Marcel’s Morceaux
At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13 year-old Proust was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book:
- What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? To be separated from Mama
- Where would you like to live? In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
- What is your idea of earthly happiness? To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater
- To what faults do you feel most indulgent? To a life deprived of the works of genius
- Who are your favorite heroes of fiction? Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real
- Who are your favorite characters in history? A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry
- Who are your favorite heroines in real life? A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
- Who are your favorite heroines of fiction? Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful
- Your favorite painter? Meissonier
- Your favorite musician? Mozart
- The quality you most admire in a man? Intelligence, moral sense
- The quality you most admire in a woman? Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
- Your favorite virtue? All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
- Your favorite occupation? Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
- Who would you have liked to be? Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.
One Response to “Marcel’s Morceaux”
What a fag.