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Lettre de Proust, Pastiche littéraire

200 x 300 mm

UNEDITED AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT of a truculent literary pastiche entitled " Letter from Proust ".

 

 

900 

1 in stock

Description

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT of a truculent literary pastiche entitled " Letter from Proust ".
Miomandre imitates Proust's very long convolutions with a great deal of humour, even imitating, on 6 pages, the erasures and repentances of the author of the Searching for lost time. 
[…]

So I was dressed and ready to go down my stairs, at the bottom of which was waiting for me the old taxi in which I do my shopping, and which is strong, inconvenient, but which I dare not dismiss because the coachman is a cousin by marriage of Mama's first valet and this confers on him certain sentimental rights over me which I do not have the courage to discuss, when all of a sudden I realised the frightening embarrassment I was going to expose myself to if I went innocently to see you, as I was driven to do by the great desire I had to see you, first of all to see you in fact, as you are aware of my sympathy for you, but also - what's the point of hiding it?  -  to take up that fascinating conversation we had, just three years and twelve days ago, in Mr De Montesquiou's antechamber, about Coromandel lacquerware...

A thought flashed through my mind. You were dangling the presence of the Comtesse de Bourbon in front of me, no doubt to attract me less, knowing how much I love this delicious woman, a veritable reincarnation of the Minerva who is in the Louvre, room 7, a few metres to the left of the door. Just think that the evening before I had to abstain from going to the party she was giving to celebrate her ravishing niece's entry into the world, on the pretext of a migraine, which I must confess I was diplomatically unwise enough to suggest promised me at least 3 or 4 days of torture. What would she have said  when I arrived  at home the next day, fresh, clean-shaven, as free of neuralgia as Don Juan was of platonic love and Pyrrhon of jealousy? 

[…]

As soon as the various ailments with which I am burdened give me a moment's respite, I will come and fetch you (preferably at 4 a.m. on my way out of the Ritz) to offer you my verbal apologies and to answer with you this conversation on Coromandel lacquerware which it is one of the deepest regrets of my life to have so unexpectedly interrupted... while waiting for this feast of the spirit, which I am only too sure will exhaust me (but my existence is but a series of successive deaths and I am resigned to this), please believe me.  my dear Sir your fervent admirer and your sorry but hopeful friend. 

Marcel Proust"

A rare document, probably unpublished. 

In-4, Sheets,200 x 300 mm,6 ff.

Bio

Francis de Miomandre

Francis Durand

(Tours: 22 May 1880 - Saint-Brieuc: 1ᵉʳ August 1959)

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