ON JANUARY 1, 1920, PROUST’S ARTICLE “On Flaubert’s Style” appeared in the NRF.1 Proust disagreed with Thibaudet’s assessment that Flaubert was not a particularly talented writer. The author of the Search maintained that Flaubert’s use of certain pronouns and verb tenses “had renewed our vision of things almost as much as had Kant.” He conceded that Flaubert’s use of metaphors and analogies did not measure up to Proust’s own standards for writers. Proust believed that “metaphor alone can give a kind of eternity to style and there is perhaps not in all Flaubert a single beautiful metaphor.” But any reader who had ever, even for a single day, stepped on board Flaubert’s “great rolling sidewalk cannot fail to realize that it is without precedent in literature.” Perhaps nothing “touched” Proust more, given his own “modest research,” than the mastery with which Flaubert gives “the impression of time.” After defending his own work, once again, against the accusations of being formless, of stemming from free associations provoked by “madeleine crumbs dipped in tea,” Proust hinted that his “entire theory of art” was based on the phenomenon of involuntary memory, and he named two writers whom he considered his major precursors: Chateaubriand and Gérard de Nerval. Proust referred to the scene in Les Mémoires d’outre-tombe in which Chateaubriand, at Montboisier, hears the thrush singing, and suddenly this songbird that he had heard so often in his youth transports him, and the reader along with him, in memory back to Combourg. The bird’s song had suddenly moved him back through time and space. Citing a similar example in Nerval, Proust remarked that this great genius could have used one of Proust’s titles for nearly all his works: “The Intermittencies of the Heart.”2
With Proust’s burgeoning fame, foreign presses and publishers were curious to know more about the author of what appeared to be a novel of unprecedented scale. In early January, Proust sent Gallimard two photographs that the publisher had requested on behalf of a Mr. Sanborn, who represented American magazines.3 As Proust attempted to win over the critics who wrote for the major dailies of Paris, he not only exchanged letters with them but often invited them to dinner, either at his bedside or in a private room at the Ritz. These literary pundits included Boulenger, Souday, and Pierrefeu, whose initial articles were decidedly hostile.4
Early in the new year, Proust invited Boulenger, along with Pierre de Polignac, Jean de Gaigneron, and Georges Casella, the publisher of Comcedia, to dine at his bedside. Boulenger declined, but the others accepted. Henri Rochat was also present, and the small bedroom was filled. The novelist understood that his critics-given the vastness of his novel and the slowness of its publication—might easily believe his narration had no particular goal in view. Without revealing details, he assured them that long ago he had written the conclusion of his novel, which would circle back and connect with the beginning, while resolving the themes sounded in the opening pages. He explained his method of characterization, whose aim was to endow his players with “the movement of life, which means that one only meets characters in my books as one does in life, that is to say one is at first mistaken about them.” By underscoring the originality of his method, Proust sought to convince critics not to draw conclusions until they had read the entire Search, “this work to which I am sacrificing my pleasures, my health, my life.”5
Proust thanked Mme Alfred Vallette, alias Rachilde, who had accused him in an article of being a socialite who sought readers in the upper class. Proust observed that choosing society people for many of his characters did not imply that he sought them for readers. “If my work is refined, society people, as regards literature, are the least refined people.” He would do better to seek electricians as readers. Far from seeking the Prix Goncourt as she had alleged, he had been approached by members of the Académie Goncourt. Proust must have enjoyed reminding Rachilde that he had been obliged to pay for the publication of Swann’s Way, which had been declined by the major publishers, including her husband.6
Proust’s insomnia worsened, and in turn he again increased his dosage of depressants. In mid-January, he wrote Boulenger that he had been unable to sleep, despite having taken three grams of Veronal each evening. Rather than writing letters, he “would do better to correct my proofs. I won’t do that either. Playing checkers is my maximum effort.”7
No longer trusting Gallimard to see that his books remained in stock, Proust sent Odilon to bookstores to look for copies. He found several stores that had no copies; nor could the clerks tell him when delivery was expected. Gallimard assured Proust that there were seven thousand copies in stock and that if bookstores ran out, it was due to their failure to reorder, or to a temporary shipping delay.8 Proust remained skeptical. A few days later he wrote Gallimard that while Odilon was waiting at the NRF, someone came in to ask for Within a Budding Grove and received the astonishing reply that there were no copies. Although Proust was unable to tell his publisher when the proofs of The Guermantes Way would be ready, he had reached a conclusion that he knew would please Gallimard: he had abandoned the idea of publishing the remaining volumes at the same time.9 Gallimard was relieved, primarily because Proust’s texts were such a challenge for the printer, not only because huge amounts of lead stayed immobilized while Proust corrected proofs but because of the nearly illegible manuscripts, and proof pages that came back covered with corrections and additions. Proust failed to appreciate how difficult his texts were for the printer, who left blanks for the author to fill in, as Nahmias had done when preparing the typescript of Swann’s Way.
Gallimard urged Proust not to worry about printer’s errors in the second set of proofs for The Guermantes Way. Before the final print run, the publisher would go himself, with Rivière, to the printer’s and verify that all the corrections had been made. He wondered when Proust could give him the revised text for Sodom and Gomorrah, for which Gallimard had earlier sent him the typescript. Concerning the supply of Proust’s books in stores, the publisher asked for his trust. Gallimard insisted that the books were never unavailable, no matter what Proust’s spies reported.10 Proust at first declined Gallimard’s offer to go to the press and check the proofs, saying that it was too much trouble. In any case, he could not accept the offer because Gallimard refused to accept the compensation Proust offered. Meanwhile, Proust thought the process of correcting proof would advance more rapidly if he could find someone to read his texts aloud to him.11 Rochat, useless in so many ways, was unable to help with this task because he read poorly in French, making it difficult for Proust to distinguish words and verb tenses.
