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.

2. Drawings (1902-1906)

Here Proust inscribes Hahn’s initials (RH) on the female figure’s crown and on the pages of the open book. He replaces the caption “Concordia” with the biblical “Esther,” the subject of a 1905 opera by Hahn, and he sets her next to her adoptive father “Mordecai,” drawn from a statue of Saint Jerome. Below, Proust writes that Esther is shown “with little bbirds,” while Mordecai is “botsched.”
Marcel Proust, “Esther pour Reynaldo Hahn” [n.d.]. b 94M-48 (90), Houghton Library, Harvard University. Gift, Mrs. Bradley Martin, 1994.
Adapted from Émile Mâle, L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France. Paris: Armand Colin, 1902. 203 M24ba, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University.