Peculiar physiognomy

We are very slow to recognize in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the model which is labeled "great talent" in our museum of general ideas. Simply because that physiognomy is new and strange, we can find in it no resemblance to what we are accustomed to call talent. We say rather originality, charm, delicacy, strength; and then one day we realize that it is precisely all this that adds up to talent.


Proust is here in the middle of discussing the writer Bergotte, a fictional creation who was apparently supposed to be something of a combination of the novelist Anatole France and the philosopher Henri Bergson, both of whom the real Marcel much admired. And the narrator Marcel surely takes his reading seriously. In this observation it sounds like he is settling a score with critics who maybe did not appreciate his favorites with the praise he wanted to hear. Obviously the word "talent" holds some special meaning for him.