In February, Gallimard reassured Proust about the constant availability of Within a Budding Grove. The publisher had ordered another printing, after which the book would have sold fifteen thousand copies—“a beautiful number,” said Gaston, who hoped to sell even more.12 Gallimard soon reported that the printer was “tormenting” him because the longer Proust kept the proofs the longer the printer’s lead remained immobilized. A Proust volume used far more lead than the average book; and paper was still scarce and becoming increasingly expensive. Gallimard feared that if they delayed too long, he might have to raise the price on The Guermantes Way.13
Rivière’s article “Marcel Proust and the Classical Tradition” appeared in the February NRF. Jacques had given Proust the proofs to read in January, after writing to say that this article was not the one he dreamed of writing but the best “his brain has allowed him to produce so far.” In the essay Rivière compared Proust to Racine, saying that the novelist had renewed the great French classical tradition by examining himself in order to understand others. The Search was indeed a “psychological novel, but one imbued with lyricism.” In a long letter thanking Rivière, the novelist assured him that “no one could have for you more admiration, gratitude and affection than your Marcel Proust.” Proust soon informed Rivière of his intention to dedicate The Guermantes Way to Léon Daudet for helping him obtain the Prix Goncourt.14
In late winter, Proust offered Rivière financial assistance if he had trouble making ends meet. Rivière, deeply touched, said that he would not hesitate to accept Proust’s generous offer, if need be. Jacques’s wife was expecting in March, and he worried about the delivery because their first child, a girl now eight, had been delivered by cesarean section. In early March, Proust paid a late afternoon visit to the NRF offices. Rivière, whose health remained fragile, asked whether Robert Proust could recommend a neurologist; he planned to see a specialist immediately after his wife’s delivery. On March 11 Rivière announced to Proust the birth of his son Alain, who arrived “in the best possible conditions.” Relieved at how well his wife and baby were, he made plans to see Dr. Gustave Roussy in early April. Rivière hoped that the neurologist recommended by Dr. Proust would “bring me out of this awful languor in which I am stuck.”15
As Proust wrote to friends or attempted to answer the hundreds of congratulatory letters he had received, his fears regarding his own health became a constant theme. Though made miserable by his usual ailments and deplorable use of stimulants and depressants, the writer worked hard correcting proofs. Proust gave his own race against time and preoccupation with death to the Narrator, who discovers his vocation as a writer at the same time he realizes that he has grown old. “The idea of death took up permanent residence within me in the way that love sometimes does. Not that I loved death, I abhorred it. But after a preliminary stage at which, no doubt, I thought about it from time to time as one does about a woman with whom one is not yet in love, its image adhered now to the most profound layer of my mind, so completely that I could not give my attention to anything without that thing first traversing the idea of death . . . the idea of death kept me company as faithfully as the idea of my self.”16
In mid-March, Proust received a letter from Mme Straus. She had intended to write three months earlier but had fallen seriously ill and spent seven weeks in bed. She told him that when he won the Prix Goncourt, Montesquiou had wanted to send his congratulations, but because the count’s letter praising Within a Budding Grove had gone unanswered, he could not, “given his age, his correctness, etc., write a second letter before receiving a reply.” Instead, he asked Mme Straus to congratulate Marcel on his behalf. Having been “foolish enough to recover,” she wanted to keep her promise to Montesquiou.17
Proust answered her immediately, saying how distressed he was to know that she had been so ill. “What a blessing that you have recovered!” He wanted to come and sing hosannas to her for escaping death. He also gave Mme Straus—survivor of so many Proustian furniture sales—the good news that he had discovered twelve forgotten Royal Dutch shares, which had allowed Céleste to sport some very ugly feathers from a bird of paradise on her hat. Proust dutifully sent Montesquiou a brief, dry note, claiming that his brush with “Death” had prevented his writing sooner.18
Hauser kept Marcel’s New Year’s letter—the one in which the novelist had said that he could “not get used to things that end”—for three months before answering it in a rather distant tone. Lionel preferred to drop their debate about Proust’s powers of psychological analysis, which was pointless in any case, because the financial adviser was talking about psychology as applied to practical matters, whereas Proust applied his remarkable analytical skills to personality, motivation, and understanding one’s profound self. In an April letter, Hauser repeated his accusation of Proust’s behaving like a spoiled child. The accountant shared Montesquiou’s view that Proust’s fame had gone to his head; unlike Montesquiou, Hauser told him so: “I fear, my dear Marcel, that glory has somewhat intoxicated you.” After they exchanged a few more letters, Hauser relented a little by offering to examine Proust’s account at the London County Bank and bring his financial statement up to date. Although their friendship might have seemed to have survived all the misunderstandings, too many acrimonious words had been exchanged for either man to enjoy corresponding as in the past.19
Rivière had his first appointment with Dr. Roussy in early April and was “delighted” with the man, in whom he had “complete confidence.” Roussy, because of his friendship with Proust, would not accept a fee for his services. Rivière, obviously buoyed by the consultation, failed to appreciate Proust’s state of fatigue and urged him to write an article on Sainte-Beuve for the July issue of the NRF.20 Proust declined, while holding out the tantalizing offer of novellas, presumably excerpts from the Search that he could shape into anthology-like pieces. Proust soon told Rivière that he must devote what little energy he had to completing the novel.21
Late on a rainy spring evening, Proust attempted to call on Tronche. Gustave heard the bell ring, but incredulous that anyone would call at such an hour, especially in bad weather, he ignored the sound. Proust, who waited for a while in the rain, may have wanted to thank Tronche for the ten thousand-franc check he had received as a partial payment on royalties due.22
On April 16 Gallimard sent the second corrected proofs of The Guermantes Way, part 1, with a typescript of the author’s additions, from which the printer insisted on working. The workers who composed on monotype had begun to refuse copy that was too difficult to read because they were paid per thousand letters. The time they spent trying to decipher Proust’s handwriting lowered their wages considerably.23 Gallimard asked Proust to fill in a few blanks in these proofs, passages where no one had been able to determine what he had written.
