"It was about this period that Bloch overthrew my conception of the world and opened for me fresh possibilities of happiness (which, as it happened, were to change later on into possibilities of suffering), by assuring me that, contrary to all that I had believed at the time of my walks along the Meseglise way, women never asked for anything better than to make love. he added to this service a second, the value of which I was not to appreciate until much later: it was he who took me for the first time into a house of assignation. He had indeed told me that there were any number of pretty women whom one might enjoy. But I could see them only in a vague outline for which those houses were to enable me to substitute actual human features. So that if I owed to Bloch - for his 'good tidings' that happiness and the enjoyment of beauty were not inaccessible things that we have made a meaningless sacrifice in renouncing forever - a debt of gratitude of the same kind as that we owe to an optimistic physician or philosopher who has given us reason to hope for longevity in this world and not to be entirely cut off from it when we shall have passed into another, the houses of assignation which I frequented some years later - by furnishing me with samples of happiness, by allowing me to add to the beauty of women that element which we are powerless to invent, which is something more than a mere summary of former beauties, that present indeed divine, the only one that we cannot bestow upon ourselves, before which all the logical creations of our intellect pale, and which we can seek from reality alone: an individual charm - deserved to be ranked by me with those other benefactors more recent in origin but of comparable utility (before finding which we used to imagine without any warmth the seductive charms of Mantegna, of Wagner, of Siena, by studying other painters, hear of other composers, visiting other cities): namely illustrated editions of the Old Masters, symphony concerts, and guidebooks to historic towns."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 619-620
In this passage, full of both more earthly and more profound mysteries, Proust reflects upon Bloch sharing with him some of the more philosophical and more tangible secrets of women. Proust makes his first visit to a brothel, which does sound much less tawdry when it's referred to as a "house of assignation." First off, two bits of wisdom shared with me decades ago by two friends: "I can only imagine how much more enjoyable high school would have been if I had known then that girls actually wanted sex as much as I did" and "The only honest relationship that a man will ever have with a woman is the one he has with a prostitute." Granted, Hoosiers can't express themselves as eloquently as French geniuses, but I suspect that on some level they're talking about the same thing.
However, Proust, as is his wont, is taking this concept to a whole different dimension. First off, the obvious disclaimers. This is clearly a product of a very different age, which is not the same as saying it should be dismissed; rather, we just need to take that into account when providing the context for understanding Proust's universe. Yes, it brings up issues related to gender and power relationships, and one wonders how misogynistic Proust was, especially in regard to his age. This passage certainly reeks of privilege, which I guess means that Proust could run for president of the US today. Having said all of that, I also think Proust is touching upon the mythic nature of sex, almost the sexual act as initiation. In this case it might be argued that it is an initiation into adult, even if it is a male-dominated and privileged adulthood, but it is crossing a boundary none the less. However, I think he is also talking about an initiation into beauty. He proposes that the houses of assignation "by furnishing me with samples of happiness, by allowing me to add to the beauty of women that element which we are powerless to invent, which is something more than a mere summary of former beauties . . . before which all the logical creations of our intellect pale." So, is sex actually that transformative that is acts as almost a liminal space? There is a reason why the French refer to the orgasm as the petit mort, and what could be more of an initiation than that?
No comments:
Post a Comment