Cahier 54 (Cahiers 1 à 75 de le Bibliothèque nationale de France) (review)

This two-volume edition of Proust's fifty-forth 'cahier', which dates for the most part from 1914 (roughly halfway through the composition of A la recherche du temps perdu), is the first instalment in a collective project to provide facsimiles and transcriptions of each of the notebooks contained within the 'Fonds Proust' at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Founded in 1962 and completed in 1984, the 'fonds' contains, among other things, no less than 75 notebooks used by the author between 1908 and his death in 1922. Barely a quarter of their 8000 handwritten pages, which played an inestimable role in the genesis of the Recherche, have been published. The first volume of this new series contains colour facsimiles of each page of the manuscript in its original format (including 'paperoles' —fully unfurled —and 'papiers collés'), and a diagram of 'unités textuelles', which saves the reader the onerous task of piecing together textual fragments. The second volume offers an exhaustive 'diplomatic' transcription as well as a rich critical apparatus, with an introduction, meticulous notes, an 'analyse' (which is also invaluable for the joining up of bits of text) and an index. In terms of content, the first textual 'unité' of the notebook is unique in the volume in that it is not devoted to the death of Albertine and its upshot. It relates the jealous agonies of M. de Charlus, 'délaissé' by the young 'Félix', whom he imagines both to be pursued by and as pursuer of 'des invertis' —in town, at sea, even in 'le confessional' (p. 19). In the Introduction to the second volume, Nathalie Mauriac Dyer is keen to tie these brief passages about Charlus and the remaining text that concerns Albertine to Proust's relationship with his chauffeur Alfred Agostinelli, who died in a plane crash in 1914. While one should, of course, be wary of extreme forms of Sainte-Beuvism, Mauriac Dyer makes careful use of references within the notebook to events both in Proust's life and elsewhere in order to date key passages. In terms of transcription, the 'diplomatic' approach, which reproduces the layout of the manuscript page without aiming at photographic exactness, makes for fascinating reading. The 'biffures' do not fully mask the words they rule out, allowing the reader to trace aborted lines of flight within Proust's oeuvre that are invisible in the published Pléiade editions. The importance of this work cannot be overstated. It will be of interest to anyone working on Proust (and not only to the more 'genetically' inclined scholars) and on modern European literature in general. It also sets a clear standard for future manuscript transcriptions. One is left wondering how many volumes in the series will appear in one's lifetime and frustrated by the prospect of not living long enough to see the complete set. There is a word that appears regularly on the pages of Proust's manuscript and which describes perfectly the first two volumes in this series: 'Capitalissime'.