Inscribed and signed: “à Marcel [Proust]; Hommage respectueux. R.H. [18]96.”
Reynaldo Hahn met Marcel Proust in 1894, an encounter that sparked a passionate liaison lasting two years before evolving into a deep friendship that would end only with the writer’s death in 1922. Les Bretonnes was being prepared for publication in late 1895, at the height of the two men’s relationship, when they traveled together along the Breton coast from 4 September to 27 October — first to Belle-Île-en-Mer, then to Beg-Meil in Finistère, where they stayed at the Hôtel Fermont and met the American painter Alexander Harrison, one of the models for Elstir. While Proust read Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes and began writing Jean Santeuil, in which he drew a faithful portrait of Hahn, Hahn himself composed a trio and Là-bas, chœur breton, both drawing on the secular choruses of Les Bretonnes, originally composed in 1892.
This chorus had never been revived, still less published, a situation Hahn was determined to correct. 1896 was one of the most prolific years of their correspondence, with eleven letters from Proust to Hahn. Only one letter in the other direction survives for that year. Over the twenty-nine years the two men corresponded, some 200 letters from Proust are known, against a mere twelve from Hahn. One of these, written on 21 May 1896, concerns the emotional estrangement that would lead to their summer breakup; the other eleven, from 1897 to 1922, are friendly but of little consequence.
This inscription on Les Bretonnes is therefore among the rare surviving letters sent by Hahn to Proust — and perhaps even the earliest known, since Les Bretonnes was printed in February 1896, three months before Hahn’s first known letter to Proust. Although the tone is notably distant, the inscription may well have been written after the summer breakup.
Provenance: Marcel Proust; Patricia Mante-Proust (Sotheby’s, May 2016, lot 172).