"M. de Norpois had also brought about a change in my father's plans in a matter of far greater importance to myself. My father had always wanted me to be a diplomat, and I could not endure the thought that, even if I were to remain for some years attached to the Ministry, I might run the risk of being sent later on as ambassador to capitals in which there would be no Gilberte. I should have preferred to return to the literary career that I had planned for myself and then abandoned years before during my wanderings along the Guermantes way. But my father had steadily opposed my devoting myself to literature, which he regarded as vastly inferior to diplomacy, refusing even to dignify it with the title of career, until the day when M. de Norpois, who had little love for the more recent generations of diplomatic officials, assured him that it was quite possible, as a writer, to attract as much attention, to receive as much consideration, to exercise as much influence as in the ambassadorial world, and at the same time to preserve more independence."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 474
A few things jump to mind as I reread this passage, although I'm running dreadfully far behind this morning so I'll just jot down a couple notes and, inshallah, return to this later. First off, it's classic/amusing/touching/ridiculous that he initially is factoring in Gilberte in this thought process in choosing a career. That said, don't we all do this? When my son was trying to decide between Drake and Saint Anselm's (both really good schools) I was trying to get a sense of his thought process, and he had to admit that one of the allures of Saint Anselm's was that it was close to home and thus his girlfriend at the time. I told him that hometown girlfriends have a remarkably short half-life, but maybe I should have just shut up and remained out of it completely. I'm sure my thought process was very similar at that age. At the time I was dating a very sweet girl who my brother Eric remembers as being Miss Teen Indiana, although I don't think she was - although I think she competed for the title - or maybe she didn't. That was a million years ago. Without doubt, she was beautiful and smart and sweet.
The clash between Proust and his father over the younger man's career is also sadly typical. One of the issues that festered, although never rising to the level of an actual argument, between my father and myself over the years was my decision not to go to medical school, which was his preference. Now, the reality is that it was probably much more my perception of his displeasure than his actual displeasure, although I think there was at least some truth to it. If you love your career - and you feel that you are making the world a better place through it - why wouldn't you want you children to follow in your path? Certainly when I finally told him that I didn't want to be pre-med he was he very gracious and told me that I needed to do what made me happy. We just have a wonderful chat on the phone the other day where we ended up telling each other how proud we were of the other, which we probably needed to have said more definitively over the years. We have two very large egos, and sometimes it is difficult to contain both in one hemisphere, but, all things considered, we have a good relationship.
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