Marcel PROUST philosophizes about the pain of death.

Marcel Proust (1871.1922)

Autograph letter signed to Georges de Lauris.

Four pages in-12° on mourning paper.

Slnd [Monday evening, February 18, 1907]

Kolb, volume VII, pages 85-86

“You will always keep something broken. »

Beautiful letter of condolences on the evening of the funeral of Madame de Lauris.

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“My little Georges, I didn't answer you because I thought I was coming this morning [to the funeral of Lauris' mother], but I felt that I wouldn't be able to go all the way so I would explain this to you. If I send you this little note this evening it is to ask you how your father bore this day, how you bore it yourself, my poor little Georges.

Now I can tell you one thing, you will have sweets that you still can't believe. When you had your mother you thought a lot about the day now when you would no longer have her. Now you will think a lot about the days of old when you had it. When you have become accustomed to this awful thing of being forever rejected in the past, then you will slowly feel it coming back to life, coming back to take its place, its whole place, near you. At the moment this is not yet possible. Be inert, wait until the incomprehensible force and where the doctors unfortunately do not understand much more than the others which broke you, lifts you up a little, I say a little because you will always keep something broken . Tell yourself this too because it is a sweetness that we will never love less, that we will never console ourselves, that we will remember more and more. I don't need to tell you, my little George, that it is crying a lot that I am writing this to you , bad tears more for me than for yourself, whereas until this evening, it was yours. alone as I thought. I hope you can help your father endure, be completely his.

My life is completely turned upside down. Yesterday I had lunch at half past eleven, because I was getting ready to go out today. If you come one day and if I don't have as many seizures as today, maybe 7 o'clock would be best, so as not to leave your father alone in the evening. Many people write to me knowing my grief, even people you don't know, little Duplay for example. I believe that Reynaldo [Hahn] and d'Albu had telephoned me, having learned from a word from me of the terrible misfortune, to ask me when the funeral was, saying as long as it was not Monday because I am obliged to going to Compiègne, and Reynaldo who I saw before a rehearsal that he could not miss but both thinking a lot of you, my brother too, my sister-in-law even who called me really touched me. Everyone is upset, but no one can have the same sorrow as me because no one hoped and felt so much with you. Kindly to you. Marcel. »