Proust questionnaire

Questionnaire ~ Questionnaire de Proust written by Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. The questions were made in English. First published and translated in 1924. In Russian: Анкета Марселя Пруста.

Questionnaire #1:

1. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
2. Where would you like to live?
3. What is your idea of earthly happiness?
4. To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
5. Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
6. Who are your favorite characters in history?
7. Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
8. Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
9. Your favorite painter?
10. Your favorite musician?
11. The quality you most admire in a man?
12. The quality you most admire in a woman?
13. Your favorite virtue?
14. Your favorite occupation?
15. Who would you have liked to be?

Questionnaire #2:

1. Your most marked characteristic?
2. The quality you most like in a man?
3. The quality you most like in a woman?
4. What do you most value in your friends?
5. What is your principle defect?
6. What is your favorite occupation?
7. What is your dream of happiness?
8. What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
9. What would you like to be?
10. In what country would you like to live?
11. What is your favorite color?
12. What is your favorite flower?
13. What is your favorite bird?
14. Who are your favorite prose writers?
15. Who are your favorite poets?
16. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
17. Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
18. Who are your favorite composers?
19. Who are your favorite painters?
20. Who are your heroes in real life?
21. Who are your favorite heroines of history?
22. What are your favorite names?
23. What is it you most dislike?
24. What historical figures do you most despise?
25. What event in military history do you most admire?
26. What reform do you most admire?
27. What natural gift would you most like to possess?
28. How would you like to die?
29. What is your present state of mind?
30. To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
31. What is your motto?

The answers of 13 years old Marcel Proust:

1. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
   To be separated from Mama.
2. Where would you like to live?
   In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal.
3. What is your idea of earthly happiness?
   To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater.
4. To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
   To a life deprived of the works of genius.
5. Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
   Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real.
6. Who are your favorite characters in history?
   A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry.
7. Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
   A woman of genius leading an ordinary life.
8. Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
   Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful.
9. Your favorite painter?
   Meissonier.
10. Your favorite musician?
    Mozart.
11. The quality you most admire in a man?
    Intelligence, moral sense.
12. The quality you most admire in a woman?
    Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence.
13. Your favorite virtue?
    All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues.
14. Your favorite occupation?
    Reading, dreaming, and writing verse.
15. Who would you have liked to be?
    Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.

another version:

• Your favourite virtue. - Toutes celles qui ne sont pas particulières à une secte, les universelles.
• Your favourite qualities in a man. - L'intelligence, le sens moral.
• Your favourite qualities in a woman. - La douceur, le naturel, l'intelligence.
• Your favourite occupation. - La lecture, la rêverie, les vers, l'histoire, le théâtre.
• Your chief characteristic. -
• Your idea of happiness. - Vivre près de tous ceux que j'aime avec les charmes de la nature, une quantité de livres et de partitions, et pas loin un théâtre français.
• Your idea of misery. - Etre séparé de maman.
• Your favourite colour and flower. - Je les aime toutes, et pour les fleurs, je ne sais pas.
• If not yourself, who would you be? - N'ayant pas à me poser la question, je préfère ne pas la résoudre. J'aurais cependant bien aimé être Pline le jeune.
• Where would you like to live? - Au pays de l'idéal, ou plutôt de mon idéal.
• Your favourite prose authors. - George Sand, Aug. Thierry.
• Your favourite poets. - Musset.
• Your favourite painters and composers. - Meissonnier, Mozart, Gounod.
• Your favourite heroes in real life. - Un milieu entre Socrate, Périclès, Mahomet, Musset, Pline le Jeune, Aug. Thierry.
• Your favourite heroines in real life. - Une femme de génie ayant l'existence d'une femme ordinaire.
• Your favourite heroes in fiction. - Les héros romanesques poétiques, ceux qui sont un idéal plutôt qu'un modèle.
• Your favourite heroines in fiction. - Celles qui sont plus que des femmes sans sortir de leur sexe, tout ce qui est tendre poétique, pur, beau dans tous les genres.
• Your favourite food and drink. -
• Your favourite names. -
• Your pet aversion. - Les gens qui ne sentent pas ce qui est bien, qui ignorent les douceurs de l'affection.
• What characters in history do you most dislike. -
• What is your present state of mind. -
• For what fault have you most toleration? - Pour la vie privée des génies.
• Your favourite motto. - Une qui ne peut pas se résumer parce que sa plus simple expression est ce qu'[il y] a de beau, de bon, de grand dans la nature.

Cet album fut retrouvé par André Berge, un des fils d'Antoinette Faure, qui publia pour la première fois en 1924 les pages remplies par Marcel Proust. André Berge rapporte que certaines pages comportent des dates qui s'échelonnent entre 1884 et 1887.

• André Berge, "Autour d'une trouvaille", Cahiers du Mois, n. 7, 1er décembre 1924, pp. 5-18.

The answers of 20 years old Marcel Proust:

1. Your most marked characteristic?
   A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired.
2. The quality you most like in a man?
   Feminine charm.
3. The quality you most like in a woman?
   A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship.
4. What do you most value in your friends?
   Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having.
5. What is your principle defect?
   Lack of understanding; weakness of will.
6. What is your favorite occupation?
   Loving.
7. What is your dream of happiness?
   Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.
8. What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
   Never to have known my mother or my grandmother.
9. What would you like to be?
   Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be.
10. In what country would you like to live?
    One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining].
11. What is your favorite color?
    Beauty lies not in colors but in their harmony.
12. What is your favorite flower?
    Hers - but apart from that, all.
13. What is your favorite bird?
    The swallow.
14. Who are your favorite prose writers?
    At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti.
15. Who are your favoite poets?
    Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny.
16. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
    Hamlet.
17. Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
    Phedre (crossed out) Berenice.
18. Who are your favorite composers?
    Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann.
19. Who are your favorite painters?
    Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt.
20. Who are your heroes in real life?
    Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors).
21. Who are your favorite heroines of history?
    Cleopatra.
22. What are your favorite names?
    I only have one at a time.
23. What is it you most dislike?
    My own worst qualities.
24. What historical figures do you most despise?
    I am not sufficiently educated to say.
25. What event in military history do you most admire?
    My own enlistment as a volunteer!
26. What reform do you most admire?
    (no response)
27. What natural gift would you most like to possess?
    Will power and irresistible charm.
28. How would you like to die?
    A better man than I am, and much beloved.
29. What is your present state of mind?
    Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions.
30. To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
    Those that I understand.
31. What is your motto?
    I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.

External links

• The Infamous Proust Questionnaire
• Proust Questionnaire
• "Les questionnaires de Marcel Proust" (in French)
• Answer the Proust Questionnaire

This work is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less.