Are you familiar with that letter from Proust to Gallimard, in which the author confirms in advance the…

🐝 Are you familiar with this letter from Proust to Gallimard, in which the author anticipates the reputation that Cocteau would later attribute to him – that he was, to those close to him, a sort of devouring insect:

🖋️ “I no longer have the ability to move, to speak, to think, or even the simple comfort of being free from pain. Thus, expelled, as it were, from myself, I take refuge in the volumes which I touch rather than read, and I treat them with the care of the burrowing wasp about which Fabre wrote those admirable pages (…) Huddled up like it and deprived of everything, my sole concern is now to provide them, through the minds of people all over the world, with the fulfilment that is denied to me.”
— extract from the letter of 3 October 1922

Perhaps these final words of Proust contain a reference to Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondances”, about which he had just written an article for @nrf.larevue 📓, in which he evokes scents that are “corrupt, rich and triumphant, / Expanding like infinite things, / Like amber, musk, benzoin and incense, / Which sing of the raptures of the mind and the senses.”

Be that as it may, I find this to be one of the most beautiful and intimate passages in the correspondence between Proust and Gallimard (1912–1922) @editions_gallimard 🙌🏻

Fancy some more extracts? 📖

#MarcelProust #proustagram #GastonGallimard #CharlesBaudelaire #Correspondance #RTP