Proust told Morand that he was being urged to present himself as a candidate for one of the three vacant seats at the Académie française. Were he to do so, “it must be now, because after Sodom, it will no longer be possible.” Proust sounded out acquaintances who were members of the august body and sent them copies of his books. Henri de Régnier was caught off guard when Marcel broached his possible candidacy. In a letter to Régnier, Proust admitted that his candidacy presented “numerous drawbacks.” His contacts with members he knew, such as Gabriel Hanotaux and Pierre Loti, were old and tenuous. Of course, if he became a candidate, he would visit them as well as the others. He told Régnier, rather naïvely, that he thought he could count on the support of the war hero General Mangin, “a close friend of my brother . . . and a friend of my books.”24
Régnier replied tactfully but advised Proust not to seek election at that time. Proust said that he could not promise to follow the poet’s advice, but he identified two unsurmountable obstacles to his candidacy: his close friendship with Léon Daudet, who had many enemies in official circles, and the nature of his forthcoming volumes on homosexuality.25 He would be averse to changing the nature of his books for a seat in the Académie française. His original intention had been to write about homosexuality in an objective way. “But to my great chagrin” the fate of the characters led him “to write a sort of pamphlet, a sermon, very different from the impartial depiction I had intended. I see in this a literary drawback about which I can do nothing.” If Régnier informed members of the Académie française that Proust depicted the dangers and difficulties of homosexuality, it would reassure them. “I add that if condemnation breaks through everywhere, on the other hand, the depiction is not insipid, far from it. And this, doubtless, is not very academic although fairly religious.” If Régnier thought his election possible, Proust would engage Guiche, who had excellent contacts, to lobby on his behalf. Although Proust had not seen “Masters” like Anatole France for twenty years, he was certain that they viewed him kindly: “I don’t know if all these puzzle pieces of friendship add up to a vote.” Régnier again cautioned Proust not to put himself forward, observing that he had waited too late to launch a successful campaign; members were already committed to other candidates. Régnier advised him to wait for the next vacant seat and to announce his candidacy immediately. As a gesture of his friendship, Régnier offered his vote and support should Proust become a candidate.26
In early May, Proust called on Maurice Barrès late one evening to solicit his support. Barrès did not care for Proust’s works; he had only “leafed through Swann’s Way, whose style, content and characters he deprecated.”27 When Proust called at approximately ten P.M., Barrès was outraged at Proust’s presumption and his appearance. Fulminating later to his secretary, Barrès expressed his annoyance that Proust, whom he had not seen “in twenty years,” would knock on his door at such an “impossible hour.” And “what a man! Muffled up in an enormous scarf, unshaven, looking exactly like someone who had just climbed out of bed” at an hour when normal people were retiring to theirs. The academician wondered aloud why Proust had “risked dying en route” to come and “ask me if I didn’t think it was time for him to respond to the wishes of those who were calling him to the Académie française. What a singular idea! No one, there, is expecting anyone!” Barrès was surprised at Proust’s “exaggerated opinion (and yet quite legitimate) of his own importance.”28
Proust had little choice but to follow Régnier’s advice and wait. Still, he hesitated, weighing an immediate move against a future one. He asked Rivière whether a seat in the Académie française would be good for his books and for the NRF. Jacques, who understood that Proust’s stature rendered such distinctions meaningless, assured the novelist that his work was “too vigorous, too real, too true” for members of the Academy. “Most of them cannot understand you; their slumber is too deep.”29 Marcel was not to fulfill his father’s prophecy and become a member of the Académie française.
Natalie Clifford Barney, a wealthy American expatriate who lived openly as a lesbian, sent Proust a copy of her recent book Pensées d’une amazone (Thoughts of an Amazon), bearing the inscription (in French): “To Marcel Proust, whose understanding merits this unexpurgated copy—between pages 72 and 73— . . . where he will find himself mentioned.” In this passage, she writes about the amorous relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, as described in Plato’s The Symposium. Proust wrote immediately to thank her for the book, which was “ravishing and profound and puts mine to shame.”30 Thus began an exchange of letters that continued for some time in a fruitless attempt to arrange a rendezvous. Had Proust met Miss Barney, he would presumably have asked many questions of this outspoken proponent of Gomorrah.
Proust sent a brief description of himself and his career to the Italian bibliophile and historian Alberto Lumbroso, who like many of Proust’s foreign admirers was eager to know about the man who wrote such extraordinary prose. In evoking his youth Proust spoke of the “great indulgence” from which he had “benefited and which should have,” without his bad health and extreme laziness, “encouraged me to work.” He reviewed his early stories and the volume into which they were collected, saying that he did not repudiate them but remembered vaguely that they contain the “embryo of today’s books”; reading them again, though, as enjoyable as that might be, would also “pain me because then I had a certain gift for style.” He started writing again “twenty-five years later,” when he was too sick to do anything else. Although his looks had not changed and he did not have a single gray hair, he had lost all the “suppleness of the craft.” Nor did he “share at all Francis Jammes’s opinion who saw in Swann the model of the most perfect language he knows since Tacitus!”31
It is surprising that Proust misrepresented his career, for he had never really stopped writing. By glossing over the “twenty-five years” that separated Pleasures and Days and his first drafts of the Search, Proust left out the abandoned Jean Santeuil—more important in the development of his themes and style than Pleasures and Days—his Ruskin translations, his articles, and his pastiches. The biographical sketch describes the Narrator’s career more accurately than Proust’s. His hero, when young, wrote only one article for the Figaro and then floundered for years before discovering his vocation late in life. Proust, in his final years, often adopted his protagonist’s persona. At the end of the letter to Lumbroso, Proust anticipated his own legend. After referring to his pages on Italy, Proust explained that his travels were now limited to his imagination because he had cloistered himself “in this extraterrestrial place which is my cork-lined room, whose blinds are always closed, and where the only light is electric.” Not only had Proust not spent twenty-five years without writing anything, he was no longer surrounded by cork.
Although only two volumes of the Search had appeared, readers and critics began to speak of the creation of a new world. Abel Bonnard wrote Proust, saying that his pages captured the very essence of the “most fleeting emotions,” that the completed novel would contain “your own universe where you will reign like an Enchanter.”32 Blanche, in the Revue de Paris, likened the Search to a “rising whirlwind” that surprises and changes the world as we know it,” creating “a public granary that will nourish other writers.”33 The painter wrote, “There is nothing like it in the plastic arts.”34 Proust, who recognized an excellent blurb, sent this quotation to Rivière, urging him to use it in the forthcoming issue of the NRF. Rivière declined, saying that he had received the quotation too late and did not have room to insert it. Proust replied that his excuses were preposterous, but, as usual with Jacques, he showed remarkable patience and forbearance.35
Proust finished the proofs for The Guermantes Way, part 1, in two days and on May 18 gave them to Tronche to deliver to Gallimard. Gaston, noting the rapidity with which the proofs had returned, told Proust that this was a “good sign” for his health and for the NRF.36 Gallimard sent the proofs on to the printer, instructing him to use the greatest care in making corrections. In spite of Proust’s refusal to accept help, Gallimard intended to go to the printer’s for a final reading to make certain that all the author’s changes had been made. By May 20 the deluxe edition of Within a Budding Grove was finished, though it would not be available to subscribers until the end of July.
