November 1922 — Visitors and Artists at Marcel Proust's Bedside

On 18 November 1922, Marcel Proust breathed his last in his apartment on the rue Hamelin, leaving to posterity a work whose final volumes would not appear until after his death. On the occasion of the centenary of his death, the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray gathered into an anthology the testimonies of those who hurried to his side in the hours and days that followed his passing: close friends, lifelong companions, journalists and artists who came to pay a final tribute to the man and to discover, with astonishment, that the work was complete.

This volume thus offers a striking picture of the death of an extraordinary writer — a death willed, accepted, deferred just long enough to bring the Recherche to completion — as experienced and recorded by his contemporaries. Visitors' accounts, letters, press articles, private notebooks, drawings and photographs: so many testimonies that together compose the portrait of a man whose death was felt as an irreparable loss for French letters.

Overview

Organised in strict chronological order, the volume follows the course of the days from 18 to 21 November 1922, from Proust's final agony to his funeral at the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot, and then to his burial in the Père-Lachaise cemetery. The excerpts are drawn from an extremely wide range of sources: notes from talks, memoirs, private diaries, press articles published in the weeks following his death, or testimonies written years later, when their authors returned to this formative experience.

The second part of the anthology, written by Anne Imbert, is devoted to the artists who captured Proust's features on his deathbed. It retraces the circumstances in which Paul Helleu produced his drypoint, André Dunoyer de Segonzac his five pen drawings, Man Ray his photographs, and Emmanuel Sougez his documentary shots. A careful study of the surviving works — compared against written testimonies — makes it possible to reconstruct the conditions of each sitting and to clarify certain questions of authenticity or attribution.

Authors and Contributors

Anne Imbert, art historian and member of the board of directors of the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, selected and annotated the excerpts in the anthology and is the author of the essay devoted to the last portraits: drypoints, drawings and photographs made in the death chamber on the rue Hamelin.

Jérôme Bastianelli, president of the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, wrote the foreword to the volume.

Thierry Laget, writer and editor, author notably of Proust ou le bonheur du roman (Gallimard, 2019), wrote the preface — a meditation on the place of death in Proust's life and work, from Les Plaisirs et les Jours to Le Temps retrouvé.

Contents

• Foreword, by Jérôme Bastianelli
• Preface, by Thierry Laget
• Saturday 18 November: the final days and the death agony
• Sunday 19 – Monday 20 November: visitors at Marcel Proust's bedside
• Tuesday 21 November: the funeral at Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot
• Memories of Marcel Proust
• Last Portraits: the artist-witnesses, by Anne Imbert
• Biographies of the witnesses

Bibliographic Information

• Format: paperback, 100 pages
• ISBN: 978-2-492318-14-6
• Price: 12 €
• Publisher: Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray
• Printer: SP-COMM
• Legal deposit: first half of 2022