Proust's Drawings and the Secret of the "Solitary House"

This article examines drawings by Marcel Proust that have received little critical attention. They are two-dimensional landscapes, summarily composed using simple lines and childlike shapes: the sun, a few trees, a house. I show that these drawings, while they may appear naïve, are in fact designed to make visible a network of literary, musical, and deeply personal references, shared with a specific addressee: Reynaldo Hahn. In doing so I shed light on the secret of the "solitary house" described by Legrandin in "Combray," as well as on key passages in Jean Santeuil and at both ends of the Recherche.