Reading Proust: Beginning Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah, the fourth book of In Search of Lost Time, is the last section of the novel to be fully completed by Proust and the last to be published before his death. It begins by overlapping a seemingly minor occurrence in The Guermantes Way. On page 784 of the previous book, the reader finds the narrator venturing out early one morning to visit the Duke and Duchess Guermantes upon their return to Paris. But, he is too early, they have yet to arrive. Later that afternoon, he decides to wait for their carriage, out of sight so as not to be too conspicuous upon their return, upon a staircase in the courtyard. At which time he reports to have made a discovery that the telling of which is “preferable to postpone” so as not to interrupt the narrative of the moment.
The narrator is on the staircase at the start of Sodom and Gomorrah. Passing time, he is observing the Duchess’ courtyard orchids. He considers himself an amateur botanist and is wondering if he might observe a random insect entering a pistil that he finds particularly beautiful. As it turns out, he spots a bumble bee. He drifts downstairs for a closer look when his attention is unexpectedly directed toward M. de Charlus who crossing the square having just visited his aunt at the Hotel Guermantes, happens upon Jupien, owner of a waistcoat shop in the courtyard.
There begins a brief Proustian comic escapade between the two, who are unaware of the narrator’s presence. Without speaking, the two men begin to flirt with one another by slight changes in their facial expressions and posturing, like a mating dance between birds. One blinks a certain way, the other puts his hand on his hip, and so on. “This scene was not, however, positively comic; it was stamped with strangeness, or if you like a naturalness, the beauty of which steadily increased.” (page 6)
The two make seemingly innocuous small talk until Jupien invites M. de Charles into his shop, adding “you shall have everything you wish.” The sneaky narrator, his curiosity peaked, becomes disinterested in the bumble bee and maneuvers himself so that he can listen in on (he cannot see into the room) what transpires – which is sex between the two men.
“For from what I heard at first in Jupien’s quarters, which was only a series on inarticulate sounds, I imagine that few words had been exchanged. It is true that these sounds were so violent that, if they had not always been taken up an octave higher by a parallel plaint, I might have thought that one person was slitting another’s throat within a few feet of me, and that subsequently the murderer and his resuscitated victim were taking a bath to wash away the sins of their crime. I concluded from this later on that there is another thing as noisy as pain, namely pleasure…” (page 12)
Up to this point, we have been led to believe in previous sections of the novel that M. de Charlus was, first, the open lover of Mme Swann (the boy narrator sees M. de Charlus from a distance at Tansonville {Swann's country estate}, in Swann’s Way) and, second, that he enjoys sexual pleasure with many different women. So this will surprise the first-time reader on multiple levels. Proust’s intent, obviously, is to maximize the shock, particularly in consideration that this was published in 1921. But, he also uses this moment to springboard into one of the novels best sections, his philosophy on sexuality, which is, in itself, racy for its time.
To the narrator, as M. de Charlus begins the comical courtyard ‘dance’: “…for what was suggested to me by the sight of this man who was so enamored of, who so prided himself upon, his virility, to whom all other men seemed obviously effeminate, what he suddenly suggested to me, to such an extent had he momentarily assumed the features, the expression, the smile, thereof, was a woman.” (page 5) After he overheard the intercourse, the narrator proclaims that the Baron was a woman in that moment. “He belonged to that race of beings less paradoxical than they appear, whose ideal is manly precisely because their temperament is feminine, and who in ordinary life resemble other men in appearance only; there were each of us carries, inscribed in those eyes through which he beholds everything in the universe, a human form engraves on the surface of the pupil, for them is not that of the nymph but that of an ephebe. “ (page 20)
(As an aside, Proust’s writes longest sentence of the novel during this section. It lasts for about three pages at 958 words.)
