PROUST’S LAST THOUGHTS. The article on the essentialvermeer blog about the effect of Vermeer’s View of Delft on Proust shows that there are some biographers who think that the Proust was making changes to his novel on the night he died, and, remarkably, that the changes were to the passage which described the death of his character Bergotte. This passage from the Tadie biography appears under the heading: “WHEN DID PROUST WRITE THE DEATH OF BERGOTTE?”: “Tadie says the following about Proust’s last night:
‘And during the night, he dictated some sentences to do with Bergotte’s death: a partially incoherent passage, into which he put himself, and he described the activity of the doctors dancing attendance on the dying man.'”
If this report of Proust’s death is correct, Proust was not only making changes in his novel up to the point of death, but he was also making changes in the description of the death of an important character to reflect Proust’s experience of his own death.