Holydays Memories by Marcel Proust

In 1911, Marcel Proust spends holydays at sea in Cabourg, a nice small town in Normandie. He writes to his boyfriend Reynaldo Hahn...


To Reynaldo Hahn

Grand Hôtel,

Cabourg, Tuesday, July the 25th 1911

Mister my bunibuls,

I think much about you, and don't.write to you because I don't enjoy Cabourg this year, and because I suffer from asthma. Imagine, my bunibuls, that every evening, at sunset when I have not put on the ligth yet, I think about you in my small bed with rather sorrow, and at this moment big women come to play at large on the beach some waltzes with hunting horns and valve cornets until the night arrives. It could make me plunge into the sea from melancholy. [...]


Remarks:

- "bunibuls" is one of the gentle words from the private language between Proust and Reynaldo Hahn (untranslatable)

- question: what Italian movie producer (he died recently) does the image of big women playing hunting horns and valve cornets make you think of ?