About this Exhibition

Private Proust: Letters and Drawings to Reynaldo Hahn was produced by François Proulx, Lecturer on Comparative Literature at Harvard University and guest curator at Houghton Library. This online exhibition was originally a component of the Proust and the Arts web site, which served as a resource both for students enrolled in "French 165: Marcel Proust" and for guests and attendees of the interdisciplinary conference held at Harvard University April 19-20, 2013.

3. "An Opuscule" (1909-1913)

In this letter from 1911 playfully addressed to Zadig, Hahn’s new dog, Proust explains – in simplified terms accessible to dogs – his theory on the limited role of intellect and the importance of longing in artistic creation.

“… Zadig, you not read, and you have not ideas. And you must be very unhappy when you feel sad.

But know this, my good little Zadig […] intellect merely allows us to replace those impressions that make you love and suffer with weak facsimiles that cause less sorrow and give less affection. In the rare moments when I recover all my affection, all my suffering, I no longer feel through these false ideas but rather through something that is similar in you and in me, my little douog. And this seems to me so superior to all the rest that it is only when I have reverted to the state of dog, to a poor Zadig like you, that I start to write; books written this way are the only ones I love.”
Marcel Proust, Letter to “Zadig” [Reynaldo Hahn], [early Nov. 1911].  b 94M-48 (93), Houghton Library, Harvard University. Gift, Mrs. Bradley Martin, 1994.