February 6, 1897. The day when Marcel Proust fights a duel

Aged 26, Marcel Proust has just published his first work of prose poems entitled The Pleasures and the Days. Shortly after its publication, a review published by The newspaper makes him mad with rage. Its author, Jean Lorrain, kills the book. It must be said that the 42-year-old man is famous for his pen soaked in vitriol. He describes Proust as a “whisper” and a “precious writer”. This would not deserve a duel, if Lorrain had not insinuated that Alphonse Daudet would preface Proust’s next book, “because he can refuse nothing to his son Lucien”. Decryption: this innocuous sentence reveals, for those who know how to read between the lines, that there is an intimate relationship between the author Proust and Lucien Daudet, a handsome and frail young man. Which is probably true, but…