by a young girl above our heads; if we smear one of these plugs in grease immediately its despotism is obeyed by the whole household, and the same laws are extended out of doors. Pianissimo is no longer sufficient, the plug instantaneously closes up the piano and the music lesson is abruptly curtailed; the gentleman who is pacing the room above our head ceases his round in one fell swoop; the traffic of carriages and trams is interrupted as if a head of state were about to pass." (RTP, II, 374-375.) [PK, ChC] </ref>


<ref name="n16"> Translation notes: The mention of the fortifications of Liège is a pun on "liège" - cork. </ref>  
<ref name="n16"> Translation notes: The mention of the fortifications of Liège is a pun on "liège" - cork. </ref>  

Revision as of 08:11, 5 July 2022


Other languages:

Marcel Proust to Anna de Noailles [26 and 27 May 1919]

(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[1]

Madame,

What bliss of resurrection I felt to see the marvellous loops of your handwriting after so many years, which seem to be capable of protecting the Celestial Garden which the Angel (now become redundant) bearing a blazing sword keeps watch over[2]. Your kindness in writing to me like this, and so quickly (qui cito dat, bis dat)[3] brought back to me ancient feelings that you have since martyred a little. And I am sad to think, at the time of this renewal of respectful tenderness, that three of my books are about to appear in eight days[4], in which simply by chance the space you occupy in them is so small, a few lines in a Renan pastiche which you know[5], a line in a new Saint-Simon pastiche which you do not know[6] (maybe a word in "Mélanges"[7] I don't know, I didn't choose the selections). I shall not forget your kindness today and I will have the opportunity in the not too distant future to convey my gratitude worthily. But it pains me that I didn't beg for and receive word from you a month earlier, so that I would have been able to put in the book what I can now only put in another one[8].

I would also like to thank M. de Noailles (how the war has made him grow more handsome!). I will find a way. How good it is of him to remember to speak to you about it[9], tell him, please do (honestly, don’t forget to tell him) how much I was moved by it.

Ought I to tell you that your wonderful letter has been just like a priceless drawing, because I have hardly been able to decipher a single word of it. Only the name Bernstein can be made out, and I can understand why he has come to be there[10]. But before daring to bore you with all this, some months ago I telephoned him and, like me, he has mislaid the address. But that's of no importance now, as Guiche (who has been wonderful to me in this frightful tale of moving house, went to see the managers, got from them the money which I believe they owed me), has strained all his ingenuity into searching out cork makers who would be willing to convert my suberin[11] into bottle corks.

Please accept my respectful and grateful admiration Madame,

Marcel Proust

After having written to you, for the fiftieth time I am looking at this beautiful arabesque design, and here are the words "Cité de Retiro", an Élysée in Élysée which, being named by you become the "Champs-Élysées", glowing in letters of fire. Tomorrow I shall write to Cité de Retiro [12] to find out what this mysterious address can relate to. No doubt I shall find a use for my cork there as I won’t be able to put it up in my new lodgings which I am leaving boulevard Haussmann for. (I am leaving because the building has been sold to a banker, who in good M. Josse[13] fashion wants to turn it into a bank, and to do that he is making all the tenants leave, without understanding that it will be the death of at least one of those who he uproots.) Moreover I believe that fortifications, even those of Liège, have had their day[14]. And it occurs to me that it would be better to apply the means of defence to the ears. Mme Simone spoke to me about some ivory balls[15] (I would really like to find more details about them!) the Duchesse de Guiche mentioned cotton wool in vaseline. But no doubt these ladies are less sensitive to noise than I, who am terribly ill, dying.


[16] [17]

