My Year With Proust - Day 294

   I was about to change my position again, so that he should not catch sight of me; I had neither the time nor the need to do so.  For what did I see!  Face to face, in that courtyard where they had certainly never met before (M. de Charlus coming to the Hotel de Guermantes only in the afternoon, during the time when Jupien was at his office), the Baron, having suddenly opened wide his half-shut eyes, was gazing with extraordinary attentiveness at the ex-tailor poised on the threshold of his shop, while the latter, rooted suddenly to the spot in front of M. de Charlus, implanted there like a tree, contemplated with a look of wonderment the plump form of the ageing Baron.  But, more astounding still, M. de Charlus's post having altered, Jupien's, as though in obedience to the laws of an occult art, at once brought itself into harmony with it.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 616

Marcel is thinking about moving, but is instead drawn to hide so that he can view the unfolding drama in secret.  As you might imagine, Proust devotes an extensive amount of time to what happens next and what he think it means, and thus I think I'm going to be forced to break it up into manageable chunks; which is why getting through Proust has taken a lot longer than I thought, at least in the commentary stage, but it is also a labor of love.  What struck me here, and which we'll follow up on shortly in more detail, is the odd, overpowering and often inexplicable power of human desire.  Proust compares it to "obedience to the laws of an occult art."  I'm paraphrasing, as I often do, but I think I remember Milan Kundera writing that true beauty was based on the derivation from the accepted norm, and I think that this is nowhere more true than in the realm of desire.  The "standard" beauty, at least in my mind, works better as a philosophical construct than an inspiration.