Proust proceeds to discuss the concept of the “man-woman” by describing a how certain men can be so seemingly like a woman when lying in repose in bed in the morning. “…the invert vice begins, not when he enters into relations, but when he takes his pleasure with women…it is in vain that he keeps back the admission ‘I am a woman’ even from his demanding mistress (even if she is not a denizen of Gomorrah) when all the time, with the cunning, the agility, the obstinacy of a climbing plant, the unconscious but visible woman in him seeks the masculine organ.” (page 29)
But, Proust is not just speaking of the “deception” of homosexuality. He offers a wider view which is applicable to all possible sexual relationships, including threesomes, fluidity and a source of jealousy. “Some – those no doubt who have been most timid in childhood – are not greatly concerned with the kind of physical pleasure they receive, provided they can associate it with a masculine face. Whereas others, whose sensuality is doubtless more violent, feel an impervious need to localize their physical pleasure. These latter, perhaps, would shock the average person with their avowels…the second sort seek out those women who love other women, who can procure for them a young man, enhance the pleasure they experience in his company; better still, they can, in the same fashion, take with such women the same pleasure as with a man. Whence it arises that jealousy is kindled in those who love the first sort only by the pleasure which they may enjoy with a man, which alone seems to their lovers a betrayal, since they do not participate in the love of women…the other sort often inspires jealousy by their love-affairs with women. For, in their relations with women, they play, for the woman who loves her own sex, the part of another woman, and she offers them at the same time more or less what they find in other men, so that the jealous friend suffers from feeling that the man he loves is riveted to the woman who is to him almost a man, and at the same time feels his beloved almost escape him because, to these women, he is something which the lover himself cannot conceive, a sort of woman.” (pp. 30- 31)
Needless to say this makes for some rather complex sexual relationships which are probably more prevalent today than they were in 1921. Proust is largely speaking of his own experience as a homosexual in this passage. But, clearly his intent is to speak the sexual preferences of women as well. The narrator, being a young man at this point, speaks mainly from the male perspective with the concept of “man-woman” sexuality. But he readily ascribes to human sexuality the mixing of genders and sees a sort of yin-yang equality there. He emphasizes, more than pure homosexuality, male bisexuality while taking female bisexuality for granted. Needless to say, for Proust, sexuality is impossible without jealousy; a dark view but an honest one from his erotic nature. He doesn’t end on a dark note, however.
After this introspective section, the narrator returns to the story: “M. de Charlus had distracted me from looking to see whether the bumble-bee was bringing to the orchid the pollen it had so long been waiting to receive, and had no chance of receiving, save by accident so unlikely that one might call it a sort of miracle. But it was a miracle also that I had just witnessed, about the same order and no less marvelous. As soon as I considered the encounter from this point of view, everything about it seemed to me instinct with beauty.” (page 38)
Interestingly enough Proust designates this short 44-page section as “Part One” of the two-part 724-page volume. This is indicative of the weight of its substance in comparison with the vastness of “Part Two” which is broken up into four chapters of unequal length. Chapter One is about 200 pages long, Chapter Two about 270 pages, about 185 pages for Chapter Three while Chapter Four, a momentous moment in the novel, comes in at a mere 25 pages.
Chapter One is one of the funniest and most entertaining portions of the novel. It features the height of the narrator’s social climb in terms of social events. He attends a reception given by the Prince and Princess de Guermantes, one step up from the Duke and Duchess. It starts with the narrator in great anxiety over whether or not he has even been invited to the party as he is about to enter it. This is “formal” society, even in the afternoon. “The usher asked me my name, and I gave it to him as mechanically as the condemned man allows himself to be strapped to the block. At once he lifted his head majestically and, before I could beg him to announce me in a lowered tone so as to spare my own feelings if I were not invited and those of the Princess de Guermantes if I were, roared the disquieting syllables with a force capable of bringing down the roof.” (page 50)
Halarious. But Proust is just getting started. The narrator meets the Princess and is informed by her that the Prince is in the garden. The narrator’s objective, from that point forward, is to be introduced to the Prince for the first time. Feeling awkward that the Duke and Duchess have yet to arrive (late again!) and recognizing only M. de Charlus at the large affair, he wades through a sea of strangers toward the great room’s doorway leading to the garden. But he is almost immediately intercepted by a fellow piece of “debris” at the gathering, Professor E---. The narrator tries to make use of him, but…
“As he knew absolutely nobody there, and could not wander about indefinitely by himself like a minister of death, having recognized me he had discovered for the first time in his life that he had an infinite number of things to say to me, which enabled him to keep some sort of countenance.” (page 54) The narrator manages to escape the clinging clutches of the professor when he sees a Marquis with which he is acquainted. Perhaps he can secure his introduction via that route.