Notes

  1. ↑ This letter is to thank Anna de Noailles for her telegram (on the subject of dealers in cork) of Monday [26 May 1919], received by Proust the same day, as is indicated by the sent and received post marks (see CP 03786; cf. Kolb, XVIII, no. 105). Having received it shortly after four o'clock (time stamp of receipt: 16:05), his reply could date from the same Monday 26 May, if he wrote his reply immediately, in the evening or at night, according to his usual habit. The post script however is slightly later, Proust having reread the note to decipher the address of the cork trader, which is difficult to read on account his correspondent's style of writing. Written at separate times this letter likely dates from 26 and 27 May 1919. [PK, FL]
  2. ↑ Allusion to the Old Testament: "Genesis", III, 24. It is not a question of an Angel, but two cherubim. - In Sodome et Gomorrhe I (RTP, III, p. 32), confusing (deliberately?) the episode of the destruction of Sodom ("Genesis", III, 18-19) with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (ibid., III, 22-24), Proust imagines that at the gates of Sodom were placed two angels with "flaming swords" in order to prevent the inhabitants from fleeing, but that the inhabitants would have scorned them. In the episode about Adam and Eve that he is alluding to in the present letter, on the other hand, the guardians of the Garden of Eden are not at all "redundant", since they do indeed prevent the guilty ones from this now for ever lost paradise. It is therefore possible that Proust was currently working on the pages in Sodome et Gomorrhe I that interweave these two episodes. [PK, ChC, FL]
  3. ↑ As regards this well-known Latin saying [he who gives promptly gives twice], it was a figure of speech frequently used by Proust to thank his correspondents, see CP 05413, note 6. [FL]
  4. ↑ Proust is thinking of his three books due out in June: Pastiches et mélanges, the reprint of Du côté de chez Swann, and À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. [ChC]
  5. ↑ See Pastiches et Mélanges, Paris, Éd. de la Nouvelle Revue française, 1919, p. 57 and note 1. (PM, p. 37-38, et note * p. 38-39.) - The Renan pastiche (on the Lemoine Affair) had appeared in the "Supplément littéraire" of Le Figaro of 21 mars 1908; the mention of Anna de Noailles was already present in it. [PK]
  6. ↑ See Pastiches et Mélanges, op. cit., p. 76-77. (PM, p. 51-52.) [PK]
  7. ↑ In fact there are two complimentary references to the Comtesse de Noailles under the "Mélanges" section in the essay "John Ruskin", taken from chapters III and IV of Proust's preface to his translation of La Bible d'Amiens (1904): see Pastiches et Mélanges, op. cit., p. 165, note 1 at the foot of page 164, and p. 195, note 2 at the foot of page 194. (See PM, p. 118, note *, and p. 140, note **.) - Given the resetting of parts of this article as well as the changes made to other sections of text (see the Notices to PM in the Pléiade edition, p. 722-726, p. 756, etc.), it is difficult to believe that the "selection" of texts for Mélanges would have been carried out by the editors at the NRF without Proust's active participation. [PK, ChC, FL]
  8. ↑ The imprint date of Pastiches et Mélanges being 25 March 1919, it was not "a month earlier" but more than two months earlier when Proust could have inserted some complimentary references to Anna de Noailles. As for À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, the imprint date was 30 November 1918. [PK, FL]
  9. ↑ Proust had met Mathieu de Noailles at Princesse Edmond de Polignac's on the evening of 25 May, and had requested him to ask his wife to remind him of the address of the cork dealer through whom he had had the walls of his bedroom covered in 1910. On the same subject see his letter to Jacques Porel of [Tuesday 27 May 1919] (CP 03788; cf. Kolb, XVIII, no. 107, note 8). [PK, FL]
  10. ↑ "M. Henry Bernstein, for whom any noise was intolerable, was the first person to have cork sheets installed in his apartment. Marcel Proust and myself followed his lead, thanks to which work and sometimes sleep became possible." (Information given by Anna de Noailles, CG, t. 2, p. 213, note 1.) [PK, FL]
  11. ↑ Suberin is the principal component of cork (suber in Latin). On the subject of the properties and functions of this polymer, see for example the article in Wikipedia. [FL]
  12. ↑ In her telegram Anna de Noailles, who had also lost the address of the dealer in cork, gave Proust (slightly inaccurately: "5 Cité du Retiro", instead of 6 bis / 15) the address of Maison Leys, carpet manufacturers and cabinet makers, who might be able to advise him. [ChC, FL]
  13. ↑ Allusion to L'Amour médecin by Molière, act I, scene 1. Sganarelle says: "You are a goldsmith, M. Josse, and your advice has the whiff of a man wishing to rid himself of his wares." [PK]
  14. ↑ On the subject of the fortifications of Liège, see the allusion that Anna de Noailles makes to them in her telegram of Monday [26 May 1919] (CP 03786, note 3; cf. Kolb, XVIII, no. 105) to which Proust is replying here. But whereas her correspondence stresses their "heroic" resistance, Proust underlines more pertinently here the point at which these fortifications had become redundant in the First World War, in which aerial bombardment was first pioneered. [FL]
  15. ↑ This no doubt refers to boules Quiès [natural wax earplugs]. In Le Côté de Guermantes Proust describes his experiences with these earplugs. See the famous episode about silence being created artificially by means of boules Quiès: "Indeed it sometimes happens that an invalid whose ears have been hermetically sealed can no longer hear the noise of a fire like the one that was crackling away at that very moment in Saint-Loup's chimney [...]; to no longer hear the passage of the trams whose music rose at regular intervals over the main square at Doncières. And then, if the invalid reads, the pages turn silently as if being leafed through by a god. The deep rumble of a bath that is being run becomes weaker, softer and more distant like the celestial babbling of a brook [...] [W]e have only to thicken the plugs that close the aural passages, they compel to a pianissimo the boisterous tune being played by a young girl above our heads; if we smear one of these plugs in grease immediately its despotism is obeyed by the whole household, and the same laws are extended out of doors. Pianissimo is no longer sufficient, the plug instantaneously closes up the piano and the music lesson is abruptly curtailed; the gentleman who is pacing the room above our head ceases his round in one fell swoop; the traffic of carriages and trams is interrupted as if a head of state were about to pass." (RTP, II, 374-375.) [PK, ChC]
  16. ↑ Translation notes: The mention of the fortifications of Liège is a pun on "liège" - cork.
  17. ↑ Contributors: Yorktaylors
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