Alfred Agostinelli (1888–1914)
Alfred Agostinelli was born in Monaco on 11 October 1888 to an Italian-French family. In his youth he worked as a taxi driver and later as Marcel Proust’s chauffeur. In 1913 he became Proust’s secretary, during which he copied out the writer’s manuscripts. Agostinelli was interested in aviation and began pilot training. He died tragically in a plane crash on 30 May 1914 in the Mediterranean off Antibes, during only his second solo flight. The accident occurred in front of his partner Anna Square’s brother. Agostinelli was buried in Nice, where his grave has been preserved thanks to Proust scholar Jean-Marc Quarantan.
Proust first met Agostinelli in the summer of 1907 at Cabourg, Normandy, where Agostinelli worked as a taxi driver. In the summers of 1907 and 1908, Proust travelled in his taxi. Their relationship deepened over the years, and in 1913 Agostinelli moved to Paris to live with Proust, together with his partner Anna Square. Proust was deeply attached to Agostinelli, but the feelings did not appear to be reciprocal. Agostinelli fled to Monaco in December 1913, and Proust tried in vain to bring him back, even considering buying a plane for him. Agostinelli’s death shocked Proust profoundly; he wrote to his friend Henry Bordeaux that a part of himself had died with Agostinelli.
In Agostinelli, Proust saw something that transcended his ordinary background: a taxi driver who had momentarily become the central figure in his life. Their relationship was intense and full of constant misunderstandings. Agostinelli was at once vulnerable, fragile, and distant – and it was precisely this distance that caused Proust anguish when Alfred disappeared unexpectedly. The episode of buying a plane and Alfred’s refusal appears as a tragic opposition: Proust’s longing for love versus Alfred’s fleeing nature. His death ended a connection that, for Proust, was perhaps as much fantasy as reality. In the novel, the complex relationship between the narrator and Albertine mirrors this relationship in almost every detail.
Sources:
Quaranta, Jean-Marc, Un amour de Proust – Alfred Agostinelli (1888-1914). Bouquins, 2021.
Lettres, pp.388,1171-1172.
Tadié 2000, pp.21n,468,499,516,528,532-533,556,585-590,598,606,615.
The tragic fate of Marcel Proust’s Monegasque secretary. Hello Monaco magazine 27 Aug, 2024. https://www.hellomonaco.com/sightseeing/history-pages/the-tragic-fate-of-marcel-prousts-monegasque-secretary/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Photo: Paul Nadar, c.1913?. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.