Marcel PROUST (1871-1922). L.A.S. "Binibuls",... - Lot 191 - Ader

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  3. Marcel PROUST (1871-1922). L.A.S. "Binibuls",... - Lot 191 - Ader
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Lot n° 191
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Marcel PROUST (1871-1922). L.A.S. "Binibuls",... - Lot 191 - Ader
Marcel PROUST (1871-1922). L.A.S. "Binibuls", [March 4, 1911], to Reynaldo Hahn, "Mon vieux Bugnibuls"; 11 pages in-8. Superb letter about music, Wagner and Debussy, in a style full of fantasy. Reynaldo Hahn is in Russia: his reception by Diaghilev has been announced, but Proust wants other echoes for the "Figarso" column. Then he comes to Wagner... "Your dazzling article on the Maîtres Chanteurs [article by R. Hahn in Le Journal, February 21, 1911] highlights with prodigious delicacy the contradiction that struck me and to which you attribute a depth that Wagner certainly did not have etc. For it is incomprehensible that the same people who shrugged their shoulders at a piece that Wagner did his best, should feel their tears flowing before another piece by the same author. As for Beckmesser, your bad faith goes beyond all limits. As it is probable that someone who learns lyrics by heart would remember bawling for brilliant radish for paradise ogress for drunkenness i.e. words with opposite meanings, whereas if one were to remember wrongly one would remember different words but with the same meaning. It is already implausible enough, if there was no mystification on the part of Sachs, that he should have read so wrongly, but at least this can only be explained by reading. And in your desire to confuse your Bunibuls and lose him forever as you once did with Thomson and Sarah Bernard, you have gone too far. For your Buncht is now more careful. And he won't let himself be discredited like that anymore. In the same way I said some stupid things in my letter about Pelléas, but if you replace Malbrough with the King of Thule it is irreproachable. The declamation is closer to Gounod than to Wagner. Basically, how good and less tiring were the "Capulets, Montagues" than Tris Sieg tan fried [...] I feel that something they call charm is exercised in literature on non-literary people, which is what I hate most and which means least of all merit, charm with a continuity that would be called monotony or personality according to the listener's disposition, is exercised on me with a spell that I have not known since Mayol. I perpetually ask for Pelléas on the theatrophone as I used to go to the Mayol Concert. And all the rest of the time there is not a word that does not come back to me. The parts I like best are those of music without words (but is there any point in knowing what I like in Pelléas!!). It is true that the one of the mephitic and vertiginous underground for example, is so little mephitic and vertiginous that it would seem to me to go very well on the Fountain of Bandusie [melody of R. Hahn on an ode of Horace]. But beside that, for example when Pelléas comes out of the underground on an "Ah! je respire enfin" (I breathe at last), there are some lines really impregnated with the freshness of the sea and the smell of roses that the breeze brings him. There is nothing "human" about it, of course, but it is deliciously poetic, although it is, as far as I can guess by comparison, what I would hate most if I really loved music, that is to say, it is only a fleeting "notation" instead of those pieces where Wagner expects to convey everything that is near, far, easy, difficult about a subject (the only thing I value in literature). This delightful passage ends with a strict musical equivalent of my "bien gentil" (by Reboux) which I will point out to Buncht. Similarly, without continuing these interesting revelations, I will show Buncht a phrase "It seems that your voice has passed over the sea in springtime" that would be adorable in Werther. But what I hate is the distinction obtained by throwing overboard all that one has to express (like Marcel Boulenger), by which I intended to humiliate Debussy under the feet of my dear Buniguls of genius who does just the opposite to him - if the mere thought of a comparison now that I see what he thinks of Pelléas were not to horrify him. And yet... And even for the orchestra, while a Forest etc. knocks me out with their heaviness, I find there, as in La Fête chez Thérèse, obtained by a disloyal and infinitely less poetic decantation, a fine and light and always original and charming music."... Proust, imitating the Russian language, is amused to explain that he hesitated to open the letter of "Bugninuls", fearing "that on the way in the post office pell-mell with Siberian letters it has taken plague bacilli and gives me plague"... Proust, the "poor Buncht", "cried to see the welcome of the Blue God", the ballet of R. Hahn for the Ballets Russes. He instructs R. Hahn to greet "Vestris" [Nijinsky] and Bakst "whom I admire prodigiously, not knowing anything about p
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