The Schiffs, on their way south to Roquebrune, stopped briefly in Paris and met Proust. Marcel enjoyed telling the story of how Schiff, after meeting him, would stop his friends on the streets of London to tell them that the most remarkable thing he and Violet had seen in Paris was Marcel Proust: “I was very happy to hear this, but then Schiff added ‘because he’s the only man we’ve ever seen who dines in a fur overcoat.’”37 Nothing else is known about the first encounter. The Schiffs returned to Paris in the spring of 1922 to become better acquainted with the writer whose books enthralled them.38
Rivière had taken the Guermantes proofs with him on the train to Cenon, a quiet little town near Bordeaux, where, following doctor’s orders, he would rest for the month of May. In a letter to Proust, Jacques told him that as the train rolled south, he had read the proofs, “with irresistible emotion, enthusiasm, transport. You are a great writer.” Rivière found the opening pages of the new volume “even more poetical than psychological.” He asked whether he had already told Proust, “this will no doubt amuse you, that André Breton, the head Dadaist, came to help us correct your proofs, and declared to me an intense admiration for you, based precisely on the poetic treasures he discovered in your work.”39
A group of Proust’s friends, led by Hahn, began work to obtain the Légion d’honneur for Proust by July 14, the French national holiday. Although they did not meet that deadline, they succeeded before year’s end. In a May letter regarding contacts to be made for the decoration, Reynaldo told Marcel that Lucien wanted him to know that “he loves you despite your total abandonment.” Proust, tremendously preoccupied with correcting proof and courting critics, appeared to neglect his old friends.40 His health and the race to finish kept him from seeing Reynaldo, the person “I love most in the world.” To a friend, he described Hahn as “another me.”41
In May, Proust received a letter from Colette, along with the proofs of Chéri, her latest novel, due out soon and destined to become one of her most famous works. And what about his books? Colette hoped to be fortunate enough to have a new “Marcel Proust for summer vacation. That and the sea together, what bathing!”42 Proust believed that there were many who, like Colette, wanted new books for vacation reading. By midsummer he expressed his annoyance to Gallimard regarding the publication date, telling him that if The Guermantes Way, part 1, could not be placed on sale by August 1, he would prefer to wait until after October 1, when Parisians returned to the city.43 Gallimard agreed to a fall publication.
On June 14 Princesse Soutzo invited Proust to her box at the Opéra for the dress rehearsal of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, translated by André Gide and set to music by Florent Schmitt. Ida Rubinstein, whose exotic beauty had captivated audiences at the Ballets Russes, had the starring role. Gide also had offered Proust tickets and suggested that he escort Miss Barney or anyone he liked.44 During the intermission, Proust learned that Réjane had just died. He rushed to rue Laurent-Pichat, where Jacques Porel let him in.45 Two days later Marcel wrote Jacques that he grieved for Réjane as though he had lost a member of his own family. Porel, touched by Proust’s kind gesture and words, gave Proust the cameo that Anatole France had presented to Réjane so long ago at the première of Le Lys rouge. Proust insisted on returning the cameo, saying that the souvenir he would keep would be one he could not “misplace or lose,” the memory “of those sublimely atrocious evenings” when Porel’s mother had incarnated Germinie Lacerteux.46 In July, Porel asked Proust, through Gallimard, to write an article about his mother for the NRF. Again Proust’s “terrible state of health” and his intensive work on the Search forced him to decline.47
On June 26 Proust informed Gallimard that The Guermantes Way, part 1, would be followed by The Guermantes Way, part 2, and Sodom and Gomorrah, part 1, published together in the same volume. Sodom and Gomorrah, part 1, would be a relatively short text. He predicted that two or three months after the publication of Guermantes 1 they should be ready to publish the next volume, concluding The Guermantes Way and introducing the reader to the cities of the plain. That day Proust sent Gallimard another letter, which began well—if not quite sincerely—by expressing his close attachment to the NRF and Gide. Then came the reproaches directed at Gallimard, whom Proust accused of avoiding him: he did not know where his publisher lived; he seldom found Gallimard at his office, and so on. Proust made the practical suggestion that the back cover of the forthcoming volume be used to announce the December publication of The Guermantes Way, part 2, and Sodom and Gomorrah, part 1.48 In fact, Gallimard announced more “cautiously” that The Guermantes Way, part 2, Sodom and Gomorrah, parts 1 and 2, and Time Regained were in press.49
Proust wrote to Rivière, accusing the NRF of having failed to publicize Pastiches et mélanges, which had “fallen flat on its face.” He also announced his intention of giving excerpts from The Guermantes Way to Belgian and American reviews, “since the NRF had not asked him for them.” And he was still unhappy with what he believed was Gallimard’s procrastination in signing a contract for an English translation of his novel, observing pointedly that his “daily” arguments in favor of “an English translation had resulted in. . . a Spanish translation.” Proust referred to Gallimard’s recent signing of a contract with a Spanish publisher for Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove.50 When Rivière read Proust’s letter he was beside himself. He answered from Cenon that he had written five or six times requesting excerpts from The Guermantes Way, but Proust had said that they were promised to Grasset. Rivière did not mince words, telling Proust, “You are appallingly unfair!” All Rivière’s work, articles, and blurbs to launch The Guermantes Way “should mean one thing: Proust is a great writer. Proust is our only great writer.”51
In June, Proust asked Tronche to send half of the page proofs to Ezra Pound at The Dial and the other half to the Revue latine, published in Bruges, Paris, and Rome. Pound wrote Gallimard, in nearly impeccable French, to acknowledge receipt of Proust’s pages: “Quel enchantement que il [sic] y a dans cette prose” (What enchantment there is in this prose).52 An excerpt from The Guermantes Way, “Saint-Loup: A Portrait,” appeared in The Dial in October 1921.53
With the deluxe edition of Within a Budding Grove ready to go on sale at the end of July, Proust drew up a list of his wealthy friends, including the Schiffs, who might be interested in acquiring the rare, expensive book. Designed to appeal to collectors, the volume sold for three hundred francs and included a photogravure of the Blanche portrait, fragments of the manuscript, and corrected proof sheets.54 Berry, who invited Proust to accompany him to Venice in September—“Doesn’t that tempt you?”—subscribed to three copies of the deluxe edition. Proust expressed his astonishment at Walter’s generosity: “I don’t know how to thank you for this ‘folly’” Marcel found the photogravure in the deluxe edition “hideous,” saying that it made him look as if he had “a black, hairy nose.” He asked Berry not to repeat his complaints about the NRF, because despite numerous “faults,” the NRF group showed him “many great kindnesses and I know that I am not an easy author.”55 Rivière’s chastisement had at least made Proust more discreet.
