A. Gimeno y Cabañas: “Quando incontrai Marcel Proust” (1932)

The spanish reception of Proust’s work between the 1920s and the 1930s is lively and marked not only by the first translation of the Recherche in order of appearance (1920), but also by a large number of articles published in newspapers and periodicals. In this scenario, we can meet the evocation of a dinner at Proust’s home by a Spanish nobleman and doctor, Amalio Gimeno y Cabañas. The dinner took place in 1894, within the 9th International Sanitary Conference in Paris, in respect of which the Count Gimeno was part of the Spanish delegation. He was invited by Professor Adrien Proust, father of the future author of the Recherche, and a key figure in the Conference itself. It was on that evening that the Spanish doctor met French professor’s wife, and also the young Marcel, who was 22 years old. Some years later, Gimeno y Cabañas rebuilt that episode and finely outlined the figures of Madame Weil and his son Marcel.