PROUST (Marcel). Autograph letter signed "Marcel Proust" [to - Lot 191

PROUST (Marcel). Autograph letter signed "Marcel Proust" [to Gustave Geffroy]. Paris, [June 20or 21, 1920]. 4pp. in-12 square. "Dear Monsieur, I will wait for a time when writing a letter is not forbidden and almost impossible, before thanking you for your wonderful Contes du pays d'Ouest [New Tales from the West Country, a work by Gustave Geffroy, published around May 1920 by Georges Crès in Paris]. But I want to tell you what a delight and what a torment they are for me. Since I can no longer travel, I won't be able to see the places you make me nostalgic for. Even before I was so ill, I regretted reading some of the things you wrote about the Baie de la Forêt [located between Fouesnant and Concarneau] in your book: LaBretagne [Paris, Hachette, 1905], that I'd been there before I'd read you, and that I hadn't been able to look with your own eyes (despite what you've said elsewhere that's so true against artists who see after art) [Marcel Proust had stayed at Beg-Meil in Finistère in 1895, with Reynaldo Hahn]. At least I had a memory that I could rectify, enrich and nourish, with your help. But many of the places where you really bring me to life in your Contes du pays d'Ouest, I haven't known; I'll never know. Yet, thanks to you, they surround my eyes far more than the walls between which I live. The "Minerve de couvent", Sansonnet, Fanchette, the "belles-filles" of war, Barbe (I'm not naming my favorites here) are the only companions I allow near me [allusion to characters in Gustave Geffroy's work]. Alas, you have done more than invite me to the West, you have forced me to accept your invitation in spirit and in truth, this real presence is not enough for me and I must be content. Berri has not been so favored as Brittany. How factitious George Sand's speech remains next to your style. The "fragment of nature" under which Marie Dahut sleeps [in fact, a thatched cottage covered with vegetation described by Gustave Geffroy in the tale "LaCoiffe"], is perhaps the part of this whole book that is "truth and poetry" [an expression taken from the title of Goethe's memoirs, Poetry and Truth] that I love the most. How good it feels to imagine myself under its "tiny forest of grasses and herbs". But how sorry I am to be denied the "Confrontation"! Please accept, dear Sir, my admiring and grateful homage..." President of the Académie Goncourt, which had just awarded a prize to Marcel Proust in December 1919, the writer Gustave Geffroy (1855-1926) was also a respected art critic who actively supported the Impressionists, and held the position of Director of the Manufacture des Gobelins.