During the year Proust answered several surveys from newspapers. In the middle of the summer, he replied to two queries from L’Intransigeant. If he were obliged to work as a manual laborer, what sort of work would he choose? Proust answered that he would take “the very same one that he currently practiced: that of writer. And if paper became absolutely unavailable, I would, I think, become a baker. It is honorable to give men their daily bread.”56 A short time later, the newspaper asked what he thought about lending libraries that would charge for rental. Proust answered in a humorous tone, saying that those who were very poor and those who were very rich were unable to buy books, the first because of poverty, the latter because of avarice. Such libraries would only regularize an existing situation and create the “unheard of innovation of being required to return the books on loan.” He concluded by observing that when one’s taste for something was whetted, the result was more often “abuse than restraint; just as taking riding lessons made one want to have his own horse, by dint of renting books, perhaps one would finally buy some if not read them.”57 Back in February, Proust had given his answer to a survey from the Opinion about which paintings, limiting the choice to eight, should be selected for a French Tribune at the Louvre. Proust named the paintings he would choose in a letter to Vaudoyer, not intending that his list be published. Vaudoyer, an editor at the paper, printed Proust’s choices on February 28. The novelist’s selection included several works by Chardin, indicating his great admiration for that painter: Portrait de Chardin, Portrait de Mme Chardin, and Nature morte. To these he added “Millet’s Le Printemps, Manet’s Olympia, an unspecified Renoir or La Barque de Dante, or Corot’s La Cathédrale de Chartres; Watteau’s L’Indifférent or L’Embarquement.”58 When Proust saw Blanche’s list, he noted that it was remarkably similar to his. Each had selected works by Watteau, Millet, Chardin, Corot, and Manet.59
Rivière persisted in asking Proust for more articles. In late July, while planning the September issue, he reminded Proust that he had given the NRF nothing since the essay on Flaubert. The editor feared that if “your silence continues, people will think you have withdrawn your collaboration from me.” Rivière was reserving the lead story for him.60 Marcel answered a few days later, saying that the Revue de Paris wanted to publish excerpts from The Guermantes Way.61 He told Rivière again that after he finished the novel he intended to write critical articles for the NRF.62
One consequence of the Prix Goncourt was Proust’s appointment to a number of honorary committees and panels. At the end of July he was asked to serve on the selection committee of a new American institution, the Blumenthal Foundation, created by Florence Blumenthal. The purpose of the committee was to encourage French thought and art by awarding ten stipends of twelve thousand francs each. Among Proust’s distinguished fellow panelists were Anna de Noailles, Maurice Barrès, Henri Bergson, Edmond Jaloux, André Gide, Paul Valéry, and Robert de Flers.63
Proust missed the first board meeting. Knowing that Rivière neglected his own writings while struggling to edit the NRF and support his family, Proust asked whether he would like to be considered for one of the Blumenthal stipends. If so, Proust would speak to the other committee members on his behalf. Rivière, touched by such kindness, replied that the prize “would be extremely advantageous” for him. Proust promptly wrote to other committee members, stressing Rivière’s severely damaged health and true promise as a writer, citing his book L’Allemand and his essays on Rimbaud and Russian music.64
On the last Thursday in September, Proust stayed up all day in order to attend the five o’clock meeting of the Blumenthal committee. He was so shaky on arriving that he nearly “fell first on Henri Bergson and then on René Boylesve!” With Proust’s sponsorship, Jacques Rivière was awarded a stipend. Immediately after the meeting, Proust went to announce the news to Rivière, who was profoundly grateful. During the visit Proust asked Rivière to insert five lines in an article for the NRF about Lucien Daudet’s new book, Évidences. Rivière refused. Proust did not hold this against his protégé, because, as he explained to a friend, Rivière was not ungrateful; he simply held a different opinion and “he is a Conscience.”65
After Proust made a sales pitch about the deluxe edition to the Schiffs, those “charming friends of my thought,” they ordered a copy. Even so, Schiff sent Proust a letter explaining his misgivings about such editions, which he found “artistically unjustifiable.” Proust, clearly annoyed, wrote back and asked whether Schiff thought that “authors should have to starve to death?”66 Schiff made matters worse in a subsequent letter, showing himself to be something of a snob by saying, “It bothers me to know that any idiot can, by paying 300 francs, lead himself to believe he loves your pages as much as I do.” Schiff also held the taste of his fellow Englishmen in rather low esteem. “The English public that wants good literature is very small, especially for good French literature, and that public, the most learned, reads those books in French.” Schiff did not believe that translations of the Search would earn much money. “There is also the important question of the translator. I know no one except myself who would do a suitable translation.” He suggested translating Un Amour de Swann first as a “trial balloon.”67 Schiff was wrong, of course, in his pessimistic forecast about the success of the Search in English, but right in seeing that Un Amour de Swann, which could be read as a complete story, with its remarkably fine analysis of jealous love, would become the most popular portion of Proust’s novel.
Proust complained frequently to Paul Morand, another Gallimard author, about what he perceived as negligence on Gaston’s part. Morand, not always objective in his own assessments of the publisher, often fed Proust’s discontentment with erroneous information about Gallimard’s business practices. Toward the end of August, Proust grumbled to Paul that he had not received any copies of The Guermantes Way, part 1, ready since August 17, nor had Gallimard reprinted Within a Budding Grove.68 In a subsequent letter Proust said he was considering canceling his contract with the NRF. “But at present it’s only a desire.” Then he went on to say that “death is a terrible thing. For the past week I have been offered all the situations that I would have loved only a year ago. But now death.” On an equally somber note, at the end of a letter to Berry, who was enjoying his Venetian holiday, Proust wrote that “death,” with which he lived, “prevents everything.”69
On August 31 Proust began reading The Guermantes Way, part 1, and discovered numerous errors that, as he complained to Gallimard, “rendered the sentences unintelligible,” and “faced with my dishonor I understood why Vatel threw himself on his sword.”70 The reference to François Vatel was one that any Frenchman would understand. Vatel was steward to the Grand Condé, who during the reign of Louis XIV distinguished himself as the victor in the battle of Rocroi against the Spaniards. When the king visited Condé’s château de Chantilly, Vatel ran out of roast meat. Then panic seized the steward when he realized that fresh fish would not be delivered on time for Friday’s dinner. Believing himself irrevocably dishonored, Vatel committed suicide.71 Proust was not quite ready to throw himself on his sword, but he insisted on preparing an errata because the pages were not yet bound. He blamed himself for not having insisted on additional proofs, to which he had a “right,” and for having said, “Let’s go with what we’ve got!” Still, he was astounded that with all the reading by Rivière and the “charming Dadaist” Breton, blatant errors had so often gone unnoticed by such trained eyes. The proofreaders had failed to see that each time the name of Proust’s fictional novelist Bergotte occurred, the printer had put Bergson.72
Within a few days Proust regained his aplomb and told Gallimard not to be upset about the many errors. He had gotten over the disappointment in a few hours and was resigned to inserting the errata. Marcel turned to other problems: he was eager to have the proofs for The Guermantes Way, part 2, and he reproached Gallimard again for not having sold the rights for an English translation.73 Someone had told Proust that the translation was being held up because Gallimard had demanded fifty thousand francs for the rights. Defending himself, Gallimard told Proust that such a sum was impossibly high. Like a lawyer preparing a brief, the publisher outlined his contacts with English and American publishers, enclosed copies of correspondence, giving figures that were in line with other contracts for foreign translations. Ezra Pound was one editor with whom Gallimard was discussing rights and whose letter confirmed that the NRF’s terms for Proust’s novel were reasonable.74 Then Gallimard invited Proust to set his figure. “I have but one goal, to satisfy you.”75 In his letters and conversations, Gaston constantly expressed his friendship and devotion to Marcel and his eagerness to see him whenever possible. The novelist may have been “the most complicated man in Paris,” but Gallimard never doubted the importance of Proust’s book.