But when he attempts this he is inadvertently consumed by the Marquis’ wife. “The instinctive attraction which urged Mme de Vaugoubert towards me was so strong that she went as far as to seize my arm so that I might take her to get a glass of orangeade. But I extricated myself on the pretext that I must presently be going, and had not yet been introduced to our host. The distance between me and the garden door where he {the Prince} stood talking to a group of people was not very great. But it alarmed me more than if, in order to cross it, I had had to expose myself to a continuous hail of fire.” (pp. 63 – 64)
One interesting aspect of the novel is that the narrator rarely mentions anything about himself that would cause him to be endeared by these high class elites. We know he was introduced to them initially through his friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup, who is one of their class. After that, everyone willingly accepts him into their salons, parties, and dinners. We also know is that he is the young man of a father of some renown, perhaps a diplomat or international businessman. Without the narrator saying so, it is most likely due to his youth, rather than his background, that older women find him so appealing. He is intercepted by another such woman in route to the garden door.
Only this time, the narrator does something that he hasn’t up until this point of the novel. He knows the name of this woman but he cannot recall it, then, at the party. Proust uses this moment to have a little fun with something he has had a lot of serious philosophical things to say about to this point – memory. Having to awkwardly begin a conversation with someone who knows us but whose name escapes us is something almost everyone has experienced. The narrator claims to quickly have caught himself, however, and the name soon came to him during their conversation.
Now, incredibly, the overarching narrator interrupts the young man narrator within the story itself to poke fun at him. “…allow me, dear author, to waste a moment of your time by telling you that it is a pity that, young as you were (or your hero was, if he isn’t you), you had already so feeble a memory that you could not remember the name of the lady that you knew quite well.” (page 69) There is a lot to unpack in that sentence. First of all, two different levels of the novel’s narration reveal themselves to the reader, the overarching narrator critiques the other narrator. Secondly, Proust obviously parodies his method of narration in the novel. To what extent is the novel autobiographical? That is one of the most controversial aspects of the novel. For Proust, a literary critic of his time, to treat it so off-handedly reveals a subtle and profound sense of literary humor. It is funny and high-art at the same time.
Finally, our narrator, young again, comes to the Prince in the garden. Predictably, especially in the humorous spirit of this part of the story, the payoff of meeting the Prince is a mediocre experience. From his haughty position of dignity, he greets the young man with a simple “Sir.” The narrator is virtually star-struck until the Prince, in an effort to fill the void, utters: “’Do you plan to follow the career of your distinguished father?’ he inquired with a distant but interested air. I answered the question briefly, realizing he asked it only out of politeness, and moved away to allow him to welcome new arrivals.
“I caught sight of Swann, and wanted to speak to him, but at that moment I saw the Prince de Guermantes, instead of waiting where he was to receive the greeting of Odette’s husband, had immediately carried him off, with the force of a suction pump, to the further end of the garden, in order, some people say, ‘to show him the door.’ So bewildered in the midst of the glittering company that I did not learn until two days later, from the newspapers, that a Czech orchestra had been playing throughout the evening, and that fireworks had been going off in constant succession.” (page 75)
But the farce is not over. The narrator gets ahead of himself. He is still at the reception, interacting with other people. At one point: “There was a sort of royal procession to the buffet, at the head of which walked Her Majesty on the arm of the Duke de Guermantes. I happened to arrive at that moment. With his free hand the Duke conveyed to me from a distance of nearly fifty yards, countless signs of friendly welcome, which appeared to mean that I need not be afraid to approach, that I should not be devoured alive instead like sandwiches. But I, who was becoming word-perfect in the language of the court, instead of going even one step nearer, made a deep bow from where I was, without smiling, the sort of bow that I should have made to someone I scarcely knew, then proceeded in the opposite direction. Had I written a masterpiece, the Guermantes would have given me less credit for it than I earned by that bow.” The narrator learns later though his mother that the Duchess: “…said that her husband had been lost in admiration of the bow, that it would have been impossible for anyone to put more into it.” (pp. 84 – 85)
This simple bow is, perhaps, the social high-point of the novel for the narrator and reminds us that form always conquers substance at such gatherings. Eventually the narrator meets Saint-Loup. Robert is on 48 hours leave. The two discuss M. de Charlus with the narrator attempting to verify that Robert is certain of the Baron being a womanizer. Robert simply shrugs his shoulders, says he doesn’t blame the older gentleman and points to how de Charlus is carrying on with certain women at the reception.
Then the conversation turns to a subject that will sexually haunt the narrator off and on for the remainder of the novel. Robert tells him that Mme Putbus has a chambermaid that “I tell you frankly, I’ve never seen such a gorgeous creature.” This chambermaid will never actually appear in the novel. But the idea of her as seen through Saint-Loup’s eyes conjures obsession, closely aligned with jealousy in Proust’s sexual philosophy. It plays into his theory of memory as well, melding with another girl Robert has mentioned.
