To judge from the newspapers, there have been tremendous “crises” in public affairs during the last few days: the triumph of Fascismo in Italy, the Lausanne Conference, the English elections. But to many of us the great events are merely spectacular; they pass rapidly across the screen, while the band plays irrelevant scraps of syncopated music, and seem no more real than any other of the adventures, avowedly fictitious, that are “filmed” for our idle hours. They don’t, save on reflection and much diligent pondering of leading articles, come home to our business and bosoms. But one announcement in _The Times_ of last Monday week shocked many of us with a sudden, absurdly indignant bewilderment, like a foul blow: I mean the death of Marcel Proust. It is not only absurd but impious to be indignant with the decrees of Fate. The wise throughout the ages have prescribed for us our proper behaviour in the face of such an event; and most of us find the prescription quite useless. But, on the death of an author, there is this peculiar consolation that never fails: his work lives absolutely unaffected by his death. ... We can light the lamp, make a clear fire, and sit down to the book with the old thrill. There is only the thought that we must be content with what we have, that we are to get no more from that hand. With Marcel Proust, however, it seems that we are spared even that mortification. He has left behind him the completion of _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_. This is great news. The announcements from the press of _La Nouvelle Revue Française_ will be eagerly awaited. Even a new Anatole France is not so important an event. It has been said that Proust will go down to posterity as the author of one book. This is only true in a literal sense. For the many volumes of _A la Recherche_ that already crowd the shelves are several “books” in one. It is not a “story,” but a panorama of many stories. Indeed, who reads Proust for the “story”? His book is really a picture of the modern world and the modern spirit, and that is its peculiar fascination for us. There are “morbid” elements in it, to be sure—you cannot read a page without seeing that it must have been written by some one who was anything but a normal, healthy human being, and it is not for nothing that _The Times_[4] has compared him to Petronius Arbiter. But one of the advantages of this hyperaesthesia is a heightened sensibility for _everything_, the perception and accurate notation of innumerable details in thought and feeling that escape a normal observer. [Footnote 4: _The Times_, Monday, November 20, 1922: “Marcel Proust: An Appreciation.” (From a Correspondent.)—C.K.S.M.]