Marcel PROUST questions the scope of his literary consciousness.

Marcel Proust (1871.1922)

Autograph letter signed to Julia Daudet.

Four pages in-8° on mourning paper.

Slnd. [early March 1904]. Kolb, volume IV, page 75.

« … the satisfaction of my literary conscience, which nothing replaces…”

Citing Ruskin and Madame de Sévigné, Marcel Proust thanks his correspondent for his warm words following his translation of The Amiens Bible by John Ruskin.

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“Madam, I would like to be able to translate every day to receive letters like yours. And if I had only written the sentence about this charm "which slips from one language to another, in the gap between words" or that, to say that we arrived very late and left very early that we came in a dream" (has Madame de Sévigné ever found anything so delicious) or the one about Ruskin "who went as far as Tours" and who through "the eye of a visionary on Gaul" testifies of an original vision which makes the whole Bible of Amiens new to me and as if unknown until then - if ever at any moment I had known how to write one of these adorable sentences I would not need any flattering testimony , I would have something that would be more precious to me than all, even than the glorious ones like yours, the satisfaction of my literary conscience, which nothing replaces – and which alas I do not have!

I no longer know how to post a letter addressed to the name Daudet without it being a hymn of gratitude and if I had to say everything I owe to you, to Lucien and to Léon, I would have to write to you every day. Do not fear that this threat will be carried out, but allow me again, Madam, with all my deep admiration, to express my respectful gratitude to you. Marcel Proust. »

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Proust responds here to a warm letter from Julia Daudet thanking him for his Amiens Bible , which he had dedicated to her on February 29.