On 14 November 1923, the first of the three posthumous volumes intended to conclude “the Search” was published, on the…
Translated from French.
On 14 November 1923, the first of the three posthumous volumes intended to conclude “the Search” was published; Proust had worked on the proofs a year earlier, during his final days. 📚🕊️
In “The Prisoner”, the narrator has returned hastily from Balbec with Albertine, whom he is holding captive in Paris. He leads an active social life, but keeps a close watch on Albertine’s comings and goings. One day, he reads in the newspaper 🗞️ of the death of one of his former role models, the writer Bergotte, whilst attending a Vermeer exhibition @jeudepaumeparis 🖼️. He recounts this in a passage that has gone down in history:
🖋️ “However, he was well aware of the seriousness of his dizziness. In a celestial set of scales, his own life appeared to him, weighing down one pan, whilst the other contained the small section of wall so beautifully painted yellow. He felt that he had recklessly traded the former for the latter. ‘I would not, however,’ he told himself, ‘wish to be the news item in the evening papers about this exhibition.’”
He kept repeating to himself: “A small section of yellow wall with a canopy, a small section of yellow wall.” However, he collapsed onto a circular sofa; just as suddenly, he stopped thinking that his life was at stake and, returning to a more optimistic frame of mind, said to himself: “It’s just a bit of indigestion from those undercooked potatoes; it’s nothing.” Another blow knocked him down; he rolled off the sofa onto the floor, where all the visitors and guards rushed to his side. He was dead.”
Proust had visited this Vermeer exhibition himself, in the company of Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, and had felt unwell there 🥴. Three photographs have survived showing the moment when, as he left the exhibition, he appeared dazed, in a daze, with dark circles under his eyes.
On his final night 🛌🖋️, Proust reworked the scene depicting Bergotte’s death, as if he wished to infuse his novel with his own experience of death.
#ÀlaRechercheduTempsperdu #MarcelProust #proustagram #CorrProust #Vermeer #LaPrisonnière #Correspondance #AlbertineSimonet
Comments 7
Comments translated automatically.
On Instagram