Description

À la recherche du temps perdu Volume V - Sodom and Gomorrah Volume II.

FIRST EDITION.

AUTOGRAPH SIGNED LETTER:

"To Jean de Pierrefeu
nice souvenir,
already a long way off
with kind regards,
Marcel Proust"

Journalist, literary critic and columnist, Jean de Pierrefeu (1881-1940) published in L'Opinion, of 24 January 1914, an article on Swann. For him, Proust is a "disciple of Bergson"which has a "the formidable creative power of memory"but it is also a "voluptuous martyr". who "cloister in his private life".. He became a literary critic for Journal des Débats ,he defended the award of the Goncourt prize in 1919,  Les Croix de bois by Dorgelès to The Shadow of the Maidens in bloom of Proust. He developed this point of view in an article in the Literary Supplement from Journal de Débats of 2-3 January 1920, entitled The Case of Mr Proust. Proust invited Pierrefeu to a dinner at the Ritz in the company of other critics, princes and marquises, but the manoeuvre did not seem to be a success in his eyes, since he wrote a twenty-five page letter to Pierrefeu reproaching him for influencing certain virulent criticisms of his work. The approach seemed to be in vain, and Pierrefeu reiterated this in an article published on 24 November 1920 on Le Côté de Guermante who has "neither history nor subject"that the author "is not obliged to compose".. After Proust's death, Pierrefeu recognised him as a "great man".engineering"by the author of Search in three articles published in Le Quotidien and Literary News.

Marcel Proust, Letters, biographical notes on correspondents, Virginie Greene, Plon 2004.