PROUST Marcel (1871-1922).

Lot 160
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
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Result : 2 899EUR
PROUST Marcel (1871-1922).
L.A.S. "Marcel Proust", "45 rue de Courcelles Wednesday" [June 1, 1904, to Doctor Ladislas LANDOWSKI]; 4 pages in-8 (mourning). Beautiful unpublished letter of condolence addressed to his mother's doctor. [Ladislas LANDOWSKI (1867-1956) had been the pupil of Doctor Adrien Proust, Marcel's father, before becoming his assistant in 1894 at the General Inspection of the sanitary services of Paris. He was the one who treated Marcel Proust's mother and assisted her until her death in 1905. His sister Franciszka Wanda (1877-1904) had married the painter William Laparra in 1902; she died accidentally on May 26, 1904, at the age of 24]. "I have not ceased to think of you with infinite sadness since you have been so unhappy. If I have not yet written to you, it is because I am afraid that my words will be very unwelcome to you. All those must seem so foreign to you now, who do not remind you of your sister. And yet, I, who knew her so little, often thought of her. In her wonderful grace, it seemed that one could guess all her intelligence and all her heart. And having for you such a deep sympathy, I often thought with much joy that you had this great happiness to have not far from you this wonderful sister, whose young happiness doubled yours. [...] I can only think of you with great pain, with a feeling of revolt that an elite being like you, who has never done anything but good and spared the suffering of those around him, should be struck down in such an atrocious way. Believe me [...] that I have not stopped thinking about you since that terrible day and that your pain has a great echo in my heart. I cannot separate you from the thoughts of those I love. My father loved you, you were good to my brother, to myself always charming. Mother had the most lively sympathy for your sister". He was too ill to go to the funeral: "I have at least the thought to pity the suffering of those I love and to sympathize with their sorrows. Still alone, I may think about it more strongly"...
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