Book excerpt: Chardin and Rembrandt is an unfinished essay written around 1895 by Marcel Proust. Oft overlooked in Prousts illustrious writing career, this book is a newly translated version by David Zwirner Books as one of the first two entries in its ekphrasis series. This essay is a literary experiment in which an unnamed narrator gives advice to a young man suffering from melancholy, taking him on an imaginary tour through the Louvre where his readings of Chardin imbue the everyday world with new meaning, and his ruminations on Rembrandt take his melancholic pupil beyond the realm of mere objects.