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The Proust Questionnaire is a questionnaire about one's personality. Its name and modern popularity as

a form of interview is owed to the responses given by the French writer Marcel Proust.

At the end of the nineteenth century, when Proust was still in his teens, he answered a questionnaire in an

English-language confession album belonging to his friend Antoinette, daughter of future French President

Félix Faure, entitled "An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc." At that time, it was a fad among

English families to answer such a list of questions that revealed the tastes and aspirations of the taker.

Proust answered the questionnaire several times in his life, always with enthusiasm. The original

manuscript of his answers of 1890, at the time of his volunteer internship or some little time afterwards,

titled "by Marcel Proust himself," was found in 1924. It was auctioned on May 27, 2003 for the sum of

€102,000.

The television host Bernard Pivot, seeing an opportunity for a writer to reveal at the same time aspects of

his work and his personality, traditionally submitted his guests to the Proust questionnaire at the end of

the French broadcast Apostrophes .

Inspired by Bernard Pivot, James Lipton, the host of the TV program Inside

the Actors Studio , gives an adapted version of the Proust

Questionnaire to some of his guests. Lipton has often incorrectly characterized the questionnaire itself as

an invention of Marcel Proust.

A similar questionnaire is regularly seen on the back page of Vanity Fair

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magazine, answered by various celebrities. In October of 2009, Vanity Fair

launched an interactive version of the questionnaire, that compares your answers to various luminaries.

The questionnaire [edit]

There are two surviving sets of answers to the confession album questions by Proust: the first, from 1885

or 1886, is to an English confessions album, although his answers are in French. The second, from 1891 or

1892, is from a French album, Les confidences de

salon ("Drawing room confessions"), which contains translations of the original questions,

lacking some that were in the English version and adding others.

Confessions Confidences Proust's

questions questions answers 1890

The need to be

loved; more

precisely, the

need to be

Your favorite virtue The principal aspect of my personality caressed and

spoiled much

more than the

need to be

admired

Feminine
Your favorite qualities in a man. The quality that I desire in a man.
charms.

Manly virtues,

Your favorite qualities in a woman. The quality that I desire in a woman. and frankness

in friendship.

Your chief characteristic ---- ----

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To have

tenderness for

me, if their

personage is

What you appreciate the most in your exquisite

What I appreciate most about my friends.
friends enough to

render quite

high the price

of their

tenderness

Not knowing,

Your main fault My main fault not being able

to "want".

Your favourite occupation. My favorite occupation. Loving.

I am afraid it

be not great

enough, I dare

Your idea of happiness My dream of happiness. not speak it, I

am afraid of

destroying it by

speaking it.

Not to have

known my
Your idea of misery. What would be my greatest misfortune?
mother or my

grandmother.

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Myself, as the

people whom I
If not yourself, who would you be? What I should like to be.
admire would

like me to be.

A country

where certain

things that I

should like

would come

Where would you like to live? The country where I should like to live. true as though

by magic, and

where

tenderness

would always

be reciprocated

The beauty is

not in the
Your favourite colour and flower. My favourite colour.
colours, but in

their harmony.

Hers/His - and

---- The flower that I like. after, all of

[1]
them.

---- My favorite bird. The swallow.

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Currently,

Your favorite prose authors. My favorite prose authors. Anatole France

and Pierre Loti.

Baudelaire and
Your favorite poets. My favorite poets.
Alfred de Vigny.

Your favorite heroes in fiction. My heroes in fiction. Hamlet.

Your favorite heroines in fiction. My favorite heroines in fiction. Bérénice.

Beethoven,

Your favorite painters and composers. My favorite composers. Wagner,

Schumann.

Leonardo da

---- My favorite painters. Vinci,

Rembrandt.

Mr. Darlu, Mr.

Your heroes in real life. My heroes in real life.
Boutroux.

Your favorite heroines in real life. ---- ----

What characters in history do you most

---- ----
dislike.

Your heroines in World history My heroines in history. Cleopatra.

Your favorite food and drink. ---- ----

I only have one

Your favorite names. My favorite names.
at a time.

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What is bad
What I hate the most. What I hate most of all.
about me.

I am not

World history characters I hate the most Historical figures that I despise the most. educated

enough.

My military
The military event I admire the most The military event that I admire most.
service!

The reform I admire the most The reform which I admire the most. ----

The gift of nature that I would like to Will-power, and

The natural talent I'd like to be gifted with
have. seductiveness.

Improved--and
How I wish to die How I want to die.
loved.

Boredom from

having thought

What is your present state of mind. My present state of mind. about myself to

answer all

these questions.

Faults for which I have the most Those that I

For what fault have you most toleration?
indulgence. understand.

I should be too

afraid that it
Your favorite motto. My motto.
bring me

misfortune.

Notes [edit]

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Proust Questionnaire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1. ^ In French the gender of the possessive is determined, not by the gender of the possessor, but the gender

of the possessed object - in this case flower, 'fleur', is feminine, but the context gives no assurance of how to

read 'la sienne' meaning 'his/hers'.

Related links [edit]

● Responses to the questionnaire by Antoinette Faure

● Proust.com A Social Network dedicated to the spirit of the Proust Questionnaire.

● Answer Vanity Fair's Interactive Proust Questionnaire and compare your results

● Answer the Proust Questionnaire

Categories: Polling | Marcel Proust

● This page was last modified on 4 October 2010 at 18:37.

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