On September 5, when Proust attended a dinner at Princesse Elizabeth Bibesco’s, he had an earache, which marked the beginning of a painful infection. One of the Quiès balls he used to stifle noises had become lodged within his ear, and he had been able to remove only a portion of it. Dr. Gagey, his former neighbor at boulevard Haussmann, examined Proust’s ear and called in a specialist. The otolaryngologist, as Proust explained to a friend, “miraculously turned out to be the famous Alexis Wicart, who had treated Reynaldo Hahn and Georges Clemenceau.” Wicart, who found the infected ear entirely blocked, cleared it out as best he could and then left on vacation. Marcel wrote his brother: “Unfortunately,” Wicart “informed me that he would return to finish his work, which seems to be not only unblocking my ear, but to cure me of asthma, etc. He is charming, but too intelligent for me. Ah! how restful are doctors like good old Bize, who hasn’t auscultated me in ten years.”76
Lucien, who had read his advance copy of The Guermantes Way twice, wrote to express his wonderment at his friend’s accomplishment. Proust’s “projection” of what seemed to be every human thought and emotion “caused a special happiness: one no longer had the impression of reading.” He congratulated the author on his “incredible sense of dialogue,” citing examples, as Montesquiou had done. “One could make of this third volume an entire book of maxims,” the “most beautiful” ever written, and a “psychological manual more complex than all the others, a totally new artistic ‘doctrine’ and the most amusing of all the novels” ever written. Lucien was awed. “How is it that you possess all this too, in addition to all the rest?” He continued in this vein, saying that Proust had encapsulated life, accomplishing even more than Balzac and Stendhal. “You have re-created the novel, and you are the greatest novelist who has ever lived in any epoch in any country. Because you have everything that all the others had and, in addition, everything that is yours. It’s magnificent.” Lucien saw, as Gide had, the challenge Proust posed for other writers: “But you are a monster, you exhaust every subject. How can you expect anyone else to write a novel?”77
On September 21 Proust wrote to inform Gallimard that he had completed the errata for the first three-fourths of The Guermantes Way, part 1. He had spent his time looking for printer’s mistakes rather than working on the preface for Morand’s Tendres Stocks. Then, having found more than two hundred errors, he stopped because his eyes had grown too weak. Nonetheless, he reminded Gaston of his eagerness to begin work on the proofs for The Guermantes Way, part 2.78
When it was announced that Marcel Proust, “a man of letters,” would be awarded the Légion d’honneur, he received a new stack of congratulatory letters. Henri Bergson told his “dear cousin” that Within a Budding Grove was “the worthy continuation” of Swann’s Way: “Rarely has introspection been carried so far. It’s a direct and continuous vision of inner reality.” Artist Paul Helleu, ready to embark for New York, sent congratulations and said that he had always wanted to do an etching of Proust’s head, “but you never come to see me anymore.” From his vacation spot at Le Piquey near Bordeaux, Cocteau wrote, “On you—the red ribbon has meaning. I embrace you.” As usual, Walter Berry managed to be charming and witty. Having noticed that Édouard Branly was being honored in the same group as Proust, Berry wrote that the “government has brought honor on itself by decorating two great Frenchmen—the only truly modern novelist and the inventor of the wireless, Branly. Basically, you both practice the same trade, but I prefer your waves!”79 When Proust learned that Berry had ordered two more deluxe copies of his book, for a total of five, he teased the American about being so wildly extravagant and threatened to give him a legal guardian.80
On learning that he was to receive the Légion d’honneur, Marcel confided to his brother his fears that the committee might think the Sodom and Gomorrah volumes were “pro-sodomy and pro-gomorrah books,” whereas they were the opposite. It “would be truly ridiculous, if having been decorated, I were subjected to disciplinary actions for writing indecent books.” While he certainly did not “disdain honorary distinctions,” they were “secondary”; the only thing that mattered was the work.81 He told Robert that The Guermantes Way, part 1, would be published at the end of October, and, although the next installment was only half as long as the others, “I am certain you will not read it.”82
Robert answered from his vacation spot in Stresa, on the western shore of Lake Maggiore, saying that he had brought along with him, as he put it, Marcel’s “Girls in Bloom” (À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs). Contrary to Marcel’s assumption, Robert had read much of the volume and was finishing it in a “hotel very like ‘Balbec’” He expressed his joy that Marcel was to receive the Légion d’honneur and promised that he would come to congratulate and embrace his brother.83
In mid-October, Cartier’s notified Proust of a delivery they wished to make. René Gimpel had commissioned a magnificent Légion d’honneur cross studded with diamonds. Proust thanked Gimpel for his munificence, which moved him more than he could say: “Dear friend, you cannot imagine the hell my life has become because of my health” and “bad hygienic habits.” As for the “ravishing cross,” Proust wondered where he could hide it; he would have no occasion to wear it, because he never attended “official receptions.” Marcel requested that Robert, a longtime member of the Légion d’honneur, be authorized to bestow the cross on him. Moved by his brother’s thoughtful gesture, Robert obtained permission to present the award. On Sunday, November 7, at the Proustian hour of ten in the evening, Robert placed the red ribbon bearing the cross around Marcel’s neck.84 Robert stayed and dined at Marcel’s bedside, where the two brothers evoked memories of their parents and childhood.85
As publication of the next installment drew near, Proust tried to prepare critics for the course his novel would take in the opening section of Sodom and Gomorrah. Léon Daudet’s article announcing a new book by Proust appeared on the front page of Action française on October 8. Proust alerted Paul Souday that in the next volume things were going to “take a bad turn through no fault of mine. My characters don’t turn out well; I must follow them where their serious defects or vices lead me.”86 Proust was capable, depending on the person and concern he addressed, of presenting his treatment of homosexuality as condemnatory, sympathetic, objective, or exculpatory.
