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Revision as of 01:29, 30 September 2021
Marcel Proust to Samuel Pozzi [14 or 15 October 1914]
(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)
Dear Sir,
It is not, I swear, a diminishment of gratitude that grows each day, if I did not write to you straight away. Already confused that you would, despite my recommendations, bother to write to me, while you are overworking yourself to prepare victories and while your correspondents wait for you not even the « brevitas » but the « silentium » of the general[2], every day I believed that, come the next, I would be in a state to visit you. But my asthma attack has lasted longer than I could have believed. I think I will be in a state to chat with you for a few seconds one day or another. It is too soon for me to ask you of this, but not too soon to express my gratitude. It saddened me to have kept silent up until this moment and that is why I am writing to you. You may know that your student, my brother, is not unworthy of such a mentor[3]. His nurses wrote to their president[4] that they have admiration for all that he has done, by his courage and his composure. Alas, who says courage (they had even written “heroism”) says danger faced[5]. And the news of the possible invasion of Verdun is not to reduce my anxiety[6]. But there is already too much to speak about, since there is not at this moment a Frenchman who does not have to fear for dear lives and to be proud of lives offered in sacrifice. One last word, dear Sir, it is natural to ask you to allow me (thus, you will provide me double the service without which I would not dare ask) to come as a patient. That will not deprive me in any way of the sweetness of being called “friend,” and that will leave it purer than doubts. The terms “patient” and “friend” are not entirely incompatible. You know better than anyone by which beautiful methods one can resolve such contradictions, you who have so much opposed then unified “master” and “equal” in your response to the court[7].
Please accept, dear sir, the offering of my feelings of great respect and gratitude.
Marcel Proust