PROUST, Marcel (1871-1922)

PROUST, Marcel (1871-1922)

Autograph “Carte-télégramme” signed « Marcel Proust » to Fernand Gregh
[Paris], « Monday morning », postmark [7 Nov. 1892], 1 p. in-16°, black ink
Autograph address on verso : « [M]onsieur / Fernand Gregh / 40 Boulevard Haussmann »
Some browning

Proust and Gregh are dining at Bergson’s

« Cher ami

Veux-tu faire à nous tous le plaisir de venir dîner ce soir lundi à 7 heures précises seul avec M. Bergson et surtout pas en habit. Il est aussi en deuil et serait gêné par la présence d’un convive si éclatant.

À ce soir donc et en attendant, affectueuses amitiés

Marcel Proust »

Proust – Bergson: Mutual Admiration and Ambiguous Influence
The meeting between 20-year-old Proust and 33-year-old Bergson took place on the occasion of the latter’s wedding, on January 7, 1892, to Louise Neuburger, Marcel’s cousin. This family connection between the two men did not, however, bring them closer. In appearance, Bergson was reserved, though sensitive; Proust, on the contrary, warm and emotional. “The extreme modesty of the former did not align with the latter’s taste for confession” (Jean-Yves Tadié, Marcel Proust, vol. I, p. 238). Politics was also a clear point of discord at the onset of the Dreyfus Affair. While Marcel gathered signatures in support of Zola during the 1898 trial, he was likely rebuffed by his cousin, whose name appeared on no petition. Bergson, who had long believed in the guilt of his coreligionist, would later adopt a more neutral stance (we might recall that Swann adopts a similar position at the beginning of the Affair).
Three years before meeting his future cousin, Bergson had already provided one of the keys to Proust’s universe: in his work Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience), he offered “a privileged expression, because theoretical, of the mental universe of a generation” (Jean-Yves Tadié, ibid., vol. I, p. 472). Proust drew on Bergson’s work, but in an ambiguous way. While he adopted the opposition between the superficial self and the deep self proposed by Bergson, he rejected the label of “Bergsonian novel” for Swann, asserting that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory dominated his entire work, whereas it was contradicted by Bergson’s own theories. Likewise, Bergson pointed out the differences that separated his thinking from Proust’s: “his thought is essentially about turning away from duration and the élan vital.” Nevertheless, the two men admired each other greatly.

“A sort of communion between two young disciples and a master”: Fernand Gregh, who was then preparing for his philosophy aggregation, would describe this intimate dinner in these terms in his memoir L’Âge d’or (The Golden Age) (pp. 154-155 and 169-170).

It was in January 1892, among the students of the Condorcet Lycée who contributed to the literary magazine Le Banquet, that Fernand Gregh (1873-1960) met Marcel Proust. He quickly became the director of this periodical, while Proust published some of his first important literary and theoretical texts there. Along with two other Lycée students and Banquet members, Louis de La Salle and Daniel Halévy, Proust and Gregh began writing a collaborative novel in 1893. This collective text, conceived on the model of La Croix de Berny (written by Gautier and three other authors), was never completed, but Proust was its main writer and already introduced themes that would later appear in In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu). Fernand Gregh then devoted himself almost exclusively to poetry, winning a prize from the Académie française in 1896. He played a certain role in literary life through his position as managing editor of Revue de Paris (1894-1897) and as editor of Lettres (until 1909). However, his friendship with Proust was marked by intermittent periods, primarily due to aesthetic differences. Furthermore, like many established writers, Gregh initially viewed Proust with a certain condescension, while Proust mocked his friend’s somewhat “charming” character. Fernand Gregh was elected to the Académie française in 1953 and left behind significant literary memories, including a volume titled Mon Amitié avec Marcel Proust (My Friendship with Marcel Proust, 1958), in which he published the letters he had received from the author of In Search of Lost Time.