MARCEL PROUST
21
[November 1915?]
Madame,
I am extremely embarrassed that I have not yet thanked you. The real Truth is that I always defer letters (which could seem to ask you for something) to a moment when it is too late and when consequently, they are no longer indiscreet. Considering how little time it took to do the work on Ste Chapelle (this comparison can only I think be seen as flattering), one may presume that when this letter reaches Annecy, the beautifications of Boulevard Haussmann will be nearly done.
The real truth, I said, the “Truth” as Pelléas says, is not to be found in the letter that was addressed to you, a fragment of which you wanted to communicate to me (I do not have it at hand, but will reproduce it for you). It is rather a dispatch from the Wollff Agency.40 In any case I am not very well placed to judge on my own. I feel no resentment toward Madame Terre [earth] (one does say the Sun King and Madame Mère [mother]).41 I have adapted for her, in honor of that Cybele who perhaps announces silence to the dead but not to the living, more than one piece of verse, beginning with the famous sonnet.
Alas I bear an evil whose name — well known — is Earth
This evil has no cure, and thus my lips are sealed
And she whom I lament knows nothing of my woe
Hereunder where I lie, I no doubt pass unseen,
Reposing at her feet and yet still quite alone,
And till the end I will have done my time on earth
Ne’er asking aught but stillness and receiving none.
She whom God has fashioned neither sweet nor kind,
Determined in her mind that I will have to hear
This ceaseless noise of hamm’ring now raiséd at her steps,
To holy Pity faithless every livelong day,
Will say when she shall read these lines so filled with her,
“Who can this woman be?” and will not comprehend.42
Besides, who knows? — I have always thought that noise would be bearable if it were continuous. As they are repairing the Boulevard Haussmann at night, redoing your apartment during the day and demolishing the shop at 98 bis in the intermissions, it is probable that when this harmonious team disperses, the silence will resound in my ears so abnormally that, mourning the vanished electricians and the departed carpet-layer, I will miss my Lullaby. Deign to accept Madame my respectful greetings.
MARCEL PROUST
22
[November 1915?]
Madame,
As Annecy was for me voiceless (if the Boulevard Haussmann was not noiseless), I do not know if you received my latest letters and especially those in which I passed on to you the respects of poor Clary.43 — . This one is just a quick note from a neighbor. I am forced to go out very ill and do not know in what state I will return! Yet tomorrow is Sunday, a day which usually offers me the opposite of the weekly repose because in the little courtyard adjoining my room they beat the carpets from your apartment, with an extreme violence. May I ask for grace tomorrow? Or when I do my fumigation let them know so that they can take advantage of that time. I hope that you will not find me too indiscreet and I lay at your feet my respectful regards.
MARCEL PROUST
Mme Williams and her harp
23
[November 1915]
Madame,
Your letter fills me with gratitude (and sadness since you seem to believe there could be doubts on my part). The epistolary “silence” for which it is too good of you to apologize had been accompanied by another silence which I perceived very distinctly for the past six days and which it was sweet for me to owe to you. The sweetness of your presence and your intention was incarnate in it, and I savored it with thankfulness. I fear that the unexpected arrival this evening at midnight of my friend Reynaldo Hahn who for the 1st time in 15 months was returning from the front and who entered in disarray may have occasioned some noise which would so ill have recompensed that which you are sparing me.44 I was very moved to see him again. I do not know to what extent my health will allow me to see him during the 6 days that he will be spending in Paris but I will ask him not to be so noisy again. He comes up like a whirlwind and goes down in the same way, I can’t understand that. Alas he will not be coming back again until the end of the war . . . — . I also wonder if the voice of my housekeeper, very sharp, does not rise to you. She stays with me very late and does not make any noise when she moves about. But if her voice could be heard, I implore you to tell me. In prescribing for me certain modifications in my ways of doing things, I cannot express to you the intimate pleasure that you would give me. Their daily repetition would mingle your image with my obedience. “Nothing is so sweet as her authority.”45 I am a little sorry that you have not received my last letters (though they were addressed I believe quite correctly). The pastiche of Thérésa’s Song: “This is the earth [terre]!” would have made you smile, I believe and was less bad than that of the sonnet of Arvers which you did receive, I think.46 Clary told me what a great musician you were. Will I never be able to come up and hear you? The Franck quartet, the Béatitudes, the Beethoven Quartets (all music that I have in fact here) are the objects of my most nostalgic desire.47 I have never once been well enough to go hear them (last Sunday the Béatitudes was performed, but I was wheezing in my bed) and when by chance a musician comes to see me in the evening, I stop him from making music for me so that the noise may not bother you. What compensation if on one of the very rare evenings when I can get up, you should permit me to hear you. Thank you again Madame and please accept my lively and grateful respects.
MARCEL PROUST
24
[19 December 1916]
Tuesday 10 o’clock — evening
Madame,
Alas upon returning home in the grip of the most violent attack I find your charming letter. The letter offers me the most delicious pleasure, the attack pitilessly denies me it. When it has subsided a little tomorrow, if it subsides, I will go to bed and will not be able to get up again for several days, what a stupid idea I had to go out for a moment today. If I had stayed in bed, I could have got up tomorrow, spent the afternoon with you, gone to shake the hand of my old and dear Maître France who in the past first introduced me to the public.48 He remembers me and forgives me I am told by Lucien Daudet who sees him often. I was determined not to go out tomorrow, I had told Montesquiou I would not go hear Madame Rubinstein pronounce some wounded offerings, and it was because I was so determined not to go out tomorrow that I made this stupid outing today, with no interest, with none of the pleasure that I would have had tomorrow.49 So I am disappointed and disheartened. — . Ever since the day on which you brought me the bright interval of your visit I have been ill the whole time. What is more the Strauses, whom I left that day, may have told you that I have not been able to see them since, for I know that you are close to them. And I have not been able to see Clary either. On the other hand I have had the joy of often having by my bedside my brother who after having been very unwell is in Paris for a little while. I wanted to mention to him the name of your mutual friend of whom you had spoken to me and have not been [word missing: able] to recall it. Happily your letters are too remarkable for one not to keep them. And I will thus find the name again. What will happen, at the theater, to those admirable phrases of S. Bonnard which I know by heart and which my memory though so enfeebled will retain until the end like a piece of music one has loved as a child. What a joy it would have been to bring together the susceptibilities of