“Ever since Saint-Loup had spoken to me of a young girl of good family who frequented a house of ill-fame, and of the Baroness Putbus’s chambermaid, it was in these two persons that had now become coalesced and embodied the desires inspired in me day by day by countless beauties of two classes, on the one hand the vulgar and magnificent, the majestic lady’s-maids of great houses, swollen with pride and saying ‘we’ in speaking of duchesses. And on the other hand those girls of whom it was enough sometimes, without even having seen them go past in carriages or on foot, to have read the names in the account of a ball for me to fall in love with them…I fuse together all the most exquisite fleshly matter to compose, after ideal outline traced from me by Saint-Loup, the young girl of easy virtue and Mme Putbus’s maid, my two possessible beauties…” (page 166)
Robert and the narrator are joined briefly by Swann, who is showing signs of his illness. Swann is aware of the gossip caused by the Prince abruptly taking him away for a private conversation. In truth, it was a conversation about the Dreyfus Affair and the Prince was merely telling Swann that he now believes that Dreyfus is innocent. Swann then adds: “'People are very inquisitive. I’ve never been inquisitive, except when I was in love, and when I was jealous. And a lot I ever learned! Are you jealous?’ I told Swann that I had never experienced jealousy, that I did not even know what it was. ‘Well, you can count yourself lucky. A little jealousy is not too unpleasant, for two reasons. In the first place, it enables people who are not inquisitive to take interest in other lives, or of one other at any rate. And then it makes one feel the pleasure of possession, of getting into a carriage with a woman, of not allowing her to go about by herself.” (page 139) This reveals to the reader a bit more on Proust’s philosophy of love while simultaneously being foreboding about what is about to happen to the narrator. Swann, in passing, refers vaguely to the darker aspects of jealousy and possessiveness as a “disease.”
Swann encourages the narrator to write Gilberte sometime, she’d love to hear from him. The narrator is unmotivated to do so, however, as he is no longer interested in her. Now that he has met her and socialized with her, he is no longer attracted to the Mme Guermantes either. Nor is he interested in Albertine outside of “purely sensual desire” which he hopes to fulfill following the reception. But Albertine is late for their date. For the first time, the narrator feels a tinge of jealousy himself because he does not believe her excuse for being tardy. Nevertheless, they proceed to “caresses and kisses.” After which, he ceases to see her for some time in order to explore “other fairies and their dwellings.”
To be continued…
The narrator is on the staircase at the start of Sodom and Gomorrah. Passing time, he is observing the Duchess’ courtyard orchids. He considers himself an amateur botanist and is wondering if he might observe a random insect entering a pistil that he finds particularly beautiful. As it turns out, he spots a bumble bee. He drifts downstairs for a closer look when his attention is unexpectedly directed toward M. de Charlus who crossing the square having just visited his aunt at the Hotel Guermantes, happens upon Jupien, owner of a waistcoat shop in the courtyard.
There begins a brief Proustian comic escapade between the two, who are unaware of the narrator’s presence. Without speaking, the two men begin to flirt with one another by slight changes in their facial expressions and posturing, like a mating dance between birds. One blinks a certain way, the other puts his hand on his hip, and so on. “This scene was not, however, positively comic; it was stamped with strangeness, or if you like a naturalness, the beauty of which steadily increased.” (page 6)
The two make seemingly innocuous small talk until Jupien invites M. de Charles into his shop, adding “you shall have everything you wish.” The sneaky narrator, his curiosity peaked, becomes disinterested in the bumble bee and maneuvers himself so that he can listen in on (he cannot see into the room) what transpires – which is sex between the two men.
“For from what I heard at first in Jupien’s quarters, which was only a series on inarticulate sounds, I imagine that few words had been exchanged. It is true that these sounds were so violent that, if they had not always been taken up an octave higher by a parallel plaint, I might have thought that one person was slitting another’s throat within a few feet of me, and that subsequently the murderer and his resuscitated victim were taking a bath to wash away the sins of their crime. I concluded from this later on that there is another thing as noisy as pain, namely pleasure…” (page 12)
Up to this point, we have been led to believe in previous sections of the novel that M. de Charlus was, first, the open lover of Mme Swann (the boy narrator sees M. de Charlus from a distance at Tansonville {Swann's country estate}, in Swann’s Way) and, second, that he enjoys sexual pleasure with many different women. So this will surprise the first-time reader on multiple levels. Proust’s intent, obviously, is to maximize the shock, particularly in consideration that this was published in 1921. But, he also uses this moment to springboard into one of the novels best sections, his philosophy on sexuality, which is, in itself, racy for its time.
