On November 21st, 1922, the funeral of Marcel Proust was held in the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot in Paris, three days after his death, to the notes of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte. The coffin was accompanied by a military escort, as Proust was a knight of the Légion D’Honneur since 1920. The funeral cortege crossed the entire city, passing through the Champs-Élysées to the Père-Lachaise cemetery, where he now rests not far from Chopin, Balzac, Bizet, Camus and Jim Morrison.
His death made news in the newspapers of Europe. In England, the Guardian’s obituary begins by taking a year off him: “he was fifty years old”. The article speaks of his poor health from childhood, his odd habits, his pale complexion, his “burning black eyes”, his being, overall, a short and frail fellow. This “strange being” led a hermit’s life, with only a few privileged friends. Their meetings took place “among precious furniture” in his cork-clad flat, away from the noises of the city. He was a writer for a “select minority” of readers, his style being too complex and obscure. His intricate meditations could not appeal to the mass of readers. Despite all this, for the columnist, of all the idols and masters of current French literature, Proust is the one likely to earn a place that time cannot take away from him.
In addition to many ambassadors and members of the Jockey-Club de Paris, the funeral was also attended by many of those who had been guests at an event held a few months earlier at the Hotel Majestic. On the occasion of the premiere of Stravinsky’s Renard staged by Djagilev’s Russian Ballets, Mr and Mrs Schiff had organised what was going to be, in their hopes, the dinner of the century. Among the many guests of honour were Proust, Stravinsky, Picasso, and Joyce – alongside critic Clive Bell, the entire corps de ballet, and the young conductor Ernest Ansermet.
Much has been written about that evening which had the main purpose of bringing together the two great men of letters of the time, Proust and Joyce. The only other occasion for them to be so close to each other, would have been Proust’s funeral.
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Various anecdotes circulate about the dinner, but all the versions have in common an underlying truth. If those present were expecting verbal fireworks, grand philosophical discussions on the highest systems of literature, stylistic challenges and duels, or even just an acknowledgement of mutual esteem, they were sadly mistaken. Little or nothing of significance would have happened. And yet, whatever little is still more important than the unlikely in-depth exchanges between two men so different in characters, temperament, background, habits and goals.
In one thing, however, Proust and Joyce converged: being latecomers. First came the Irishman when dinner was already over. In an obvious state of alcoholic alteration, he went straight to where the champagne was being served. He sat down next to Schiff and remained silent for what must have seemed an eternity. That was before he fell asleep and started snoring.
Much later, between two and three o’clock in the morning, Marcel Proust appeared, elegantly furred but looking pale and sickly.
Joyce never cared for Proust’s works, though he had some admiration for his earlier stories. Proust said he did not know anything of the recently published Ulysses. Joyce would have described their conversation as consisting mainly of the word “no”.
Among the illustrious sources regarding the evening’s proceedings is an outstanding Italian writer, likened by critics for various reasons to both Joyce and Proust: Italo Svevo, one of the models for Leopold Bloom.
Having heard the story from Joyce himself in one of their Parisian meetings in the mid-1920s, Svevo wrote that «one night Proust, already in great pain, resolved to leave his house… probably compelled by the need for an enquiry in order to finish some of his sentences or some of his remarks on some real event».
The impulse that made Proust leave his comfortable home was in all probability the desire to ask Stravinsky about Beethoven’s last quartets. The composer cut him short telling him that he detested the German musician.
Svevo recounts that Proust then «made the acquaintance of Joyce and, distracted by his own need immediately asked him: “Do you know Princess X?” “No”, replied Joyce. Then Proust asked: “Do you know Princess Y?” “No”, replied the Joyce, “nor do I care for her at all”. Understandably “they parted and never saw each other again”.
It is quite likely that this version incorporates some amused exaggerations, for we know from several other sources that the Irishman never indulged in such rude behaviour in public. The story, however, does tell us much about the difference in social and even political goals between the two.
Certainly, both were interested in the most minute details of reality, but it is a fact that Joyce, unlike Proust, was naturally annoyed by elites and always remained distant from them. All in all, he was still, as a snobbish Virginia Woolf had written many years earlier, a «self-taught workingman».
Even if the conversation did not involve only princes and princesses, it certainly never touched on matters too deep. According to some they talked about their mutual passion for truffles; for others they exchanged information about their respective ailments.
They could have kept talking at Proust’s place later on, but the Frenchman asked the driver to take Joyce home rather than inviting him in.
Joyce’s tribute to the him - and this is perhaps his best epitaph - is what he wrote in Finnegans Wake, recognising his colleague’s rightful claim to eternity: “The Prouts who will invent a writing there ultimately is the poeta”, where Prouts (instead of Proust) is an Irish priest (Father Prout – Francis Sylvester Mahony), the author of The Bells of Shandon.
Enrico Terrinoni is Professor of English Literature at the University of Perugia and president of the James Joyce Italian Foundation
