The Death of Marcel

Today, November 18th, is the anniversary of Proust’s death in 1922.  He was born on July 10, 1871 and so was 51 years old when he died.  Not a very long life, but it lasted as long as he wanted it to- until he finished his work.  He’s buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France and when Proustians make their pilgrimage there, they leave madeleines, lilies and stones.  Why stones? Because Proust’s mother was Jewish.  His father was Catholic, though, and Proust himself never really embraced any religion.  Writing was his life and his religion.

In the summer of 1922, the Paris newspaper “L’Intransigeant” published a questionnaire that included this question:

“An American scientist announces that the world will end, or at least that such a huge part of the continent will be destroyed, and in such a sudden way, that death will be the certain fate of hundreds of millions of people.  If this prediction were confirmed, what do you think would be its effects on people between the time when they acquired the aforementioned certainty and the moment of cataclysm?  Finally, as far as you’re concerned, what would you do in this last hour?”

Marcel answered.  He had answered a couple of these questionnaires when he was younger as well, at parties where this was done as part of the festivities, and Marcel apparently enjoyed answering them.  Anyhow, Marcel answered and the paper printed his answer:

“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say.  Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it- our life- hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible  for ever, how beautiful it would become again!  Ah! if only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire.  And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today.  It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.”

Marcel did not die that evening.  But not long after, he “took a chill” and it became pnuemonia, followed by secondary infections, then an abcess in his lung which became septicaemia.  This took place over several weeks, during which time Marcel exhausted himself editing and correcting his manuscripts.  Earlier, in the spring of 1922, he’d announced to Celeste Albaret, his housekeeper and confidant for ten years, that he’d finished his work, that during the night he’d written ”The End”.  To which he then added, “Now I can die”.

Four months after answering the L’Intransigeant questionnaire, Marcel died.  His brother, Robert, had to finish editing the final manuscripts for In Search of Lost Time.  But Proust was already gaining fame and a reputation after the publications of Swann’s Way (1913), In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), and The Guermantes Way (1920-21) and so he died knowing that he’d accomplished what he set out to do.  Two days after his death, the photographer Man Ray came to take his death portrait. 

A poignant confession from Celeste stays with me in relation to Proust’s death.  Sometime before he dies, Marcel said to Celeste, “…it is awful to think doctors can torture a sick person by injecting serums.  And for what?  To give his patient ten more minutes, twelve more hours perhaps, of a wretched life?  Celeste, promise me you won’t ever let them give me an injection.”  She promised.

Fast forward to the day it is obvious that Marcel is going to die.  Against Proust’s wishes, she calls his doctor and begs him to give Marcel an injection, something to give him strength, to save him.  When the doctor does so, Proust reaches out and grabs Celeste’s wrist, pinches it and says, “Oh, Celeste…oh, Celeste!”

Celeste writes that this is impressed on her forever, and that even if she wanted to, she could never drive that final cry of his out of her ears. 

Marcel Proust and The New Yorker

The September 24th, 2007 issue of The New Yorker magazine was the “style” issue but should have been called, judging by the number of Proust sightings within (five, by my count), the Proust issue.  Not that Proust wasn’t stylish, with those lavender gloves and dashing scarves, but oddly enough, for this being the style issue, none of the Proust sightings have to do with fashion.  Or maybe that’s not so odd, since when we think of Marcel, perhaps the first thing we think is not “he’s such a fashion plate….and he can write too!”  But maybe we should, after all, he lived at the height of the Belle Epoch and mingled with the beautiful people at the beautiful places, although from reading biographies of him I gather that he was considered somewhat odd in his choices of style and fashion.  But I digress.

Not so oddly, the first two sightings are within an article about memory, or rather loss of it, called “The Abyss” and written by Oliver Sacks.  It is about a man named Clive who, after a brain infection, is “left with a memory span of only seconds- the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded”.  The title of the article refers to a quotation from Proust that the man’s wife, Deborah, uses to describe a form of rescue from obliviousness that her husband will never experience.  The quote is from the Overture to Swann’s Way, in which the Narrator (either Deborah or the author of this article ascribes this quote to Swann, but this is a mistake) describes waking up from a deep sleep:

“…and when I awoke in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was, I could not even be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute than the cave-dweller; but then the memory- not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived and might now very possibly be- would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself…”

This rope from heaven gives the Narrator back his “personal consciousness and identity.  No rope from heaven, no autobiographical memory will ever come down in this way to Clive” (quote from the article).   “The rope that is let down from Heaven for Clive comes not with recalling the past, as for Proust, but with performance…”  Somehow, Clive has retained his ability to play Bach, Handel, Mozart and other classical composers on the piano, and this remarkable ability in the face of such profound amnesia is the focus of Dr. Sacks article.

Marcel Proust, through the course of his novel, will find the key to recalling lost time in everyday objects, sounds, smells.  This man, Clive, not only cannot find his lost time in this way, he doesn’t even know that he has lost time-except for his ability to recognize his wife (although he can’t remember that he just saw her five minutes ago) and his astounding retention of music he learns to play on the piano- he is a man without a past, reborn every few seconds to a world that contains no memories for him.   

Perhaps some things are better left “un-remembered”.  The next sighting is from Francine du Plessix Gray, in her article entitled “The Surrealist’s Muse”, about art patron and artist’s muse Marie-Laure de Noailles.  In the 1950’s, du Plessix Gray was assigned by her editor at Elle magazine to interview de Noailles, a task which “daunted” the author and one that she apparently approached with trepidation.  She was right to be fearful, when she arrived at de Noailles residence, she was stared at by de Noailles and the beautiful young man with her, their looks “distinctly tainted with malice” and full of “haughty insolence”.  Her proffered handshake was ignored. 

“As I proceeded to interview her, any trace of tolerance she might have had for me was diminished by my lack of an adequate retort to the one query she put to me: ‘Men who love Proust have short penises, don’t you think?”

The less said about that remembrance, the better.

The last two sightings are brief.  In an article about Donatella Versace by Lauren Collins, we learn that Donatella’s brother Gianni (the one that was murdered) called their family retreat at Lake Como his “Proust” place.  Because it was a quiet, peaceful place to go to think and to rest?  Or because the bedrooms are lined with cork?  We are not told, we can only imagine.  And finally, from a brief book review of The Worst Intentions (by Alessandro Piperno): “…this wickedly scathing debut novel, a coruscating mixture of satire, family epic, Proustian meditation, and erotomaniacal farce…”  Sounds like something Marcel would have enjoyed, n’est-ce pas?