In early April, the book “Seventy-five Pages” appeared on the shelves of French stores – the publishing house Gallimard released a collection of unique, previously unpublished manuscripts by Marcel Proust. The manuscripts created around 1908 are called the “crypt” of the writer's work, provided that “In Search of Lost Time” is his “cathedral”. The book reveals the details of this cycle of novels and was published in a circulation of 8 thousand copies. The search for manuscripts stretched for more than 60 years, and their publication coincided with the author's birthday – in 2021, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Proust is celebrated.
The seven novels included in Marcel Proust's monumental cycle In Search of Lost Time contain many characters. In the fate of the manuscripts published by Gallimard under the title “Seventy-five Pages”, there are also many actors. Many literary scholars and researchers have dreamed of finding these documents since 1954, when the publisher Bernard de Falloy mentioned them in the preface to the collection of essays Against Sainte-Beuve. This mention remained the only one, and the existence of the handwritten document that laid the foundations for “In Search of Lost Time” almost turned into a kind of legend, into a literary Atlantis or the Prustian Grail.
Marcel Proust died in 1922 and left behind extensive archives. After his death, the writer's brother Robert Proust managed to publish the three final books “In Search of Lost Time”. And after Robert died in the mid-1930s, the documents were inherited by his daughter, Marcel Proust's niece Susie Mant-Proust. She decided to open the family archive for researchers of her uncle's work, and later, in 1962, she transferred a significant part of the documents to the National Library of France (BNF). The Proust Foundation at the BNF contains the manuscripts of the writer, his notes made during his school years, youth works, critical articles, translations, drafts of novels and typewritten documents with corrections made by the writer's hand. But that mysterious manuscript was not among the documents handed over to the library.
“Folder number 3”
One of the key characters in this story is Bernard de Falloy. Before opening his own publishing house in 1987, and in 2012 acquainting readers all over the world with the novel by Swiss Joel Dicker, The Truth About the Harry Quebert affair, de Falloy worked on the texts of Marcel Proust. While still a student of philology at the Sorbonne, he decided to write a dissertation on the early work of the writer. According to the memoirs of de Falloy himself, in the 1950s, the academic environment was too conservative, because the topic he proposed did not cause approval. “They answered me:“ Choose better someone better known, someone whose talent is beyond doubt! ”No comment! But I insisted on my own, ”the publisher recalled in an interview with L'Express magazine in 2013.
The young man shared his plans with the writer André Maurois, who decided to help and turned to his friend, Suzy Mantes-Proust. Under the patronage of Maurois, de Falloy received from her for research about seven boxes of unique documents. These included drafts of two unfinished works by Marcel Proust, and in 1952, 26-year-old de Falloy published Jean Santeuil at Gallimard, and in 1954 a collection of essays Against Saint-Beuve. These two publications turned the idea of how the creative path of the writer developed.
From the opening speech to “Against Saint-Beuve” it became known that, apparently, there was another document – the “prototype” “In Search of Lost Time.” This was not confirmed until the death of Bernard de Falloy in 2018, when the second heroine of the story, Proust's creative specialist Nathalie Mauriac-Dyer, was asked to study the documents kept by the publisher. The same manuscript was found among the materials received by de Falloy from Suzy Mant-Proust: it was placed in an old burgundy cardboard folder labeled “Folder No. 3”.
It still remains a mystery how Bernard de Falloy “passed” this material and did not publish it himself. It is said that the publisher invariably shied away from questions from literary scholars who, since the 1950s, were interested in whether he kept the manuscript.
“Kiss before bed”
Natalie Mauriac-Dyer, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) contributor and editor and editor of Seventy-Five Pages, laughs when asked what a person who finds the literary Grail feels like. “Happy excitement! I would like to immediately share the find with other fans of Proust, ”she admits. For her, the publication of the manuscript is also a deeply personal, family matter: on the paternal side, Natalie Mauriac-Dyer is the granddaughter of the Nobel laureate in literature François Mauriac, and on the maternal side, the granddaughter of Susie Mant-Proust. Initially, she planned to study ancient Greek literature, and now she leads a team of proustologists at the Institute of Texts and Modern Manuscripts.
“My grandmother was the niece of Marcel Proust. I started researching his work in 1986, when, after my grandmother's death, we found a typewritten text of the novel “The Runaway” with handwritten corrections by the author. I published this text and since then devoted myself to the study and publication of Proust's manuscripts. If a family find had not pushed me to this, I simply would not have dared to work on his work. “Seventy-five pages” is another gift. I think it was a great honor for me to publish these two works, ”says Mauriac-Dyer.
