Proust marcel

1904 · 84876 — s. l. 1904. Fine. “Because I also want success I am extremely material in my wishes for those I love and I wish them every pleasure from the highest to the crudest.” s. l. mardi 25 octobre 1904 12.60 x 20.40 cm 12 pages sur 3 bifeuillets Autograph letter signed by Marcel Proust addressed to René Peter. Twelve pages written in black ink on three bifolia framed in black. Tears at the ends along the folds of the bifolia not affecting the text. Published in Kolb IV n°168. A very long letter from Proust full of innuendo to the playwright René Peter. Praising Peter's success Proust confesses to his own vanity as a writer and his literary ambitions. He subtly lets his jealousy for Peter's mistress shine through and declares his absolute devotion to Reynaldo Hahn. This is one of the first letters he sends to his childhood friend after recently reconnecting with him. Proust eternally plagued by ailments remains a recluse and apologizes for missing the rehearsal of Peter's new play Le Chiffon. Peter's three-act comedy with music by Reynaldo Hahn premiered at the Athénée the following month and was a huge success with around sixty performances before the end of the year. The young Proust relies on the glowing opinion of Hahn who had attended the rehearsals and the missive becomes a love letter for the composer and his impeccable judgement: ""Reynaldo told me that your play was delightful and ravishing which is not quite the same thing that he laughed and cried in it as he never laughs or cries in the theater and that the language was exquisite. Of that I was certain. But knowing nothing about you I couldn't know if you had dramatic genius. I am certain of it now because even if I do not know a judge as severe as ridiculously severe as Reynaldo I also do not know one who has more taste giving his enthusiasm very great value in my eyes.” In a characteristic tangle of confession and denial Proust barely hides his ambitions and his quest for recognition. He hopes and prays for the same laurels he places on Peter's head: “your poor and charming mother who like all those who love and who have lived life bruising all our tenderness has suffered so much is witnessing this great happiness these first rays of glory on your charming forehead which Vauvenargues says softer as the rising sun. I only speak of them in quotations having never known them myself!” He will even end up instilling his own literary vocation into the fictional life of the narrator of In Search of Lost Time – although the narrator's journey as a man of letters is more marked by disappointments than “rays of glory” so long awaited by Proust himself. However it culminates in Time Regained with an epiphany: the narrator now knows what to write and above all how to write it. The letter marks the beginnings of the Proust-Peter-Hahn trio whose complicity was such that they formed a special vocabulary of which only they had the secret. The river of words in this letter perfectly illustrates the undeniable link between desire and intellectual admiration: “Because I also want success I am extremely material in my wishes for those I love and I wish them every pleasure from the highest to the crudest.” Despite these displays of generosity the writer cannot however mask a certain jealousy towards Robert Danceny the fictional co-author of Le Chiffon who was none other than Peter's mistress Mme Dansaërt. Proust elegantly but explicitly refers to her: “It makes me happy to think that the charming woman who I am assured is hiding under the male name of your collaborator shares half of your work. I am not talking about your success because whether she worked with you or not she would always have shared your success with her heart having I believe a deep friendship for you.” Typical of a Proust transposing his desires through fiction the writer will form various dramatic and morbid scenarios between Peter and this young woman in the following years: “I unknown