Le Souvenir d’avoir chanté
Signed presentation inscription by Reynaldo Hahn on the title page: “Exemplaire de Marcel.”
Reynaldo Hahn met Marcel Proust in 1894, an encounter that sparked a passionate episode lasting two years before evolving into a deep friendship that would last until the writer’s death in 1922.
The years 1896–1897 were the most prolific, with eleven letters from Proust to Hahn. Only one letter in the other direction is known for that year. Over the twenty-nine years during which the two men corresponded, some 200 letters from Proust survive, against a mere 12 from Hahn. Only one of these, written on 21 May 1896, concerns the romantic falling-out that led to their break that summer. The other eleven, from 1897 to 1922, are friendly but of little particular interest.
This inscription is one of the very few surviving items sent by Hahn to Proust — only two earlier ones are known, on Les Bretonnes, in 1896, and Théone, in 1897.
Provenance: Marcel Proust — Mante-Proust collection (Sotheby’s, May 2018, lot 146); exhibited: Marcel Proust and his Time, no. 334.