Lettre autographe signée à Maurice de Fleury à propos de ses pastiches

Autograph letter signed by Marcel Proust to his friend Maurice de Fleury, a psychiatrist and famed man of letters close to Émile Zola, who wrote a collection of short stories as well as various medical works on neurasthenia, insomnia, epilepsy (Chiara Carraro, Philip Kolb). Four pages written in black on a bifolium with "Island Mill" watermark and framed in black. Usual traces of folds.
Published in Kolb, VIII, no. 32, p. 74-75.
Superb letter extolling the merits of literary pastiche, by one of the greatest writers of the genre: Marcel Proust.
The writing of this letter may coincide with the publication of Proust's series of pastiches on the Lemoine Affair (a scam set up by a French engineer of that name, who claimed to be able to make genuine diamonds). The articles were printed on the front page of the literary supplement of 'Le Figaro' between 1908 and 1909, or date from its publication in volume, under the title 'Pastiches et mélanges', in 1919.
The autograph letter is presented in a midnight blue half morocco chemise, with marbled paper boards, beige suede lined pastedowns, and a slipcase edged with the same morocco.
Proust warmly thanks his correspondent Maurice de Fleury whom he describes as a "scholar and writer", for his favorable reception of his "little pastiches": "Your double merit should make you doubly severe: and you excuse pastiche, that inferior genre!" (Votre double mérite devrait vous rendre doublement sévère : et vous excusez le pastiche, ce genre inférieur !), acknowledging with irony the still precarious place of this unusual genre, although popular during Proust's lifetime.
Pastiche was perceived more as a stylistic musing or even a student exercise than a true creation worthy of literary praise. Yet here the writer considers it here a refreshing addition to the strict hierarchy of genres that still prevailed: "Handled, however, by your hands more beautiful than mine, it seems to me that it could perhaps become a more discreet, more fragile and more elegant form of literary criticism. Very proud minds could devote themselves to it, and very fine minds, like yours, very attached to greatness, seriousness, duty, as wise, could take pleasure in it, and follow these games." (Manié pourtant par vos mains plus belles que les miennes, il me semble qu'il pourrait peut-être devenir comme une forme indirecte, plus discrète, plus frêle et plus élégante de critique littéraire. Des esprits très fiers pourraient s'y adonner, et des esprits très fins. comme le vôtre, très attraché par la grandeur, le sérieux, le devoir, aussi sage, pourrait s'y plaire, suivre ces jeux). With these words, Proust asserts the interest of 'critical pastiche,' which was already well established and acted as an empirical analysis of an author's style. Since his years as a student in Condorcet, the writer had regularly indulged in this activity with, according to him, varying degrees of success: "I have also sometimes made pastiches of medical literature! [these writings are now lost] If I could have found them again, or started them again (but all that is too far away) I would have published them if I had known that you read this for fun. I don't need to tell you that, considered inimitable, you are not among the authors I pastiched. But [...] others are less perfect and combined some very interesting qualities with small flaws that could be imitated and caricatured." (J'ai été aussi quelques fois à faire des pastiches de littérature médicale ! Si j'avais pu les retrouver, ou les recommencer (mais tout cela est trop loin) je les aurais publiés si j'avais su que vous lisiez cela pour vous amuser. Je n'ai pas besoin de vous dire que jugé inimitable, vous n'y figurez pas. Mais [...] d'autres sont moins parfaits et joignaient à des qualités bien intéressantes, des petits défauts dont l'imitation et la caricature étaient possibles). Pastiche had many virtues for the writer, and its use undoubtedly helped him refine his own style. The exercise would soon go beyond the confines of literary criticism, as Paul Aron remarks: "It is not wrong to say that In Search of Lost Time is a gigantic pastiche of fin de siècle social discourse." Proust's magnum opus indeed contains a number of pastiches: their most remarkable appearance is undoubtedly a true-false quotation from the "unpublished journal of the Goncourts", a passage entirely invented by Proust which was published in 'Time Regained'.

An exceptional testimony about an important process of Proustian literary creation, which appears in the pages of In Search of Lost Time.