Correspondance, tome 17

Category: Livres,Romans et littérature,Littérature française

Correspondance, tome 17 Details

In 8 relié toilé rouge sous jaquette illustrée 614 p. Editions Plon 1989.

Reviews

This particular volume is a rare find. It is part of Kolb's 21-tome set of Proust's letters, a set itself essential to studying the author. It's a pity Plon does not make the complete set available again, perhaps this time, in electronic format. But it is out of print. Like Proust before him, Kolb devoted himself completely to his life-project -- in his case, finding and editing a comprehensive, annotated edition of the letters, while many of Proust's correspondents were still alive. (A fascinating and moving essay on Kolb's life-long effort has been published by his daughter Prof. Jocelyne Kolb and is included in volume 4 of the English translation of Proust's Selected Letters.) Like his subject, Kolb devoted himself to his work throughout a lengthy terminal illness -- even to the point of death, for he reviewed the final proof of tome 21 in the clinic where, shortly thereafter, Kolb died. An extraordinary scholar in the service of an extraordinary artist, surely: the parallel with Proust verges on an exemplary parable of scholarship, before which one cannot help but stand in awe.Plon owes Kolb more than the single volume selection that Mme Leriche edited a few years ago, fine though that selection is and attentive as her editorship proved to be. In an age of electronic publications, how hard would it be to issue a new edition of the Kolb set on disk? Or make it available in some web-based fashion? Producing the original set enjoyed a public subvention from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an arm of the federal goverment of the USA. Wouldn't it be short money for the French government to support a second, electronic-format edition of the set?As it is, very few libraries possess the complete 21-tome set, and most of those are university libraries not readily accessible to the non-academic public. Full sets come on the market highly infrequently. Certain volumes (especially tomes 1-10 and tome 12, for 1913, the year Du Côté de chez Swann was published) are more or less readily available; but many later volumes are seldom seen. So, it was a rare occasion to see tome 17 offered for sale. Understandably, the item's price was commensurate with its rarity.In this particular Amazon.fr transaction, the seller's service was commendable: reliable, prompt, and courteous. The book arrived well packaged and protected from the caprice and hazards of international shipping from France to the United States. A most reliable seller.