She explains that Seventy-Five Pages is a fundamental manuscript that allows us to understand the origins of the work on In Search of Lost Time: “Until now, it was believed that the foundations of the cycle were laid in the critical essay Against Saint-Beuve, on which Proust worked since 1909. This text quickly became a mise-en-scène for the appearance of the character, who was then still called, by the way, Marcel Proust. The hero wakes up in the morning, the reader feels the whole gamut of his feelings, memories … Then his mother brings him a newspaper article of his authorship, which he sent to Le Figaro, and now it was finally published. This is followed by a conversation with his mother, in which the hero mentions plans to write a new article in which Sainte-Beuve would be criticized. We believed that this particular episode became the starting point of “In Search of Lost Time”, since the cycle begins with the scene of the hero's awakening. However, we now understand that the essay Against Sainte-Beuve only laid the structure of the narrative, and the thematic diversity, including memories of childhood or time spent at sea, was formed even before the essay was written. “
The manuscript that became the basis for Seventy-Five Pages is a very touching document filled with the personal impressions and experiences of Marcel Proust. In some places in the manuscript, he uses the real names of his mother and grandmother – Jeanne and Adele, in the text there is still an undisguised family intimacy. Proust's mother died in 1905. He deeply felt the loss and stopped writing, and again took up the pen only in 1907. Then he wrote two articles for Le Figaro: one was about the death of his mother, and the other was about a trip to the country, where the object of his romantic interest was then located. This crush also revived his desire to write.
Natalie Mauriac-Dyer notes the subtle biographical character of the manuscript: “The image of the mother is very vividly present in the 'Seventy-five pages'. The entire first part is devoted to the unbearable separation from her. In the manuscript, for example, there is the first version of the famous scene in Comber from the first part of the novel “Towards Swann” and the famous kiss goodnight – the episode when Monsieur Swann comes to dinner and the hero has to go to bed without waiting for the mother's kiss before sleep. It is very touching also because in the draft the author allows an allusion to the death of his own mother, writes about the nightmares that torment him after the loss. Subsequently, these fragments and reflections will be included in “In Search of Lost Time”, but they will no longer be dedicated to the mother, but to the grandmother. “
“Access to Meanings”
There are many options for presenting manuscripts and drafts to readers when publishing. In preparing Seventy-Five Pages for publication, Gallimard and Natalie Mauriac-Dyer chose not to include most of the deleted passages in the book so that readers could appreciate, without distraction, how accessible and well-designed Proust's text was already in the draft stage.
“In addition to the main manuscript, the publication includes several separate drafts, and in their case I thought it right to leave in the book copies of the pages with blots and corrections by Proust himself. We have also preserved the crossed out passages that tell about the mother of the hero-storyteller: they are important to show how in detail Proust worked on them, and, of course, to convey his feelings. It was important to show that these are drafts, during the writing of which the author progressed, as if by groping, trying various options. But the publishers of “Seventy-five Pages” primarily wanted to give the reader access to the meanings of the work, so the manuscript in the book is somewhat “filtered”. But it's also interesting to look at the manuscript in its mysterious materiality – with blots and corrections, ”explains Moriak-Dyer.
And such an opportunity will present itself: in 2022, it will be 100 years since the death of Marcel Proust. For this event, the National Library of France plans to organize a large-scale exhibition. Natalie Mauriac-Dyer emphasizes that she has no official confirmation that the original of the manuscript will be among the exhibits, but she will be “very surprised” if the document is not shown at the exhibition. “It's still one of the library's biggest acquisitions in recent years,” she says. Now the library experts are carrying out the restoration of the document.
“Proust writes about us”
François Mauriac called Marcel Proust “an inhabited writer”, écrivain habitable. He meant that Proust is an author, to whose works one wants to return, a writer, in whose texts you always discover something new. In his work there are elements characteristic of other greats – Baudelaire, Racine, Balzac … According to Natalie Moriak-Dyer, he was also inspired by Russian writers, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, their manner of building the characters' characters, emphasizing their ambiguity.
Natalie Mauriac-Dyer believes that “Seventy-five Pages” is a good book to start your acquaintance with the writer's work and with the cycle “In Search of Lost Time”: it is not yet so complex compositionally, it is “simpler” as it should be the first version of the artwork. The expert does not agree that “In Search of Lost Time” is a work for an adult, experienced reader, as well as that in order to start reading Proust, it is worth waiting for some suitable moment. She recommends surrendering to chance and not thinking that this is some particularly difficult reading: “You need to understand what Proust writes about us, about people: about our innermost things, about our feelings and thoughts. Sometimes it happens that we do not even realize that we are visited by certain thoughts, and while reading we recognize ourselves in the characters of Proust. “
“There is no universal key in literature, everything is too individual and unique. Need to try. Maybe just open the book to any page and read a fragment. You can get into a very funny passage. Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of funny things in Proust's works, he was a great comedian. For example, in “Under the Shade of Girls in Bloom” there is an episode in which a young man passionately wants to be introduced to a girl walking by accompanied by his friends. But at the moment when they are nevertheless introduced, he deliberately assumes an indifferent look, turns away and supposedly plunges into contemplation of the shop window in order to demonstrate his indifference. And when he turns around again, the girls have already left him. It's funny because you can't help but recognize yourself in it. We all act like this when we pretend. And many things disappear from under our noses simply because we could not be honest in the moment. Proust is very accurate in terms of the behavior inherent in each of us when we are pretentious, funny, when we lie or are hypocritical. At the same time, Proust is also characterized by forgiveness, such a global philanthropy. We are all like that, without exception. And he looks at it with liveliness and without anger, ”explains Natalie Mauriac-Dyer, making it clear that the main characters are not only stories about the mysterious manuscript, but most of all the work of Marcel Proust – his readers.
