Q&A with Genius

Though I have yet to familiarize myself with his works personally (though my insatiable appetite for art will soon take me there), I have still fallen for him. He is French writer, great thinker, and avant-garde-ist of the Belle Epoque, Marcel Proust.

He was asked a series of questions twice in his early life, once when 13, once when 20 and his answers are just as bright as the day they left his incandescent inner thoughts.

So youthquakers here are the 13 year old's answers to those questions. Here is the wonderful Proust Questionnaire. What are your thoughts? xoxo

• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
  
  To be separated from Mama
• Where would you like to live?
  
  In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
• 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
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  
  To a life deprived of the works of genius
• 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
• Who are your favorite characters in history?
  
  A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry
• Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
  
  A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
• 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
• Your favorite painter?
  
  Meissonier
• Your favorite musician?
  
  Mozart
• The quality you most admire in a man?
  
  Intelligence, moral sense
• The quality you most admire in a woman?
  
  Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
• Your favorite virtue?
  
  All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
• Your favorite occupation?
  
  Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
• 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.