Proust auction sky rockets!
Booklovers around the globe had a bit of an exciting week when all kinds of lovely Proust memorabilia went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Paris. Among other things, His final words, a golden watch and a poem He wrote about housekeeper and confidante Celeste Albaret.
If I ever thought I had a shot at owning a sliver of Proust, master of the endless sentence, I was sadly mistaken, because bidders from all over the world flocked to the auction rooms to have a go at owning a piece of literary history.
Like the auctioneer said: Proust’s name is still ‘magical’ and bidders went a bit crazy, crisis or no crisis. Prousts final words went for no less than 21.000 euros. Zoiks! That’s almost double the estimate! The poem got 17.000, a lock of His hair 11.000. His golden watch, to top things off, got the bidders vying with each other for up to a staggering 60.000. Wow. Sotheby;s were hoping for about 15-20.000 on that little trinket!
However steep these figures may seem, I wish it’d been me! If I’d had the money laying around doing nothing, I would have been right there in the thick of it. It’s probably not a bad investment either ’cause it’s not like there will be more ‘final words’ coming along soon!
