Here is an extract from Notebook 4, in which Proust carried out the “graft” 🤵🏻‍♂️👨🏻‍⚕️ between his project “Against…

Here is an extract from Notebook 4, where Proust carried out the “graft” 🤵🏻‍♂️👨🏻‍⚕️ between his project “Against Sainte-Beuve” and the pages written in 1908 on the “75 folios”:

🖋️ “In the Loir, too, every now and then a carp would come to the surface, yawning with hunger or agitation, in a sort of deep, restless sigh, as if yearning for the beyond. We would always stop to look at those carats in the river—the ones the kids use to catch small fish; the crystal contains water, just as on a table, but gives a far greater impression of freshness, because it is itself contained by water; one can no longer tell whether it is the river that is a crystal carafe, or whether it is the carafe that is icy liquid. Between the two there arises that sort of alliteration one used to find at Guermantes in certain cider glasses, whose cloudy, pink liquid, as if moistened with droplets of crystal, seemed like a drink in itself, stirring the desire to drink whilst at the same time interposing between it and our lips an obstacle too solid, into which our teeth would have longed to bite, as into the skin of a woman that is too thick, where it seems that without the bite we shall not be able to go all the way with the kiss.”

Pictured above are Jules Amiot and his wife Élisabeth, née Proust, sister of Dr Adrien Proust and the inspiration for “Aunt Léonie”. The photograph belongs to the Marcel Proust Museum @amisdeproust 📍

Although the extract is set in Illiers-Combray, the text does not specify whether Jules was in the habit of biting Élisabeth. 🤭 But it seems obvious that the carp, brimming with desire, is a self-portrait of the author. 🐟💦 Don’t you think?

#proustagram #MarcelProust #IlliersCombray #Loir #rivière #TanteLéonie #cidre #ledésirdelacarpe