To the narrator, as M. de Charlus begins the comical courtyard ‘dance’: “…for what was suggested to me by the sight of this man who was so enamored of, who so prided himself upon, his virility, to whom all other men seemed obviously effeminate, what he suddenly suggested to me, to such an extent had he momentarily assumed the features, the expression, the smile, thereof, was a woman.” (page 5) After he overheard the intercourse, the narrator proclaims that the Baron was a woman in that moment. “He belonged to that race of beings less paradoxical than they appear, whose ideal is manly precisely because their temperament is feminine, and who in ordinary life resemble other men in appearance only; there were each of us carries, inscribed in those eyes through which he beholds everything in the universe, a human form engraves on the surface of the pupil, for them is not that of the nymph but that of an ephebe. “ (page 20)
(As an aside, Proust’s writes longest sentence of the novel during this section. It lasts for about three pages at 958 words.)
Proust proceeds to discuss the concept of the “man-woman” by describing a how certain men can be so seemingly like a woman when lying in repose in bed in the morning. “…the invert vice begins, not when he enters into relations, but when he takes his pleasure with women…it is in vain that he keeps back the admission ‘I am a woman’ even from his demanding mistress (even if she is not a denizen of Gomorrah) when all the time, with the cunning, the agility, the obstinacy of a climbing plant, the unconscious but visible woman in him seeks the masculine organ.” (page 29)
But, Proust is not just speaking of the “deception” of homosexuality. He offers a wider view which is applicable to all possible sexual relationships, including threesomes, fluidity and a source of jealousy. “Some – those no doubt who have been most timid in childhood – are not greatly concerned with the kind of physical pleasure they receive, provided they can associate it with a masculine face. Whereas others, whose sensuality is doubtless more violent, feel an impervious need to localize their physical pleasure. These latter, perhaps, would shock the average person with their avowels…the second sort seek out those women who love other women, who can procure for them a young man, enhance the pleasure they experience in his company; better still, they can, in the same fashion, take with such women the same pleasure as with a man. Whence it arises that jealousy is kindled in those who love the first sort only by the pleasure which they may enjoy with a man, which alone seems to their lovers a betrayal, since they do not participate in the love of women…the other sort often inspires jealousy by their love-affairs with women. For, in their relations with women, they play, for the woman who loves her own sex, the part of another woman, and she offers them at the same time more or less what they find in other men, so that the jealous friend suffers from feeling that the man he loves is riveted to the woman who is to him almost a man, and at the same time feels his beloved almost escape him because, to these women, he is something which the lover himself cannot conceive, a sort of woman.” (pp. 30- 31)
Needless to say this makes for some rather complex sexual relationships which are probably more prevalent today than they were in 1921. Proust is largely speaking of his own experience as a homosexual in this passage. But, clearly his intent is to speak the sexual preferences of women as well. The narrator, being a young man at this point, speaks mainly from the male perspective with the concept of “man-woman” sexuality. But he readily ascribes to human sexuality the mixing of genders and sees a sort of yin-yang equality there. He emphasizes, more than pure homosexuality, male bisexuality while taking female bisexuality for granted. Needless to say, for Proust, sexuality is impossible without jealousy; a dark view but an honest one from his erotic nature. He doesn’t end on a dark note, however.
After this introspective section, the narrator returns to the story: “M. de Charlus had distracted me from looking to see whether the bumble-bee was bringing to the orchid the pollen it had so long been waiting to receive, and had no chance of receiving, save by accident so unlikely that one might call it a sort of miracle. But it was a miracle also that I had just witnessed, about the same order and no less marvelous. As soon as I considered the encounter from this point of view, everything about it seemed to me instinct with beauty.” (page 38)
Interestingly enough Proust designates this short 44-page section as “Part One” of the two-part 724-page volume. This is indicative of the weight of its substance in comparison with the vastness of “Part Two” which is broken up into four chapters of unequal length. Chapter One is about 200 pages long, Chapter Two about 270 pages, about 185 pages for Chapter Three while Chapter Four, a momentous moment in the novel, comes in at a mere 25 pages.
