Proust engineered good reviews
LETTERS showing how Marcel Proust waged a charm offensive to win France’s top literary prize – and ensure his books got glowing reviews – will go under the hammer next month.
Like many an ambitious and well-connected writer after him, the cache lays bare how the author of Remembrance Of Things Past pulled every possible string to make sure his books were hailed as masterpieces.
Proust roped in friends like Jean Cocteau and his young lover Lucien Daudet – the son of the celebrated novelist Alphonse Daudet – to make sure that his books got the praise he felt they deserved.
Sixteen letters that Proust wrote to the influential newspaperman Rene Blum between 1913 and 1916 form the core of the Oct 7 sale at Christie’s in Paris.
The correspondence, which runs to 90 pages, is expected to go for up to US$331,000 (Rm1.3mil).
In it, the hypochondriac dandy goes to extreme lengths to ensure that Swann’s Way, the first part of his seven-volume magnum opus, is published exactly the way he wanted – by paying for the printing himself.
“If (the publisher) Monsieur Grasset agrees to take it” in the normal way, he wrote, “he will read it, make me wait, suggest changes and then put it out in little editions.”
But the wealthy Proust had grander plans for his book, wanting it to be published in a flashy luxury edition.
Before a publishing contract was even signed, he was already plotting how the book would win prizes.
If the publisher agrees, he wrote in Feb 1913, “I could put it up for the Prix Goncourt” – France’s premier literary prize.
When Blum convinced Grasset to publish the book, Proust was beside himself with joy, telling his friend that “you can ask me any favour and I will grant it with pleasure.”
When rival publishing house Gallimard began to show interest in Swann’s Way – which contains the famous madeleine moment as Proust eats a cake that takes him back to his childhood – he wrote again to Blum begging him to help him get out of his contract with Grasset.
Gaston Gallimard wound up buying all 200 unsold copies of Swann’s Way from Grasset in Oct 1917 and resold them under a different cover.
Eighteen months later, with WWI over, he republished it himself with the second volume of the saga, In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower.
It went on to upset the odds and win the Prix Goncourt in December 1919.
An autographed copy of the book which Proust sent to the critic and poet Henri Gheon as part of his charm offensive is expected to fetch around €12,000 (RM55,200) in the Christie’s sale.
Bidding for a luxury edition of the book from the collection pianist Alfred Cortot could reach €120,000 (RM552,000), according to the auction house.
The sale comes as nine newly discovered novellas by the master, dating from the very beginning of his career, are set to be published in France.
The texts were originally to be part of Proust’s first book, Les Plaisirs et les Jours (Pleasures And Days), a collection of poems and
short stories published in 1896.
The Mysterious Correspondent And Other Unpublished Novellas will come off the presses on Oct 9. –AFP