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

"Sometimes we suddenly begin to resemble those we mourn , and perhaps you are currently inheriting a mysterious legacy of thought."

Marcel Proust invokes Baudelaire to praise the latest work of his correspondent.

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“Madam, what a moving experience it is to read these pages where you have spoken to your Sorrow, like the Poet: ‘Be wise’ [allusion to Baudelaire’s lines ‘Be wise, O my sorrow’] and also ‘Be wise, be clear-sighted and resurrected.’ You show only the tomb, but our compassionate thoughts perceive the tormented woman who reveals it to us and who hides herself in supreme self-effacement. You not only depict it with the most poignant truth, with that transport of the heart’s forces to the intellect, the moment when warmth becomes light ; it seems as if it paints itself through you, as if there has been an ‘entrance,’ as they say in spiritualist language, as if it has guided, clasped your hand. There are phrases of yours that seem to be his, that differ from your usual phrases by something strict, singular, that was uniquely his.”

Sometimes we suddenly begin to resemble those we mourn , and perhaps you are currently receiving a mysterious inheritance of thought. Such occurrences exist in the spiritual realm as in the succession of kingdoms. Moreover, I am probably generalizing too much because of a few phrases where the real presence seemed evident, even unsettling. Where else could it find greater pleasure in dwelling, if anything of the spirit remains, outside the intellectual dwellings it itself constructed?

I could tell you all this less painfully if my eyes didn't bother me so much. And perhaps the best thing wouldn't be, if you're home sometimes in the evening, as good people say, "to see each other." (Don't be alarmed by this suggestion, which my health makes practically impossible.) Please accept, Madam, my most respectful regards. Marcel Proust.

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The stepmother of Georges de Lauris, one of Marcel Proust's friends whom he met in 1903 and who served as a trusted 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 recognized by the French Academy, and from 1912 she became president of the Prix de la Vie Heureuse (later the Prix Fémina), thus occupying an important place in Parisian literary life. Marcel Proust frequented her salon and consulted her on literary matters. She was notably one of the witnesses to the difficult gestation of the first volume of * In Search of Lost Time*.