Chapter One is one of the funniest and most entertaining portions of the novel. It features the height of the narrator’s social climb in terms of social events. He attends a reception given by the Prince and Princess de Guermantes, one step up from the Duke and Duchess. It starts with the narrator in great anxiety over whether or not he has even been invited to the party as he is about to enter it. This is “formal” society, even in the afternoon. “The usher asked me my name, and I gave it to him as mechanically as the condemned man allows himself to be strapped to the block. At once he lifted his head majestically and, before I could beg him to announce me in a lowered tone so as to spare my own feelings if I were not invited and those of the Princess de Guermantes if I were, roared the disquieting syllables with a force capable of bringing down the roof.” (page 50)
Halarious. But Proust is just getting started. The narrator meets the Princess and is informed by her that the Prince is in the garden. The narrator’s objective, from that point forward, is to be introduced to the Prince for the first time. Feeling awkward that the Duke and Duchess have yet to arrive (late again!) and recognizing only M. de Charlus at the large affair, he wades through a sea of strangers toward the great room’s doorway leading to the garden. But he is almost immediately intercepted by a fellow piece of “debris” at the gathering, Professor E---. The narrator tries to make use of him, but…
“As he knew absolutely nobody there, and could not wander about indefinitely by himself like a minister of death, having recognized me he had discovered for the first time in his life that he had an infinite number of things to say to me, which enabled him to keep some sort of countenance.” (page 54) The narrator manages to escape the clinging clutches of the professor when he sees a Marquis with which he is acquainted. Perhaps he can secure his introduction via that route.
But when he attempts this he is inadvertently consumed by the Marquis’ wife. “The instinctive attraction which urged Mme de Vaugoubert towards me was so strong that she went as far as to seize my arm so that I might take her to get a glass of orangeade. But I extricated myself on the pretext that I must presently be going, and had not yet been introduced to our host. The distance between me and the garden door where he {the Prince} stood talking to a group of people was not very great. But it alarmed me more than if, in order to cross it, I had had to expose myself to a continuous hail of fire.” (pp. 63 – 64)
One interesting aspect of the novel is that the narrator rarely mentions anything about himself that would cause him to be endeared by these high class elites. We know he was introduced to them initially through his friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup, who is one of their class. After that, everyone willingly accepts him into their salons, parties, and dinners. We also know is that he is the young man of a father of some renown, perhaps a diplomat or international businessman. Without the narrator saying so, it is most likely due to his youth, rather than his background, that older women find him so appealing. He is intercepted by another such woman in route to the garden door.
Only this time, the narrator does something that he hasn’t up until this point of the novel. He knows the name of this woman but he cannot recall it, then, at the party. Proust uses this moment to have a little fun with something he has had a lot of serious philosophical things to say about to this point – memory. Having to awkwardly begin a conversation with someone who knows us but whose name escapes us is something almost everyone has experienced. The narrator claims to quickly have caught himself, however, and the name soon came to him during their conversation.
Now, incredibly, the overarching narrator interrupts the young man narrator within the story itself to poke fun at him. “…allow me, dear author, to waste a moment of your time by telling you that it is a pity that, young as you were (or your hero was, if he isn’t you), you had already so feeble a memory that you could not remember the name of the lady that you knew quite well.” (page 69) There is a lot to unpack in that sentence. First of all, two different levels of the novel’s narration reveal themselves to the reader, the overarching narrator critiques the other narrator. Secondly, Proust obviously parodies his method of narration in the novel. To what extent is the novel autobiographical? That is one of the most controversial aspects of the novel. For Proust, a literary critic of his time, to treat it so off-handedly reveals a subtle and profound sense of literary humor. It is funny and high-art at the same time.
Finally, our narrator, young again, comes to the Prince in the garden. Predictably, especially in the humorous spirit of this part of the story, the payoff of meeting the Prince is a mediocre experience. From his haughty position of dignity, he greets the young man with a simple “Sir.” The narrator is virtually star-struck until the Prince, in an effort to fill the void, utters: “’Do you plan to follow the career of your distinguished father?’ he inquired with a distant but interested air. I answered the question briefly, realizing he asked it only out of politeness, and moved away to allow him to welcome new arrivals.
