Marcel Proust, moved by the death of his friend Lauris.

Marcel Proust (1871.1922)

Autographed letter signed to Georges de Lauris.

Two pages in-12° on mourning paper.

Slnd [Monday evening, February 18, 1907]

Kolb, Volume VII, pages 83-84

"It feels like I'm losing my mother a second time."

Proust learns of the death of the mother of his friend Georges de Lauris.

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"My dear Georges, it seems to me that I am losing my mother a second time. And that it is more dreadful for you than it was for me after so much hope for so long, and to have seen her suffer like this. But all of that vanishes now that I no longer have her, your mother whom I loved so much and whom I never knew, whose face of heroic courage, of gentleness, of detachment from all that is not you and your father, remained unknown to me and has been so constantly present for a year. And your father, whom I think of constantly, his pain haunts me, and having never seen him, I cannot imagine it. And it is less cruel, because you, Georges, I see you, I feel you, I live you, and that is for me the most dreadful of tortures. If only I could be of use to you, be near you, act in accordance with your pain and my own. But my powerlessness binds me to it even more cruelly." Jean Blanc will ask you if there's anything I can do for you other than think and cry with you constantly. Yours tenderly, Marcel.