My Year With Proust - Day 114

   "'Are you being properly looked after?' Bergotte asked me, 'Who is treating you?' I told him that I had seen, and should probably go on seeing, Cottard. 'But that's not at all the sort of man you want!' he told me.  'I know nothing about him as a doctor.  But I've met him at Mme Swann's.  The man's an imbecile.  Even supposing that doesn't prevent his being a good doctor, which I hesitate to believe, it does prevent his being a good doctor for artists, for intelligent people.  People like you must have suitable doctors, I would almost go so far as to say treatment and medicines specially adapted to themselves.  Cottard will bore you, and that alone will prevent his treatment from having any effect.  Besides, the proper course of treatment cannot possibly be the same for you as for any Tom, Dick or Harry.  Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.  They need at least a doctor who understand that disease.  How do you expect Cottard to be able to treat you?  He has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare.  So that his calculations are inaccurate in your case, the balance is upset; you see, always the little bottle-imp bobbing up again.  he will find that you have a distended stomach; he has no need to examine you for it, since he has it already in his eye.  You can see it there, reflected in his glasses.'"

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 614

This was a scene that, truthfully, I initially marked because I was amused at Bergotte heaping more foul scorn on Cottard, but then on re-reading it I realized that a lot more was going on; which doubtless goes to show that I am guilty of the same imbecility that Bergotte identifies with Cottard.

"Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect."  Essentially, is being smart actually bad for you?  Certainly being intelligent, despite all the talk of women being sapiosexual, never gets you much attention. Nor do most people seem to understand you.  As Proust continues, "How do you expect Cottard to be able to treat you?  he has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare."  For a person who lives and dies for baseball I have to admit that I'm not much of a Bull Durham fan.  That said, I'm reflecting back on Annie's observation that "The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness."  Is being intelligent actually self-isolating?  As Scipio Africanus reminded us, "I am never less lonely than when I am by myself."