Chloé Cruchaudet, “CELESTE”
Translated from French.
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 illustrated by @chloe_cruchaudet. 📗📘
First of all, the comic adaptation of Proust’s world – seclusion and eccentricity, hypochondria and creativity – is very successful. Traditional visual conventions (panels, speech bubbles, sketches) are constantly subverted here by inventiveness, in a continuous dialogue between words and images. 🖋️🖼️
As with Proust, metaphor is everywhere in these pages – perhaps thanks to the translucency of the watercolour 💧 – and these two generous volumes should be savoured, above all, as a poetic and subjective evocation of a vanished world 🕰️🪟🛌: that of Paris during the Belle Époque and then the Roaring Twenties 🎊, to which numerous documentary details discreetly allude, and which was also the interwar period. 💥💣
@chloe_cruchaudet is undoubtedly a seasoned Proust scholar and, with the skill of a master of both pen and brush 👩🏼🎨, she skilfully incorporates excerpts from his works as well as his correspondence. In this respect, the bibliography she provides at the end of the volume is worthy of an academic work. 📚🤯
But above all, she is an artist who lovingly embraces ❤️🩹 the work of another artist. Proust, clearly, fascinates her just as much as he does all of us here… yet, unlike most of us, the author of “CELESTE” does not remain an “artistic spinster”, blinded by Proust-worship… 🫣 Far from the rigid and sterile reverence of a mere adaptation, @chloe_cruchaudet manages to convey most of the key elements of the Search thanks to her perfect mastery of her art. 👌🏻✨
Thanks to her, we take a step back alongside Céleste Albaret, and this beautiful, original work bears witness to the unconditional love that her maid 🙇🏻♀️ was the first to show, not just for the work itself, but for the author himself: a certain Marcel Proust. 👨🏻
And as far as we know, there is no sound recording of Proust’s voice… so please don’t say that the author ‘makes him speak in a language verging on caricature’, but rather say that this is not how you imagine him. Cocteau’s Proust is not the same as Morand’s, and Gide’s is not the same as Rivière’s. It is impossible to say definitively: Proust spoke like this or like that.
We don’t all have the same image of our favourite authors in our minds, and that’s just as well.
I’d like to reiterate my compliments to @chloe_cruchaudet! 👏👏