On October 10 Proust wrote André Chaumeix, editor of the Revue de Paris, and offered him the preface he had written for Morand’s volume containing three novellas. Proust told the editor that the preface was in part a response to Anatole France’s article on Stendhal, in which his former mentor had made some remarks about style and French literature with which Proust disagreed.87 Marcel mentioned how sick he was. A few days earlier he had caught cold, after which his asthma attacks returned with an “unprecedented violence.” Because he was running such a high fever, Dr. Bize gave him “morphine shots, the first in my life,” which had “so far only resulted in making me entirely stupefied.” He feared that his spasms made his handwriting illegible for Chaumeix. After meeting with Proust at rue Hamelin, Chaumeix agreed to publish the preface in the November 15 issue.
Proust was delighted to learn of a sign of his growing international reputation: readers in various countries, including Holland, Belgium, and England, had founded Marcel Proust Societies. The English Proust club was modeled on the Browning Society. Proust informed a correspondent that his novel “was commented upon in nearly every country (even in China).”88
On October 18 Proust sent out the first signed copies of The Guermantes Way, part 1, to his friends. Under the printed dedication in Léon’s copy, he wrote a few lines to express his “affection” that he had not “dared” include in the printed text lest his friend think him “too familiar.” The published dedication was “To Léon Daudet,” the author of “so many masterpieces, to the incomparable friend, as a token of gratitude and admiration, M. P.”89 It was a grand Proustification to call Daudet’s works masterpieces and a potential ongoing embarrassment to have done so indelibly. But Proust had always prized “tendresse” and the expression of gratitude much more than he feared derision.
On the same day, Proust sent Mme Straus her copy of The Guermantes Way. “Everything in it that’s witty comes from you.” She had refused to let him put her name next to her witticisms because this was a novel. He asked her, should she see Montesquiou, to tell him that he had run a high fever for ten days, which had prohibited answering the count’s letter. He wanted Montesquiou to appreciate that “I might appear negligent while being fidelity personified.”90
In his publisher’s copy, he wrote: “To my dear Gaston, I hardly suspected when I saw you for the first time ... that I would one day owe you so much gratitude, and the absurd fidelity that this real and sometimes imaginary cuckold has to the NRF, Affectionately, Marcel Proust.”91 Even his dedication (of this and future volumes) to Gaston contained explicit or barely veiled reproaches.
Proust answered Clément de Maugny’s request to preface a slender volume of his wife’s drawings. He was eager to accommodate the Maugnys but wondered whether he could write about something “so new for me.” Perhaps he could write instead a brief notice for the Revue hebdomadaire. It would be pointless to ask the NRF, where all he had to do was to recommend someone for them to refuse. Describing how he lived, Marcel told Clément that so much time in bed had fattened him. From time to time he went to the Ritz so that his room could be cleaned. Because he had difficulty speaking, it was painful to dine with friends, and so he often dined alone in a private room, where he corrected proofs. If he took “enough caffeine” beforehand, his speech difficulty would disappear for an hour or two.92 Proust finally agreed to write a brief preface for Rita de Maugny, whom he greatly admired for her service to France as a nurse in the war against her native Germany. He wrote to tell Rita that, after announcing his “death in Morand’s preface,” he would use hers to make a kind of “pilgrimage to Lausenette and Maugny.” It was regrettable that her illustrations had not been reproduced in color, for this voyage in his mind was inseparable from “the pure tones and perspectives of your landscapes.”93
On October 22 Gallimard sent Proust a letter to announce that The Guermantes Way, part 1, was in bookstores. Anticipating Proust’s canvassing, Gallimard had phoned stores throughout Paris to make certain the copies were on the shelves.94 Critical reception was generally favorable. Still, with the appearance of this volume, which describes the Narrator’s entry into the exclusive aristocratic salons of Paris, Proust found himself depicted again as a snob. He immediately launched a counteroffensive. In a letter to Jacques Boulenger, Proust observed that because he had lived from the age of fifteen in the midst of ladies like Mme de Guermantes, he had the “strength to brave in the eyes of those who ignore it the opinion that I am a snob, by depicting snobbery, not from the outside and ironically as would a novelist who was a snob, but from the inside by giving myself the soul of someone who would like to know a duchesse de Guermantes.” He admitted to Boulenger that when “excessively fatigued,” he occasionally dispensed with inventing and gave his own traits to the Narrator. “But would an author who is a snob . . . say that he desired to know a Mme de Guermantes?” He described “so many different things in his work that truly one cannot think that everything is me. Without being enraptured like the ‘Dadaists’ over my pages about deafness . . . nonetheless they are true. Now I am not in the least deaf.”95
A recent remark published by Paul Souday alarmed Proust even more. He wrote the critic that “one thing pained him” in the review, although he knew that “it was not intentional!” What disturbed Proust, especially in anticipation of the publication of Sodom and Gomorrah—after which “no one” would dare defend him—was Souday’s characterization of him as “feminine. From feminine to effeminate, there is only a step. Those who served as my seconds in duels will tell you if I am soft like men who are effeminate.”96 Souday had used the word in comparing Proust’s style to Saint-Simon’s. Although Proust’s style did share many characteristics with Saint-Simon’s, Souday wrote, “Marcel Proust is above all a highly sensitive aesthete, somewhat morbid, almost feminine.”97
Proust’s prophesy came true rather quickly. Jacques Patin, writing in the Figaro’s literary supplement of November 14, quoted at length from Souday, including the description of his “feminine” quality.98 Souday wrote Proust and asked: “What kind critic would refrain from criticizing?” To which Proust replied, after treating Souday to dinner at the Ritz, “Allow the author the right... to find that such and such a criticism is more or less fair.”99
In addition to sparring with critics, Proust received and answered letters of congratulations from his friends. Mme Straus wrote that she had been reading “with passion,” this “beautiful book that evokes many memories of boulevard Haussmann.” Because it was unlikely that the two of them would see each other again, she suggested that Proust send the “beautiful Céleste” to report on his health and work, and thus spare himself the trouble of writing. As for her, she had to put down her pen and “die again for today.”100 Around this time, Proust somehow broke his glasses, which caused quite “a drama.” But his fever and cough had disappeared.101
Schiff wrote to say that Violet had been ill and had undergone surgery but was expected to make a full recovery, to which The Guermantes Way had already contributed. Sydney had not yet finished the volume because he was savoring Proust’s sentences as one did the “bouquet of an old Chambertin.” He preferred Proust to Henry James because the American “never succeeds” in making the reader feel his characters are “living beings.” Most of all, Schiff wrote, “you give us yourself, whom we love and whom we keep in our heart like a part of ourselves.” In the spring the Schiffs planned to spend several weeks in Paris on their way to Rochebrune and hoped to see him.102
On November 15 Proust’s preface for Morand’s Tendres Stocks appeared in the Revue de Paris, under the title “For a Friend: Remarks on Style.”103 Although Proust said that Morand’s “delicious little novellas” needed no introduction, he would have undertaken a “real preface” had not “a sudden event prevented me from it. A strange woman took up residence in my brain. She came, she went,” so often that soon he “knew all her ways. Moreover, like a boarder who is too attentive, she insisted on establishing direct relations with me. I was surprised to see that she was not beautiful. I had always thought that Death would be.” Some of Proust’s friends were disturbed to hear him thus announce his death; others, who had heard it so often, thought he lacked originality; still others thought that such a proclamation seemed out of place in a preface for a young writer’s first publication. When Reynaldo read the preface, he became furious at Marcel for calling Léon Daudet and Charles Maurras “my masters.”104 Hahn knew that Proust was like the Himalayas compared with those two minor elevations.
