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Sans formol, Proust est plus fol !
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🖋️ “For the dramas and events of history, however dazzling they may seem from a distance, are made up of the same elements as…
our obscure lives, of the very substance of the universe. And history is like astronomical analysis, that science which reveals the composition of the most distant...
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“Rachilde, a man of letters”
🖋️🔖 Have you heard of Marguerite Eymery, known as Rachilde? Proust often mentioned her in his letters, and suspected that she did not particularly appreciate his...
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From one Quarto to the next.
📚📖 Having finished my first complete reading of “Jean Santeuil” 💙 this week, I’m now thinking of starting another, more substantial volume. I’ve read it three times...
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Many theories have been put forward to ‘identify’ the origin, in the Search, of the famous ‘little phrase’…
Many theories have been put forward to ‘identify’ the origin, in “the Search for Lost Time”, of the famous melodic ‘little phrase’ composed by Vinteuil, which in...
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🖋️ “That smell I suddenly notice as I step into this house, where I certainly hadn’t come looking for…
🖋️ “That smell I suddenly catch as I step into this house – a place where, admittedly, I wasn’t looking for beauty, but I recognise it! It’s the smell of a certain...
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Anna de Noailles
👰🏻♀️🖋️✨ (Mrs Gaspard de Réveillon) In the section devoted to the Réveillons – a sort of prototype for the Guermantes – Proust, in “Jean Santeuil”, creates a...
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On ambition
👑🌟 Referring to the drawing room of Mrs Antoine Desroches (née Grimaldi), a cousin of Mrs Santeuil whom Jean affectionately calls “Aunt Louise”, the narrator begins...
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Late summer 1895: Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn, just a stone’s throw from the hotel in Beg-Meil?!
🧐 Whilst continuing to read “Jean Santeuil”, I began looking for pictures of Beg-Meil from around 1900 – first in my own photos, then on the internet. ⛱️🕰️ I have...
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Beg-Meil, late summer 1895 🌅: Marcel Proust is in Brittany with Reynaldo Hahn 🎼.
It was there, a year before publishing the collection “Pleasures and Days” with @calmann.levy and before discovering the works of John Ruskin (two of whose...
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From one dead person to another…
⚰️🪦👻 I’m continuing to read “Fantômes et vivants”, the first volume of his memoirs, published by Léon Daudet in 1914, on the eve of the war. 💥💥💥 In Chapter III, he...
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Maria Callas was born on 2 December 1923, 100 years ago.
🌟✨ Marcel Proust 🤵🏻♂️ would certainly have admired the exceptional lyricism of “la Callas” 🫀, having written such beautiful passages about “la Berma”, the great...
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Léon Daudet and Marcel Proust
Léon Daudet x Marcel Proust 😵💫 I’m starting to read “Souvenirs et polémiques” 📘 by Léon Daudet, @editions_bouquins @robert_laffont , starting with Antoine...
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A few recent finds from second-hand bookshops and an antiquarian bookshop.
📚✨🤓 1. Paul Morand, “Journal inutile”: Volumes 1 (1968–1972) and 2 (1963–1976), @la_nrf @editions_gallimard 2001. 💛 Paul Morand kept several diaries throughout his...
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Radiguet x Proust
⚡️ Although they were contemporaries, the two authors did not belong to the same generation at all: Proust was born in 1871, Radiguet in 1903. Nevertheless, their...
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Céleste Albaret was the first of the Proust devotees!
Céleste Albaret was the first of the Proust enthusiasts! 🤩 Her encounter with “Monsieur Proust” in 1913 was, in fact, a blend of Christian revelation and Eastern...
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Chloé Cruchaudet, “CELESTE”
💦✨ You’ve seen me unpack the box 😺 and open the envelope 😻, and quite a few of you have asked me what I thought of the two volumes of “CELESTE”, written and...
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A heavenly love
🌟 “The Search for…”, “A Love of…”, “In the Neighbourhood of…”: fill in the blanks as you please. In 110 years of Proust worship, all these titles have been worn down...
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Jean Plumyène, “Céleste”, @edlatableronde 1971
🍶🥚 When a communist historian sets off on a ‘road trip’ 🛻, accompanied by his Dutch friend, in the Search for Céleste Albaret, the result is “Céleste”, a short...
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Laure Murat, “Proust, a family novel”, 2023 @robert_laffont
👌🏻✨ Laure Murat comes from a “good family” 👨👩👧: some of her ancestors enjoyed their heyday at Parc Monceau in the 1900s, a period not yet known as the ‘Belle...
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One of Marcel’s loves: Jeanne Pouquet!
👧🏻👦🏻 Jeanne Pouquet (1874–1962) was an actress 🎭 and a friend of Marcel Proust since their youth 🏸. The wife of the playwright Gaston Arman de Caillavet, she was...
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Jacques-Émile Blanche, “Portrait of Marcel Proust as a Young Man”, @editionsbartillat 2014
📚✨ Following a 30-page foreword written by @jerome.neutres, in which he explains that Blanche had always harboured a desire to write and that his entire body of...
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Sunset reflected in the windows of the Grand Hôtel de Cabourg 🌅❤️🩹 @grandhotelcabourg @villedecabourg…
@cabourgpaysdaugetourisme
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My Proustian library
📚❤️🩹 A year ago, I already owned Proust’s major works: “The Search” from @quarto_livres, a few scattered volumes of his correspondence from @editions1018 and...
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This little boy in his holiday clothes is Jacques Bizet, Proust’s first “love”.
🤍 He is the son of the composer Georges Bizet, 🎩🎻 who enjoyed enormous posthumous success thanks to his opera “Carmen”, adapted from Mérimée’s short story… and...
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