"'You are intelligent enough, I dare say, not to imagine that it is inspired by "lack of connections," by fear of solitude and boredom. I need not speak to you of your family, for I assume that a youth of your age belonging to the lower middle class' (he accentuated the phrase in a tone of self-satisfaction) 'must know the history of France. It is the people of my world who read nothing and are as ignorant as lackeys. In the old days the King's valets were recruited among the nobility; now the nobility are scarcely better than valets. But young bourgeois like you do read, and you must certainly know Michelet's fine passage about my family: "I see them as being very great, these powerful Guermantes. And what is the poor little King of France beside them, shut up in his palace in Paris?" as for what I am personally, that, Monsieur, is a subject which I do not much care to talk about . . .
. . . M. De Charlus broke off to question me about Bloch, whom he had heard discussed, though without appearing to b e listening, in his aunt's dressing room. And in that tone which he was so skillful at detaching from what he was saying that he seemed to be thinking of something else altogether, and to be speaking mechanically, simply out of politeness, he asked if my friend was young, good-looking and so forth. Bloch, if he had heard him, would have been more puzzled even than with M. de Norpois, but for very different reasons, to know whether M. de Charlus was for or against Dreyfus. 'It is not a bad idea, if you wish to learn about life,' went on M. de Charlus, 'to have a few foreigners among your friends.' I replied that Bloch was French. 'Indeed,' said M. de Charlus, 'I took him to be a Jew.' His assertion of this incompatibility made me suppose that M. de Charlus was more anti-Dreyfusard than anyone I had met. He protested, however, against the charge of treason levelled against Dreyfus. But his protest took this form: 'I believe the newspapers say that Dreyfus has committed a crime against his country - so I understand; I pay no attention to the newspapers; I read them as I wash my hands, without considering it worth my while ti take an interest in what I am doing. In any case, the crime is non-existent. This compatriot of your friend would have committed a crime if he had betrayed Judaea, but what has he to do with France?' I pointed out that if there should be a war the Jews would be mobilised just as much as anyone else. 'Perhaps so, and I am not sure that it would not be an imprudence. If we bring over Senegalese or Malagasies, I hardly suppose that their hears will be in the task of defending France, and that is only natural. Your Dreyfus might rather be convicted of a breach of the laws of hospitality. But enough of that. Perhaps you could ask your friend to allow me to attend some great festival in the Temple, a circumcision, or some Hebrews chants. He might perhaps hire a hall and give me some biblical entertainment, as the young ladies of Saint-Cyr performed scenes taken from the Psalms by Racine, to amuse Louis XIV. You might perhaps arrange that, and even some comic exhibitions. For instance a context between your friend and his father, in which he would smite him as David smote Goliath. That would make quite an amusing farce. He might even, while he was about it, give his hag (or, as my old nurse would say, his "haggart") of a mother a good thrashing. That would be an excellent show, and would not be unpleasing to us, eh, my young friend, since we like exotic spectacles, and to thrash that non-European creatures would be giving a well-earned punishment to an old cow.'
AS he poured out these terrible, almost insane words, M. de Charlus squeezed my arm until it hurt. I reminded myself of all that his family had told me of his wonderful kindness to this old nurse, whose Molieresque vocabulary he had just recalled, and thought to myself that the connexions, hitherto, I felt, little studied, between goodness and wickedness in the same heart, various as they might be, would be an interesting subject for research.
I warned him that in any case Mme Bloch no longer existed, while as for M. Bloch, I questioned to what extent he would enjoy a sport which might easily result in his being blinded. M. de Charlus seemed annoyed. 'That,' he said, 'is a woman who made a great mistake in dying. As for blinding him, surely that Synagogue is blind, since it does not perceive the truth of the Gospel. Besides, just think, at this moment when all those unhappy Jews are trembling before the stupid fury of the Christians, what an honour it would be for him to see a man like myself condescend to be amused by their sports.'"
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, 296-299
Wow, where to begin with this passage? As M. de Charlus and Proust leave the party the older aristocrat unleashes a torrent of anti-Semitic vitriol. Proust describes the words as "terrible, almost insane." The passage does make the reader question the sanity of M. de Charlus. However, are we actually being too generous to give M. de Charlus that "out"? It's much like all the stories recently that have questioned Trump's sanity. It's a lot easier to dismiss these racist words (both those of M. de Charlus and Donald Trump) as the ramblings of a mad man, and thus not representative of a corrupted societal core (as the Drive-By Truckers remind us, "there's a lot of bad wood underneath the veneer"). This is essentially the political equivalent of the "unhinged loner" that the NRA likes to promote as the cause of mass shootings, as compared to a broader societal malaise. No matter what, in his section Proust reminds us once again, specifically, of the lurking presence of the Dreyfus affair, and, more generally, of the dark anti-Semitism that continued (and continues) to bedevil French society. What is particularly telling is this exchange: "It is not a bad idea, if you wish to learn about life," went on M. de Charlus, "to have a few foreigners among your friends." I replied that Bloch was French. "Indeed," said M. de Charlus, "I took him to be a Jew." That perverse reading of the relationship between nationality and religious identity is pretty common in racist ideology, as you can see in Hitler's own words, and which is also appearing in the most extreme of Trump's followers today, sadly.
No comments:
Post a Comment