FOOTNOTES
[1] Mr. Birrell, whose essay, though first printed in The Dial, was written for inclusion in this volume, has kindly consented to my substituting for the original text my own versions of this and the following quotations from A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs and Du Côté de chez Swann respectively.—C.K.S.M.
[2] See, however, my foot-note on [page 106] and Pastiches et Mélanges, pp. 91-99.—C.K.S.M.
[3] Reprinted from The Times of Wednesday, November 29, 1922. The Times had been almost alone among English newspapers in giving “publicity” to the death of Marcel Proust in its issue of Monday, November 20.—C.K.S.M.
[4] The Times, Monday, November 20, 1922: “Marcel Proust: An Appreciation.” (From a Correspondent.)—C.K.S.M.
[5] Transcriber’s Note: See next footnote.
[6] I am glad that the acknowledgement here of Mr. Walkley’s courtesy in allowing me to substitute my version for his of these two passages from A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs gives me an opportunity to acknowledge also my borrowing and to congratulate him upon the discovery of the word “mild”—“une véritable trouvaille,” as Norpois would undoubtedly have called it.—C.K.S.M.
[7] In his article, published in The Times three weeks later, on December 20, 1922, Mr. Walkley replied to a criticism of this statement:—“The old complaint of ‘misrepresenting’ modern France is now beginning to be heard about the great novelist just dead, Marcel Proust. An eminent English novelist tackles me about this. He says Proust is not entitled to the highest rank in literature because his representation of French society is partial only, and therefore unfair; that he writes only of the Faubourg Saint-Germain set, which stands for the ‘dead’ France, and not of the ‘live’ people, soldiers and statesmen and others, who have made and are making France to-day. And he contrasts him with Balzac, who aimed at giving a panorama of the whole social scheme. Well, it strikes me as an unfortunate comparison. Balzac’s Comédie Humaine was like Zola’s Rougon-Macquart Family, a mere afterthought, a specious formula designed to suggest continuity and completeness in what was merely casual and temperamental. As a ‘representation of France’ it is not to be taken seriously; what it represents—like any other work of art—is its author’s genius. His men of action, his statesmen, his men of affairs, are, frankly, preposterous. Proust never set out to ‘represent’ France; he represented the side of its social life that happened to interest him. What he did magnificently represent was the hitherto unexplored in human nature and the human mind. As M. Jacques Rivière says of him in the current Nouvelle Revue Française, ‘The discoveries he has made in the human mind and heart will one day be considered as capital, and of the same rank as those of Kepler in astronomy, Claude Bernard in physiology, or Auguste Comte in the interpretation of the sciences.’ That strikes me as better work than producing a portrait-group of ‘Modern France,’ with General Lyautey arm-in-arm with Marshal Foch, and M. Clemenceau putting on his celebrated pearl-grey gloves.”—C.K.S.M.
[8] Reprinted from The Times Literary Supplement of Thursday, January 4, 1923, where this article followed an English version of a formal tribute to Marcel Proust, signed by nineteen English men and women, which appeared (in French) in the special number of La Nouvelle Revue Française for January 1923. Mr. Middleton Murry had already written, at greater length (too great, indeed, for reproduction in this volume), on Marcel Proust in The Quarterly Review for July 1922.—C.K.S.M.
[9] In another and rather complicated sense this is a presentiment of the future. The spires appear to have been those of Caen, the carriage a motor car, the year evidently much later. The original article will be found in Pastiches et Mélanges, on pp. 91 to 99.—C.K.S.M.
[10] I.e., Les Plaisirs et les Jours, published in 1896, and Pastiches et Mélanges, which, strictly speaking, did not come as a volume until after A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, in the spring of 1919. But of the Pastiches some at least had appeared in the Figaro in 1908 and 1909, while the Mélanges date even further, and include the introductions to Proust’s translations of Ruskin, La Bible d’Amiens (1904) and Sésame et les Lys (1906).—C.K.S.M.
[11] Transcriber’s Note: See next footnote.
[12] Mr. Hussey, whose essay by his kindness and Mr. Filson Young’s I have been enabled to repeat from the Saturday Review, has, like Mr. Birrell, authorised the substitution of my version for the original text of these two quotations from A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs.—C.K.S.M.
[13] Nouvelle Revue Française, No. 112 (N.S.), January 1923, pp. 201-2. The friend is M. Jacques de Lacretelle.—C.K.S.M.
[14] This is, in fact, an extract from Mr. Conrad’s letter in reply to a request that he would justify the project of this volume by contributing to it.—C.K.S.M.
[15] I.e., of Du Côté de chez Swann; the dinner at the Verdurins’ at which Forcheville is present for the first time with the Cottards, Brichot the painter, Swann, and Odette. It is only fair, to both critic and reader, to explain that Mr. Saintsbury had read nothing of Proust save Swann, and that only in an inadequate translation. On the other hand, it was as impossible for the editor to contemplate a book of this sort without a promise of collaboration from his old friend and master as it was, at the moment, for the doyen of English (if not of European, which is to say the world’s) critics to qualify himself for saying more than is printed on this leaf.—C.K.S.M.