To a certain extent, it is true, though not nearly enough to justify this state of mind, the Guermantes were different from the rest of society; they were rarefied and precious. They had given me at first sight the opposite impression; I had found them vulgar, similar to all other men and women, but this was because before meeting them I had seen them, as I saw Balbec, Florence or Parma, as names. It was evident from this drawing-room, all the women whom I had imaged as being like Dresden figures resembled after all the great majority of women. But, in the same way as Balbec or Florence, the Guermantes, after first disappointing the imagination because they resembled their fellow-men rather more than their name, could subsequently, though to a lesser degree, hold out to one's intelligence certain distinctive characteristics. Their physique, the colour - a peculiar pink that merged at times into purple - of their skins, a certain almost lustrous blondness of the finely spun hair even in the men, massed in soft golden tufts, half wall-growing lichen, half catlike fur (a luminous brilliance to which corresponded a certain intellectual glitter, for if people spoke of the Guermantes complexion, the Guermantes hair, they spoke also of the Guermantes wit, as of the wit of the Mortemarts), a certain social quality whose superior refinement - pre-Louis XIV - was all the more universally recognised because they promulgated it themselves - all this meant that in the actual substance, however precious it might be, of the aristocratic society in which they were to be found embedded here and there, the Guermantes remained recognisable, easy to detect and to follow, like the veins whose paleness streaks a block of jasper or onyx, or, better still, like the supple undulation of those tresses of light whose loosened hairs run like flexible rays along the sides of a moss-agate.
The Guermantes - those at least who were worthy of the name - were not only endowed with an exquisite quality of flesh, or hair, of transparency of gaze, but had a way of holding themselves, of walking, of bowing, of looking at one before they shook one's hand, of shaking hands, which made them as different in all these respects from an ordinary members of fashionable society as he in turn was from a peasant in a smock. And despite their affability one asked oneself: "Have they not indeed the right, though they waive it, when they see us walk, bow, leave a room, do any of those things which when performed by them become as graceful as the flight of a swallow or the droop of a rose on its stem, to think: 'These people are of a different breed from us, and we are the lords of creation'?" Later on, I realised that the Guermantes did indeed regard me as being of a different breed, but one that aroused their envy because I possessed merits unknown to myself which they professed to prize above all others. Later still I came to feel that this profession of faith was only half sincere and that in them scorn or amazement could co-exist with admiration and envy.
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 454-455
In this section Proust reflects upon the Guermantes, and in turn his fascination with him, and introduces the issues, to be continued later, of their interest in him. I've talked before how there are more than a few places in Remembrance of Things Past where I can't help reflecting back to The Magnificent Ambersons and the inevitable decline of a social structure that was dying. However, I wonder how inevitable that inevitability actually was. A few months back on Twitter I ruminated - well, it's hard to ruminate in 140 characters - maybe it's better to say that I proposed - that this election was really about whether the top 1% was going to become the top 1.5% (with a Clinton win) or a 0.5% (with a Trump win); essentially, that neither side really was proposing a radical, or even meaningful, transformation of society. This weekend the Donald Trump "grab her by the pussy" tape was released. Sadly, who knows if its revelations will make any difference, since so many of his followers are clearly just voting for him because he's running against Clinton. In that way, the tape is a metaphor for the entire campaign because it speaks to, at best, the base objectivization of women, at worst, an actual misogynistic hatred of women. Yes, Trump, as compared to his normal insensitive, boorish, childish nature, comes across quite clearly as a sexual predator. However, when I read his comments I also keep thinking about the broader issues of race and wealth and gender and privilege. Do Trump and his ilk unquestioningly think of themselves as "the lords of creation"? The rest of humanity - as expressed by his view of women - as existing solely for their amusement. All of this brings up the obvious question: why in the hell would you think this person is qualified to be president of the US? As I've said repeatedly, he'll lose and lose comfortably, at least in the Electoral College, but what harm has he done to the political and social discourse? As distasteful as that tape is, it should be on constant play every time one of the super rich discuss their potential roles as saviors for humanity.
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