…. aber in einem Brief an McGreevy vom Sommer 1929 (2 Jahre vor Erscheinen des Essays):
„I have read the first volume of ‚Du Cote de chez Swann‘, and find it strangely uneven. There are incomparable things – Bloch, Francoise, Tante Leonie, Legrandin, and then passages that are offensively fastidious, artificial and almost dishonest. It is hard to know what to think about him. He is so absolutely the master of his form that he becomes its slave as often as not. Some of his metaphors light up a whole page like a bright explosion, and others seem ground out in the dullest desperation. He has every kind of subtle equilibrium, charming trembling equilibrium, and then suddenly a stasis, the arms of the balance wedged in a perfect horizontal line, more heavily symmetrical than Macaulay at his worst, with primos & secondos echoing to each complacently and reechoing. His loquacity is certainly more interesting and cleverly done than Moore’s, but no less profuse, a maudlin false teeth gobble-gobble discharge from a coli-afflicted belly. I think he drank too much tilleul (note says a tilleul is a ‚lime-flower infusion‘ that went with the madeleine). And to think that I have to contemplate his at stool for 16 volumes!“
Quelle (deaktiviert):
http://cosmoszoo.blogspot.com/2010/12/samuel-becketts-first-impression-of.html
Seite 19 der ersten Arche-Ausgabe von Becketts Proust-Essay (Click to enlarge):
