Marcel PROUST summons the memory and pain of BAUDELAIRE.

Marcel Proust (1871.1922)

Autograph letter signed to Baroness Aimery Harty of Pierrebourg.

Four pages in-8°. 102 bd Haussmann. [early November 1916]

Kolb, Volume XV, pages 318-319

“It sometimes happens that we suddenly begin to resemble those we mourn , and perhaps at this moment you are picking up a mysterious heritage of thought. »

Marcel Proust invokes Baudelaire to salute his correspondent's latest work.

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“Madame, What an emotion to read these pages where you said to your Pain like the Poet: “Be wise” [allusion to the verses of Baudelaire “Be wise ô my pain”] and also “Be sagacious, be clairvoyance and resurrection”. You only show the tomb, but our pitying thoughts see the torn woman who reveals it to us and who hides in supreme self-effacement. You not only paint it with the most poignant truth, with this transport of the forces of the heart to the intelligence, the moment when heat becomes light ; one would say that he painted himself by you, that there was an “entrance” as they say in spiritist language, that he led, gripped your hand, there are sentences from you which have the air of being of him, which differ from your usual sentences by something strict, singular, which was specific to him.

Sometimes it happens that we suddenly begin to resemble those we are mourning , and perhaps at this moment you are picking up a mysterious heritage of thought. There are these advents in the spiritual order as well as in the succession of reigns. Besides, I am probably generalizing too much because of a few sentences where the real presence seemed obvious and disturbing to me. Where, moreover, could he be better pleased to live if there remains something of the spirit outside of the intellectual residences that he himself built?

I would tell you all this less badly if I suffered less from my eyes. And perhaps it would not be best if you are at home sometime in the evening, as good people say, “to see each other.” (Besides, don't be frightened by this proposition, which my health makes almost impossible.) Please accept, Madam, my very respectful homage. Marcel Proust. »

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Mother-in-law of Georges de Lauris, one of Marcel Proust's comrades whom he met in 1903 and who was a valued advisor for the writing of what would become Contre Sainte-Beuve, Marguerite de Pierrebourg (1856-1943) was initially a painter before turning to writing. Her first novel was distinguished by the French Academy and from 1912 she became president of the Prize for the Happy Life (future Fémina Prize), thus occupying an important place in Parisian literary life. Marcel Proust frequented her salon and consulted her on literary questions. She was notably one of the witnesses to the difficult gestation of the first volume of In Search of Lost Time.