"What happened when Albert Einstein met Charlie Chaplin?" The Independent

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

"Most convergences between tremendously distinguished writers, however, tend to end in bathos. Take the head-spinning evening of 18 May 1922, at the de luxe Hotel Majestic in Paris, where a moneyed couple of London arts patrons called Sydney and Violet Schiff hosted dinner for 40 people to celebrate the first performance of Stravinsky's ballet Le Renard, performed by the Ballets Russes under the great impresario Serge Diaghilev. The Schiffs had a reputation for pulling diverse but brilliant people together; their guest list on this night, however, was exceptionally ambitious. Along with Diaghilev and Stravinsky, they'd invited Picasso, Proust and James Joyce. A perfect quintet of the arch-modernists of the 20th century, five men at the cutting-edge of innovation, the "breaking of forms" and the jettisoning of the past. Would they like each other? Would they strike sparks? Would they agree to collaborate? Would they chat in ordinary human words?

Joyce arrived drunk at 11pm. He'd failed to rent or borrow a dinner suit for the glittery occasion and was, reportedly, embarrassed about being under-dressed. For a time he sat with his head in his hands, gazing at his glass of champagne. Marcel Proust swanned in at 2.30am, having just got up (he was writing the Sodom and Gomorrah chapters of A La Recherché du Temps Perdu, and working through the night in his sealed-off, cork-lined room.) He homed in on Stravinsky and asked, "Doubtless you admire Beethoven?"

"I detest Beethoven," said Stravinsky shortly.

"But cher maître," Proust protested, "surely the late sonatas and quartets ... "

"Are even worse than the rest," said Stravinsky.

Joyce, meanwhile, had fallen asleep. When he woke, he found Proust standing before him, asking, "Do you like truffles?" "Yes I do," said Joyce. History does not record if the two literary Titans munched their way through a box of chocolates together, but it's pleasing to imagine the sight.

How elevated was their conversation? Apparently Proust said, "I have never read your works, Mr Joyce," and Joyce replied, quick as a flash, "I have never read your works, M. Proust." So there. Joyce later claimed that he tried to talk to the Frenchman about the allure of chambermaids (clearly Joyce didn't know his interlocutor very well) but Proust wanted to talk about duchesses, and Joyce didn't know any. To change the subject, Joyce complained about his eyes and how they were giving him headaches. "But my stomach!" said Proust. "My stomach!"

And that was it, except for an ill-tempered cab-ride home, when Joyce lit a cigar and opened a window. Proust, allergic both to cigar smoke and open windows, talked non-stop, while Joyce glared at him and finally took the cab grumpily on to his home. "Of course the situation was impossible," Joyce later reflected. "Proust's day was just beginning. Mine was at an end." Actually Proust's was more truly at an end – he died in November that year."