ABSTRACT
Marcel Proust died in November 1922 at the age of fifty-one, and the following January Andre Gide’s N.R.F.—which had brought Proust into its select group by publishing fragments of his work as early as June and July 1914— brought out an issue of homage to the great writer. Among its numerous essays were Gide’s thoughts on rereading Proust’s first book, which can well be compared with his “Note to Angele” of 1921, both of which properly belong in his Pretexts. The life of Proust has filled the prophetic little sentence with a special emotion. Illness had kept Proust shut up in the Ark and had tempted him or forced him into that completely nocturnal existence to which he finally became accustomed, against whose dark background the microscopic specimens furnished by his amazing memory stand out with luminosity. The lucid genius of Proust already pervades this youthful sentence, and his work will indeed be permeated with the “sweet moments of clear-sightedness.”
