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Marcel Proust

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:10,000.00 - 15,000.00 USD
Marcel Proust

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Auction Date:2014 Dec 10 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Partial ALS in French, signed “Marcel Proust,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.5 x 7, no date. The concluding portion of a letter to Louisa Mornand, who inspired the character Rachel in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, with content regarding her relationship with his friend Louis d'Albufera, who he fondly called "Albu." In full (translated): "will decide it as you want it. In the meantime this verdict, risking everything with a daring which is maybe the effect of the great distance that there is between rue de Courcelles and the Chaussee St. Victor, I am going to do (by asking mentally permission to Albu) a thing that would give me delirious pleasure if it were to happen one day another way than by letter, my dear Louisa, I kiss you tenderly." Proust adds a lengthy handwritten postscript, in full: "If, (as I hope for him and for you, (because the hours that we spend apart seem to me so long when I think about the sadness of one as of the sadness of the other) Albu has returned next to you, tell him, please, mainly to not call me Proust anymore and secondary that I love him extremely. Please pay my respect to your sister whom I do not know but who must be very charming if she resembles you. If she combines your sweetness and loyalty (what I appreciate the most in you, if I am not mistaking about you, the future will tell us) she must be a distinguished individual. But I sense that I prefer you all the same!" In fine condition, with a small edge separation at the adjoining fold and a couple small stains. As with most of Proust's romantic endeavors, his relationship with Mornand was complex. She was the mistress of his close friend Louis d'Albufera, yet he was also at times wildly attracted to her—a sentiment exposed in this letter and others sent to her, which were at times very risqué and suggestive. In his great 1959 biography of the writer, George Painter suggests that Proust 'succumbed to her charm partly because she was the beloved of a friend [Louis d'Albufera], but partly for her own sake.' An exceptional letter closely associated with Proust's inextricably entangled life and work.