In January 1908, as a New Year’s gift, Mrs Straus (Geneviève Halévy, widow of Georges Bizet 🎻 and…

In January 1908, as a New Year’s gift, Madame Straus (Geneviève Halévy, widow of Georges Bizet 🎻 and remarried) gave Marcel Proust 🤵🏻‍♂️ five small notebooks which she had bought from Kirby, Beard & Co. The @labnf owns four of them, and Céleste Albaret owned the fifth for many years. 📕📗📘📙📓

It was in one of these notebooks that Proust began jotting down notes on his reading, his dreams 🛌 and his reflections, which point to a novel he was planning to write, a project he probably began in the autumn of 1907.

Around 2 February (Proust did not date his letters), he thanked her as follows: 🖋️ “Madam,
“I absolutely love your little almanacs, and the thought that they come from you makes them all the more poetic! In short, I am delighted and thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

After giving him his usual health update 🩺, Proust ends this letter by adding a few lines after his signature (as is his custom): 🖋️ “I am distraught by what you tell me about the building work being carried out next to your home. I would much rather (I assure you this is sincere) that it were next to my house and that you were spared the noise. I shall be thinking about this all the time. Alas, there is probably nothing to be done.”
“Would you like us to hire a boat ⛵️ on which we won’t make a sound and from which we can watch all the beautiful cities in the world by the sea 🌅 pass by without leaving our bed (our beds) 🛏️🛏️?” 🌅

The fact is that Proust rediscovered Cabourg ⛱️ in the summer of 1907 and would return there every summer from then on, until September 1914, the first month of the war.

☝🏻 Note the playfulness surrounding the singular/plural distinction in “notre lit (nos lits)”. In another letter to Mrs Straus that same year, Proust asserted that “The only way to defend the French language is to attack it”. Take note, detractors of @ayanakamura_officiel! 🤭

#MarcelProust #coquinou #MmeStraus #GenevièveStraus #GenevièveHalévy #GeorgesBizet #Carmen #proustagram #JacquesBizet #LettresdeProust