Marcel PROUST Long autograph letter signed (8pp) about his eternal sorrow

  

The Autographs of the Centuries bookstore has been specializing for many years in the sale of autograph letters and manuscripts. Autographed letter signed to Baroness Aimery Harty of Pierrebourg. Slnd [shortly after June 3, 1915]. Kolb, Volume XIV, pages 143 to 145. "Memory is a shadow proportionate to tenderness.

" During the First World War, Proust delivers to his correspondent a magnificent letter of condolence following the death of his mother. Moved to see young French souls dying at the front, he candidly confesses that sorrow is an integral part of his being. "So much so that it seems to me that the daily experience I have of it could provide friendly souls with consolations that I do not know how to use for myself. The other evening I went to see Georges, and I had, I cannot say joy—it is not present at the moment—but the sweetness of talking long with him and his adorable wife. When she left, I asked Georges if it was due to the mourning of his brother that she was dressed in deep black.

He told me: 'And for his grandmother.' And thus I learned of this great misfortune that had shattered for you 'The mysterious threads that bind our hearts. Not having known it earlier, I am not troubled to speak to you of it so late. I know that one regrets until the end those whom one has known since the beginning, so much so that memory is a shadow proportionate to tenderness.

I am not one of those who think that at this moment, when so many young lives are annihilated, we take less care of the disappearance of older beings. In them rested fewer hopes than in the young, but more memories. To yours, the feeling of having brought so much pious tenderness and caused so many admiring joys to Madame your mother must mix with a sweetness that I have not known. But I also feel how much associations of feelings and thoughts in a reflective heart like yours can enrich and diversify the deepest filial love, to a complexity that today can only multiply suffering. The regret of not seeing you is greater when I think that we could talk so softly about your thoughts, and particularly now about what formed the essence of my life, sorrow so much so that it seems to me that the daily experience I have of it could provide friendly souls with consolations that I do not know how to use for myself.

At least from afar, I think of you with a sad and deep sympathy. You will please me by saying less to Georges, who knows it so well, than to his wife, who knows me less, how happy I was to see them again. I had recently met Mr. He did not speak to me of your misfortune. I do not burden you with anything for him; I have long known how little sympathetic I am to him, and I admire that this has not diminished your kindness towards me. But this is no doubt because we take more account in our kindness of the feelings that inspire others in the beings we love more than those they feel. You rightly take more account of my admiration for him than of his hostility towards me. When I saw Georges, we still did not know the resumption. Przemysl, but we were somewhat expecting it. I confess that I had hoped that such a terrible suction on the eastern side would have cleared our western side more. In short, it is we who are maneuvered, despite the contrary image that is always used.

I am a little too tired to explain my thoughts, and moreover, as precious as the Italian aid seems to me, I am always a little frightened to see the field of operations indefinitely expand when the main art of our enemy is precisely that of troop movements. Defeated on the spot as at the Marne, on fronts far from each other, he gives the illusion of success whose scale conceals the incompleteness.

And undoubtedly this illusion is not victory, but in various ways it delays defeat and prolongs the tension towards dear lives, towards all lives. Please accept, Madame, the homage of my sentiments, most respectfully admiring and attached. Consult our manuscripts The Gallery of Autographs of the Centuries specializes in the sale and expertise of autograph letters and manuscripts of the great personalities of past centuries. Purchase / Payment methods We accept the following payment methods: Bank transfers and checks. The prices indicated are in euros and are net.

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