“I caught sight of Swann, and wanted to speak to him, but at that moment I saw the Prince de Guermantes, instead of waiting where he was to receive the greeting of Odette’s husband, had immediately carried him off, with the force of a suction pump, to the further end of the garden, in order, some people say, ‘to show him the door.’ So bewildered in the midst of the glittering company that I did not learn until two days later, from the newspapers, that a Czech orchestra had been playing throughout the evening, and that fireworks had been going off in constant succession.” (page 75)
But the farce is not over. The narrator gets ahead of himself. He is still at the reception, interacting with other people. At one point: “There was a sort of royal procession to the buffet, at the head of which walked Her Majesty on the arm of the Duke de Guermantes. I happened to arrive at that moment. With his free hand the Duke conveyed to me from a distance of nearly fifty yards, countless signs of friendly welcome, which appeared to mean that I need not be afraid to approach, that I should not be devoured alive instead like sandwiches. But I, who was becoming word-perfect in the language of the court, instead of going even one step nearer, made a deep bow from where I was, without smiling, the sort of bow that I should have made to someone I scarcely knew, then proceeded in the opposite direction. Had I written a masterpiece, the Guermantes would have given me less credit for it than I earned by that bow.” The narrator learns later though his mother that the Duchess: “…said that her husband had been lost in admiration of the bow, that it would have been impossible for anyone to put more into it.” (pp. 84 – 85)
This simple bow is, perhaps, the social high-point of the novel for the narrator and reminds us that form always conquers substance at such gatherings. Eventually the narrator meets Saint-Loup. Robert is on 48 hours leave. The two discuss M. de Charlus with the narrator attempting to verify that Robert is certain of the Baron being a womanizer. Robert simply shrugs his shoulders, says he doesn’t blame the older gentleman and points to how de Charlus is carrying on with certain women at the reception.
Then the conversation turns to a subject that will sexually haunt the narrator off and on for the remainder of the novel. Robert tells him that Mme Putbus has a chambermaid that “I tell you frankly, I’ve never seen such a gorgeous creature.” This chambermaid will never actually appear in the novel. But the idea of her as seen through Saint-Loup’s eyes conjures obsession, closely aligned with jealousy in Proust’s sexual philosophy. It plays into his theory of memory as well, melding with another girl Robert has mentioned.
“Ever since Saint-Loup had spoken to me of a young girl of good family who frequented a house of ill-fame, and of the Baroness Putbus’s chambermaid, it was in these two persons that had now become coalesced and embodied the desires inspired in me day by day by countless beauties of two classes, on the one hand the vulgar and magnificent, the majestic lady’s-maids of great houses, swollen with pride and saying ‘we’ in speaking of duchesses. And on the other hand those girls of whom it was enough sometimes, without even having seen them go past in carriages or on foot, to have read the names in the account of a ball for me to fall in love with them…I fuse together all the most exquisite fleshly matter to compose, after ideal outline traced from me by Saint-Loup, the young girl of easy virtue and Mme Putbus’s maid, my two possessible beauties…” (page 166)
Robert and the narrator are joined briefly by Swann, who is showing signs of his illness. Swann is aware of the gossip caused by the Prince abruptly taking him away for a private conversation. In truth, it was a conversation about the Dreyfus Affair and the Prince was merely telling Swann that he now believes that Dreyfus is innocent. Swann then adds: “'People are very inquisitive. I’ve never been inquisitive, except when I was in love, and when I was jealous. And a lot I ever learned! Are you jealous?’ I told Swann that I had never experienced jealousy, that I did not even know what it was. ‘Well, you can count yourself lucky. A little jealousy is not too unpleasant, for two reasons. In the first place, it enables people who are not inquisitive to take interest in other lives, or of one other at any rate. And then it makes one feel the pleasure of possession, of getting into a carriage with a woman, of not allowing her to go about by herself.” (page 139) This reveals to the reader a bit more on Proust’s philosophy of love while simultaneously being foreboding about what is about to happen to the narrator. Swann, in passing, refers vaguely to the darker aspects of jealousy and possessiveness as a “disease.”
Swann encourages the narrator to write Gilberte sometime, she’d love to hear from him. The narrator is unmotivated to do so, however, as he is no longer interested in her. Now that he has met her and socialized with her, he is no longer attracted to the Mme Guermantes either. Nor is he interested in Albertine outside of “purely sensual desire” which he hopes to fulfill following the reception. But Albertine is late for their date. For the first time, the narrator feels a tinge of jealousy himself because he does not believe her excuse for being tardy. Nevertheless, they proceed to “caresses and kisses.” After which, he ceases to see her for some time in order to explore “other fairies and their dwellings.”
To be continued…
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