CP 03987/en
Marcel Proust to Léon Hennique [shortly after 11 December 1919]
(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)
44 rue Hamelin
Sir
I know that you were not a friend of my books, the paper l’Eclair didn’t hide that[2]. But as this in no way prevents me from being an admirer of yours, I was very happy to find your signature at the bottom of the letter with which the Académie Goncourt has kindly honored me. I take this probably unique opportunity to tell you that the magnificent translation that Mademoiselle Hennique has made of Hardy's The Well-Beloved [3] has often been a fruitful company for me in my life of physical and moral suffering. Often I imagine myself, in thought, on the Island which resounds with the noise of the quarrymen[4].
Please Sir, accept the expression of my most sincerest regards
Marcel Proust
Notes
- ↑ The reference to an article in L'Éclair (see n2) places this letter at [shortly after December 11, 1919]. [PK]
- ↑ Proust read in L'Éclair of Thursday, December 11, 1919, an article by Gérault-Richard, "Les Trois Petits Tours du scrutin" (The Three Little Turns of the Ballot), according to which Léon Hennique voted in each round for Les Croix de bois (The Wooden Crosses) by Roland Dorgelès: "The 'Goncourts' met yesterday at Drouant's [...] Not present at the meeting were Messrs. Émile Bergerat and Lucien Descaves, who cast their votes by correspondence. [...] Once the ballot was over and the vote declared, the academicians allowed themselves to share in each others’ confidences as they were putting on their overcoats. - Descaves and Bergerat voted in every round for Les Croix de bois, declared Jean Ajalbert. - But, said Léon Hennique, so did I." [PK, FP, CSz]
- ↑ Proust confuses the daughter of the recipient, Nicolette Hennique, with that of Paul Margueritte, also a member of the Goncourt Academy. Ève Paul-Margueritte had by this time translated two novels by Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved (Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1909) and A Pair of Blue Eyes (Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1913). [PK, FP]
- ↑ The Well-Beloved is set on the Isle of Slingers, a fictionalized version of the Isle of Portland (Dorset, England). In La Prisonnière, the hero asks Albertine: "You remember in Jude the Obscure, did you see in The Well-Beloved, the blocks of stone that the father extracts from the island coming by boat to pile up in the son's workshop where they become statues [...]" (RTP, III, 878). [PK, FP]
- ↑ Translation notes:
- ↑ Contributors: Lverstraten