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Lettre autographe signée adressée au jeune Marcel Proust

1893175 x 110 mm

AUTOGRAPH LETTER TO MARCEL PROUST ENTITLED: "CATALOGUE D'UNE PETITE BIBLIOTHÈQUE IDÉALE" (CATALOGUE OF A SMALL IDEAL LIBRARY)

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Description

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED TO MARCEL PROUST written between 1893 and 1899.
4 pages in-12 (175 x 110 mm), black ink.

ENTITLED BY DESJARDINS: "CATALOGUE OF AN IDEAL SMALL LIBRARY"
A philosopher and moralist, Paul Desjardins (1859-1940) was the brother of Abel Desjardins, one of Marcel Proust's classmates at the Lycée Condorcet, where he taught from 1906. Founder of theUnion for Moral Actionto which Proust subscribed, and from 1893 he read extracts from Ruskin. Dujardin addressed the young Proust a "catalogue of an ideal small library"He recommended reading, in chronological order, Plato, Xenophon, Le Banquet (the title of the magazine Proust founded at the Lycée Condorcet and which appeared from March 1892 to March 1893), Montaigne, Shakespeare, Milton, Comus and Lycidas, Pascal, Racine, Joubert, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Emerson, Goethe, Renan, Fromentin, etc., as well as a number of other works.
The catalogue ends as follows:

"etc., etc. (not too much). And now let sincerity never desert you!
Paul Desjardins"
.

Paul Desjardins appears in the Searchwhen Legrandin recommended it to Combray: Do you know, Mr. Reader," he asked me, "this verse by Paul Desjardins: Les bois sont déjà noirs, le ciel est encor bleu. Isn't that the finest notation of this hour? Perhaps you have never read Paul Desjardins. Read him, my child; today, I'm told, he's turned into a preaching brother, but for a long time he was a limpid watercolourist..." (Pléiade, I, p. 118-119).

RARE DOCUMENT. 

This letter was presented in London at the exhibition : Marcel Proust and His Time at the Wildenstein Gallery in 1955 (n°251).

ProvenanceMarie-Claude Mante Proust, great-niece of Marcel Proust.

References : Proust dictionary, p. 297. -- G.D. Painter, Proust, Paul Desjardins and Pontigny, p. 279.

Undated [1893].In-12, Sheets,175 x 110 mm,Four pages.

Mourning paper, black ink.

Bio

Paul Desjardins

Louis Paul Abel Desjardins

(Paris: 22 November 1859 - Pontigny: 13 March 1940)

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Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust, born in Paris on July 10, 1871 and died in Paris on November 18, 1922.

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