For those who pitied Morand for his choice of presenter, matters only got worse in the following paragraphs. The only direct remark about Morand as a writer was critical: Proust said that his metaphors always fell short.105 Did the preface come too soon after Morand’s “Ode”? Was Proust trying to avoid paying Morand any compliments? He was certainly much less gracious than Anatole France had been in prefacing Pleasures and Days. Now Proust used his forum to launch a gentle attack against France, who had recently made some rather absurd remarks about style. France had expressed the opinion in the Revue de Paris that “any singularity in style must be rejected” and that since the eighteenth century French writers had written poorly. Proust did employ Morand’s style as ammunition against France’s argument. Morand’s “style was certainly singular.” Were Proust to see France, he “would ask him how he can believe in the unity of style since sensitivities are singular.” Proust used examples from France’s own books to prove his point, as well as from Baudelaire’s poetry. Then he revived his attack on Sainte-Beuve, using material from earlier notebooks on Baudelaire and Sainte-Beuve.106
In the articles and prefaces Proust wrote during his final years, he took advantage of the opportunity to put forward his own ideas on art and literature. In the Morand preface, Proust paraphrased this passage from The Guermantes Way, part 2, which was to be published the following year. Original artists are always singular, he observed, and that is why it takes a while for them to be recognized and appreciated:
People of taste tell us nowadays that Renoir is a great . . . painter. But in so saying they forget the element of Time, and that it took a great deal of time . . . for Renoir to be hailed as a great artist. To succeed thus in gaining recognition, the original painter or the original writer proceeds on the lines of the oculist. The course of treatment they give us by their painting or their prose is not always pleasant. When it is at an end the practitioner says to us: “Now look!” And, lo and behold, the world around us (which was not created once and for all, but is created afresh as often as an original artist is born) appears to us entirely different from the old world, but perfectly clear.107
Just when it looked as though Proust and Miss Barney might meet at last, he had an accident with drugs that forced him to postpone their rendezvous. Enraged at being unable to sleep, Proust said, he took an entire box of Veronal, along with Dial, another barbiturate, and opium. The dangerous mixture resulted not in sleep but in “terrible suffering.”108 Proust was apparently exaggerating about the amounts he swallowed, because that many barbituates would likely have killed him. Céleste described in her memoirs a 1917 incident during which he did not ring for two days. As Céleste waited anxiously, she feared he had died of drug intoxication.109 In his final years, Proust repeatedly risked accidental poisoning.
At the end of November, Proust wrote Montesquiou: “If by chance you learn that I have published a new book (an event of little importance and of which you will probably be unaware), I entreat you to believe if I have not yet sent it to you, it’s not through neglect.” Proust blamed the diabolical maneuverings of his publisher, the confusion over various editions, and other factors beyond his control. Montesquiou, in top form, sent a withering answer from Le Vésinet: “How would I not know that you have published your book? Do you think I am deaf? Not to the point of being unable to hear the trumpets blaring. How could all this not interest me? Why must you put on airs?” He advised Marcel to learn simplicity, as he had, and he blamed Proust for not sending the book that “everyone has had for a very long time.” It was quite simple: if Proust did not want the count to read his books, so be it.110 Of course, Proust and Montesquiou were only playing games; the count would read every book—how could he afford not to see what became of Charlus?—and the novelist would always insist that he wanted the poet to have the best editions of his volumes.
At the beginning of December, Proust sent Émile Henriot, editor at the Temps, brief answers to a survey on classic and romantic writers. Proust’s answers were to appear in January 1921 in La Renaissance politique, littéraire et artistique.111 “I believe all true art is classical, but the laws of the mind rarely permit it to be, when it first appears, recognized as such.” Proust used the example of Manet’s Olympia, which scandalized the public at first and seemed such a departure from the classical tradition, and Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. These great innovators are the only true classics, Proust wrote, and form an almost continuous line. Proust became his own advocate when he commented: “innovators worthy of becoming classics one day obey a strict inner discipline, and are builders above all. But precisely because their architecture is new, it takes a long time for people to discern it.”112
Proust wrote Louis Martin-Chauffier regarding a review planned for the February issue of the NRF. The novelist counted on him to “make it very clear that The Guermantes Way is the exact opposite of a snobbish book.... The truth is that by natural logic after having confronted the poetry of the name Balbec with the triviality of the place Balbec, I had to proceed in the same manner for the proper name Guermantes. That’s what critics call books that are barely composed or not composed at all.” Proust then revealed to Martin-Chauffier how the Narrator’s lifelong quest concludes: “The only thing I don’t say about the Narrator is that at the end he is a writer, because the entire book could be called a vocation . . . but which is not discovered until the last volume.”113