PROUST, Marcel (1871-1922)

PROUST, Marcel (1871-1922)

Autograph letter signed « Marcel Proust » to Fernand Gregh
N.p.n.d., [21 May 1897], 1/2 p. small in-8°

Fernand Gregh crowned by the French Academy

« Mon cher Gregh, je t’envoie tous mes compliments, plus sincères et plus satisfaits que tu ne le crois probablement.
Ton dévoué Marcel Proust »

Fernand Gregh had just been awarded a prize by the French Academy for his poetry collection Maison de l’enfance. This controversial attribution caused quite a stir, according to a critic in Le Figaro, who saw in it ‘the consecration of poetic anarchy’ championed by the young literary journals.

Fernand Gregh (1873–1960) met Marcel Proust in January 1892, among the students of the Lycée Condorcet who ran the literary review Le Banquet. He soon became the director of this periodical, while Proust published there some of his first important literary and theoretical texts. Together with two other Lycée students and fellow members of Le Banquet, Louis de La Salle and Daniel Halévy, Proust and Gregh embarked in 1893 on the writing of a four-handed novel. This collaborative text, conceived in the model of La Croix de Berny (written by Gautier and three other authors), was never completed, but Proust was its main contributor and already introduced themes that would later resurface in In Search of Lost Time. Fernand Gregh then devoted himself almost exclusively to poetry, winning a prize from the French Academy in 1896. He played a certain role in literary life through his position as managing editor of the Revue de Paris (1894–1897) and as editor of Les Lettres (until 1909). His friendship with Proust, however, was marked by intermittent strains, notably due to aesthetic disagreements. Moreover, like many “established” writers, Gregh initially regarded Proust with a touch of condescension, while Proust in turn mocked the somewhat “charming” ridiculousness of his friend’s character. Fernand Gregh entered the French Academy in 1953 and left behind significant literary recollections, including a volume entitled My Friendship with Marcel Proust (1958), in which he published the letters he had received from the author of In Search of Lost Time.