Excerpt from Marcel Proust’s first interview, published on 21 December.
Translated from French.
Excerpt from Marcel Proust’s first interview, published on 21 December 1913 in “Le Miroir” 🪞📰:
“A book has just been published 📗, entitled “Swann's Way”. The author’s name is Marcel Proust. There is a great deal of buzz surrounding the book. There are also plenty of rather extraordinary stories circulating about Mr Marcel Proust. For many, this writer is a newcomer, and this debut novel is a true literary revelation. For others, who are better informed, Mr Marcel Proust is a strange character 🤵🏻♂️, who, suffering from a dreadful illness, has lived in complete seclusion from the world for many years, in a room perpetually shut off from the air 🪟🚪 and light, and entirely lined with cork so that not even the faintest sounds from neighbouring flats or the street could ever penetrate it.
Those who regard Mr Marcel Proust as a novice are categorically mistaken. Those who describe this peculiar seclusion in the darkness are only half-right. 🛌🌙
(…)
As for what has been written and said about the closed room, it is all too true that a cruel affliction keeps the writer far removed from the clamour of the world and the light of day.
— ‘But this seclusion,’ Mr Marcel Proust told me, ‘I believe is deeply beneficial to my work.’ The shadow, the silence 🤫 and the solitude, by casting their thick veils over me, have compelled me to recreate within myself all the lights, the music and the stirrings of nature and the world. My spiritual being no longer comes up against the barriers of the visible, and nothing hinders its freedom…
Marcel Proust speaks to me in the large, dimly lit room from which he hardly ever emerges. He is confined to bed. Beside his bed stands a large table laden with books, papers, letters and also small boxes of medicine. It is not strictly true to say – as has been said – that the writer lives in darkness. A small electric lamp 💡, its light softened by a green lampshade, stands on the table. At the foot of this lamp lie some sheets of paper, a quill and an inkwell 🖋️, to which Mr Marcel Proust will return once our conversation is over.”
#MarcelProust #AndréArnyvelde #LeMiroir #21décembre1913 #proustagram #DucôtédechezSwann
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