| 2 | Date:1914 janvier?
La lecture de Swann laisse Edith
Wharton "palpitante d'émotion"; elle envoie immédiatement le livre à Henry James:
"I forget who first spoke to me about the book [Du côté de chez
Swann], but it may have been Blanche, who was one of
Proust's earliest friends and admirers. I began to read
languidly, felt myself, after two pages, in the hands of a master; and was presently
trembling with the excitement which only genius can communicate. I sent the book
immediately to James, and his letter to me shows how deeply it impressed him. James, at
that time, was already an old man, and, as I have said, his literary judgments had long
been hampered by his increasing preoccupation with the structure of the novel, ans his
unwillingness to concede that the vital centre (when there was any) coule lie elsewhere.
Even when I first knew him he read contemporary novels (except Wells's and a few of Conrad's) rarely, and with
ill-concealed impatience.... but in the presence of a masterpiece all of James's
prejudices and reluctances vanished. He seized upon Du Côté de chez
Swann and devoured it in a passion of curiosity and admiration. Here, in the
first volume of a long chronicle-novel - the very type of the unrolling tapestry which
was so contrary to his own conception of form - he instantly recognized a new mastery, a
new vision, and a structural design as yet unintelligible to him, but as surely there as
hard bone under soft flesh in a living organism... the encounter gave him his last, and
one of his strongest, artistic emotions.
Neither James nor I ever met Proust. In my case the meeting could have been easily
arranged, for he was the friend of some of my most intimate friends [Walter Berry]. But what I heard about him, even from the people who were
fondest of him, did not increase my desire to meet him. I did not then know how ill he
was - at that time even his intimates scarcely guessed it - and to be told that the only
people who really interested him were Dukes and Duchesses, and that the only place where
one could hope to find him was at the Ritz, after midnight, was enough to put me off.
Edith Wharton
, A Backward Glance, New York, D. Appleton-Century,
1934, p. 323-325.
Cf. fiche du 25 février 1914 [ c70170] Cf. fiche de janvier? 1914 [ c70180]
Record: c70160 |
