Jacques Rivière needs no introduction 💦: he was the first “editor-in-chief” of @nrf.larevue in 1919 and the…

Jacques Rivière needs no introduction 💦: he was the first ‘man at the helm’ of @nrf.larevue in 1919 and Proust’s first ‘real’ publisher. As you know, Rivière is Rivière, and tautology lacks flow.

But beneath the surface of the seasoned critic lies another facet of Rivière, a sort of underground Rivière: Jacques Rivière, the novelist. 🤵🏻‍♂️📚

This is what this new edition of “Florence”, his final novel, brings to the surface, as if from the depths of an artesian well ⛲️. Proust, who began writing “The Search” in 1908, wondered in his notebooks whether he was a novelist. Between 1920 and 1925, Rivière probed his inner depths 🎣: a bourgeois upbringing in Bordeaux, a mystical sensibility stifled by contrition, and an extreme shyness in the presence of women.

Rivière does not explore the mechanisms of jealousy 💔 to the same extent as Proust, nor how jealousy causes one to capsize in the murky waters of love: he regards it as a fleeting and deceptive condition that must be bailed out. But he is keen to highlight what Proust glossed over rather too quickly: seduction, flirtation, and the emergence, within a few hours or a few days, of the beginnings of an intimate relationship. 🫀💘

After publishing “Aimée” in 1922, which he had dedicated to Proust, the “great painter of love”, Rivière was working on his second novel when he died suddenly in 1925 🍂. His widow, Isabelle Rivière, published “Florence” in 1935. It is this almost-completed novel that @arianecharton and @jeanmarc.quaranta are publishing here with @editions_gallimard, accompanied by the “Letters to Antoinette Morin-Pons” 💌, who was one of the models for the eponymous character.

Rivière supported Proust in the publication of “the Search” 🕰️📚, drawing on @nrf.larevue, Gallimard and all his personal conviction to support and defend Proust’s genius. Now, in the year 2025, we too are becoming, as if swept along by a tidal bore, the Rivières of Rivière. 🫶🏻

#NRF #MarcelProust #proustagram #RTP #Proust #JacquesRivière #Gallimard #ÀlaRechercheduTempsperdu #Correspondance