Le Pont traversé

Jean Paulhan had been Jacques Rivière’s secretary at the Nouvelle Revue Française since 1920, while Proust had been published by the house since 1918. The two men became friends, although their thirteen-year age difference kept a certain distance between them. Paulhan took part in proofreading La Recherche, notably Le Côté de Guermantes, and after Proust’s death helped Robert Proust and Jacques Rivière organize the first edition of the writer’s general correspondence.

Paulhan presented Proust with copies of his first three books, all on deluxe paper: Le Guerrier appliqué; Jacob Cow, inscribed “with confident admiration”; and the present volume. Jacob Cow was also bound by Jean de Gonet in a matching binding, dated 2006 (Beaussant-Lefèvre, 2013, no. 119). Twenty-three other similar bindings, commissioned from Jean de Gonet by the bookseller Jean-Claude Vrain, are described in his catalogue Marcel Proust. None of the three Proust-Paulhan copies appeared there.

In an article in Libération (20 May 1992), the bookseller and bibliophile Jacques Guérin claimed, in substance, that presentation copies to Proust “did not exist.” He recalled arriving during the move: “in the entrance of the empty apartment, I came upon a heap of paperbound books, with the first page torn out. Madame Proust had torn out the dedications because she did not want her name circulating everywhere. There is no longer a single book with a dedication to Proust.” This account must be qualified, or rather updated: although many copies were indeed lost, some have survived. Pyra Wise has attempted a census of them, noting Proust’s careless treatment of books: “when he borrowed them, he generally returned them in poor condition, if he did not simply leave them in a cab!” A little over 110 copies are now known in total.

A very fine copy.

Pyra Wise, “Une bibliothèque amicale. Les livres dédicacés à Marcel Proust,” in Revue d’études proustiennes, no. 5, 2017, pp. 251–274; Jean-Claude Vrain, Catalogue Marcel Proust, 2022, pp. 134–142.