Anna de Noailles

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 character who owes much to the poet Anna de Noailles, a close friend of both Proust and Cocteau.

“We were visited by the newlyweds, Gaspard de Réveillon and his wife. The young woman, née Crispinelli, was a nineteen-year-old poet whose admirable verses had just been published in the “Revue des Deux Mondes”.” 👌🏻

What follows is an ambiguous physical description, accompanied by a glowing spiritual portrait: “Her body, her features, her eyes were constantly animated by such a lively charm that one never for a moment thought to ask whether this or that was more or less attractive, so captivated was one by her personality, by that originality which was reflected in every one of her features. So Jean was just as astonished when he heard it said that she had a rather prominent nose 👃🏻 as he would be when, whilst engrossed in a particular book, he heard one of those so-called connoisseurs say that a certain character was good but the composition was worthless, or something of the sort.”

The young woman, an outsider in the Réveillon household, was naturally the target of all the criticism that people dared not direct at her husband: “Madame de Réveillon (…) was regarded as very ill-mannered, somewhat eccentric in her views, and exerting a deplorable influence on her husband. Had he not just signed the petition in support of Dreyfus, which (…) was, after all, rather embarrassing for the family and demonstrated a sad neglect of the duties attached to his name? And could it have been any other way with a woman who trampled upon the most sacred things, who spoke lightly of religion and the nobility, who arrived for dinner an hour late 🕰️, who wrote, who wore extraordinary jewels like people who do not belong to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, who entertained a host of authors of very bad books, who, in the Dreyfus affair, had openly taken sides against the army and made common cause with the worst anarchists (a lady, mind you!)?”

(Continued and concluded in the comments)

#MarcelProust #JeanSanteuil #AnnadeNoailles #proustagram