PROUST'S FRIEND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 730, 10 July 1953, Page 13

PROUST'S FRIEND

PROUST’S ORIANE, by Princess Marthe a the Falcon Press. English price, 12/6. PROUST is for many people an esoteric writer, and this volume is even more esoteric than Proust. It is more likely, I fancy, to appeal to the inhabitants of the Almanach de Gotha than to the literary students of Remembrance of Things Past, that vast and influential novel of middle and upper class France. The book is a study of the Comtesse de Chévigné, who was the model for Proust’s Duchesse de Guermantes, Princess Bibesco knew the Comtesse as an elderly woman and tries to recreate from her letters and _ remembered witticisms some of the brilliance of her youth. But alas for the difference between lame biography and the creative imagination of a great novelist! Proust’s Duchesse is a dazzling creature created by a man who could

fuse pity with adoration and tenderness with satire. Princess Bibesco does no more than sketch an elderly aristocratic war-horse whose hauteur is well -documented but whose ¢harm has long evaporated. The only photograph of the lady shows her-in old age. Surely if she had to be shown in the flesh she should have appeared as Proust knew her, the lovely and unattainable princesse lointaine. There is a good case for keeping our. (continued on next page) |

K KS

(continued trom previous page) princesses Jointainée. If they get too near -particularly if the process has taken too long-the results are horribly dis-

illusioning.

I.A.

G.