Let's Get Reading: Newsletter 73

“A good book is an event in my life.” – Stendhal

A meeting of minds that went nowhere, fast

I love a crazy crossover episode. Put two icons in the same room, and sparks will fly. Right? Not always, as it turns out. In May 1922 (103 years ago this month), one of the most improbable literary dinners in history took place at the Majestic hotel in Paris. The party was hosted by the well-connected arts patrons Violet and Sydney Schiff, and the guests included Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust, amongst a few others. Indeed, the two set out to bring together this specific group, whom they considered the four most important living artists at the time. Joyce had just published Ulysses, Proust was nearing the end of In Search of Lost Time. Stravinsky was riding high off The Rite of Spring, and his Renard had just premiered, staged by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Picasso was, of course, Picasso.

A quote from scholar Richard Davenport-Hines, who’s written a whole book about this very dinner party, A Night at The Majestic: Proust & The Great Modernist Dinner Party of 1922, to set the scene: