My Year With Proust - Day 46

"It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.  And as, every time that she indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 174

And so we come to the end of this odd incident with Mlle Vinteuil. On the surface level this seems like another example of classic Catholic-engendered guilt, although I think that Proust, as is his wont, is pushing a lot deeper.  So much to say here.

One wonders if the key here is not that sex, or in this case sex outside the bounds of polite society, is evil as much as it's freedom.

My Year With Proust - Day 45

   "And yet I have since reflected that if M. Vinteuil had been able to be present at this scene, he might still, and in spite of everything, have continued to believe in his daughter's soundness of heart, and that he might even, in so doing, have been not altogether wrong. It was true that in all Mlle Vinteuil's actions the appearance of evil was so strong and so consistent that it would have been hard to find it exhibited in such completeness save in what is nowadays called a 'sadist'; it is behind the footlights of a Paris theatre, and not under the homely lamp of an actual country house, that one expects to see a girl leading her friend on to spit upon the portrait of a father who has lived and died for nothing and no one but herself; and when we find in real life a desire for melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic' instinct that is responsible for it.  It is possible that, without being in the least inclined towards 'sadism', a girl might have shown the same outrageous cruelty as Mlle Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and defying the wishes of her dead father, but she would not have given them deliberate expression in an act so crude in its symbolism, so lacking in subtlety; the criminal element in her behaviour would have been less evident to other people, and even to herself, since she would not have admitted to herself that she was doing wrong.  But, appearances apart, in Mlle Vinteuil's soul, at least in the earlier stages, the evil element was probably not unmixed.  A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil, which a wholly sicked person could not be, for in that case the evil would not have been external, it would have seemed uqite natural to her, and would not even have been distinguishable from herself; and as for virtue, respect for the dead, filial obedience, since she would never have practised the cult of these things, she would take no impious delight in their profanation.  'Sadist' of Mlle Vinteuil's sort are creatures so purely sentimental, so virtuous by nature, that even sensual pleasure appears to them as something bad, a privilege reserved for the wicked.  And when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it they endeavour to impersonate, to assume all the outward appearance of wicked people, for themselves and their partners in guilt, so as to gain the momentary illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own gentle and scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure.  And I could understand how she must have longed for such an escape when I realized that it was impossible for her to effect it.  At the moment when she wished to be thought the very antithesis of her father, what she at once suggested to me were the mannerisms, in thought and speech, of the poor old music-master."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 172-173

In some ways I find this passage almost too painful to consider, but I did promise to work my way through the novel no matter how emotionally messy it became.  I wonder if my father, who thankfully is not dead, feels the same way about me. It's not that we don't love each other or that we're not proud of each other's accomplishments, but there's always been a definite tension. We have a complicated relationship.  The universe is not big enough to house two egos that big in the same space.  My ex-wife, who was and is much more perceptive than me, said that the biggest difference between my father and myself is that he, naturally, wants to be thought a better person than he is, whereas I, perversely, have always wanted to be thought a much worse person than I actually am.

Sands

I've been depressed and more than a little adrift lately.  And more than just lately. I feel that there's nothing holding me here and that I'm slipping away. It would take very little to send me flying.

I snapped this picture on a desert safari in the UAE shortly before the desert destroyed my camera, and maybe destroyed me as well.  Sometimes I think I never really came back from the desert, and that my heart is elsewhere.

My Year With Proust - Day 44

   "In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle Vinteuil felt the sting of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and ran away; and then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking and crowing like a pair of amorous fowls.  At last Mlle Vinteuil fell down exhausted upon the sofa, where she was screen from me by the stooping body of her friend.  But the latter now had her back turned to the little table on which the old music-master's portrait had been arranged.  Mlle Vinteuil realized that her friend would not see it unless her attention were drawn to it, and so exclaimed, as if she herself had just noticed it for the first time: 'Oh! there's my father's picture looking at us; I can't think who can have put it there; I'm sure I've told them twenty times, that is not the proper place for it.'

   I remembered the words that Mlle Vinteuil had used to my parents in apologizing for an obtrusive sheet of music.  This photograph was, of course, in common use in their ritual observances, was subjected to daily profanation, for the friend replied in words which were evidently a liturgical response: 'Let him stay there. He can't trouble us any longer.  D'you think he'd start whining, d'you think he'd pack you out of the house if he could see you now, with the window open, the ugly old monkey?' . . .

   . . . But she could not resist the attraction of being treated with affection by a woman who had just shown herself so implacable towards the defenceless dead; she sprang on to the knees of her friend and held out a chaste brow to be kissed; precisely as a daughter would have done to her mother, feeling with exquisite joy that they would thus, between them, inflict the last turn of the screw of cruelty, in robbing M. Vinteuil, as though they were actually rifling his tomb, of the sacred rights of fatherhood.  her friend took the girl's head in her hands and placed a kiss on her brow with a docility prompted by the real affection she had for Mlle Vinteuil, as well as by the desire to bring what distraction she could into the dull and melancholy life of an orphan.

   'Do you know what I should like to do to that old horror?' she said, taking up the photograph.  She murmured in Mlle Vinteuil's ear something that I could not distinguish.

   'Oh! You would never dare.'

   'Not dare to spit on it? On that?' shouted the friend with deliberate brutality.

   I heard no more, for Mlle Vinteuil, who now seemed weary, awkward, preoccupied, sincere, and rather sad, came back to the window and drew the shutters close; but I knew now what was the reward that M. Vinteuil, in return for all the suffering that he had endured in his lifetime, on account of his daughter, had received from her after his death."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 171-172

This scene gets darker and more complicated, and we're not done with it yet, even if the shutters are now closed. Mlle Vinteuil's "discovery" of her father's portrait paints her relationship with her friend in an entirely different light.  Does she love her friend or does she just hate her father?  We'll keep discussing this issue in the next post as well, but it makes me wonder how much of relationships are based on the sadism that Proust discussed.  You'll see one partner deliberately make the one wait for no reason, and it would be one thing if it were just power-politics, but often it's just the relationship equivalent of pulling the flies off wings.  And how much of the early sexual energy of a relationship is just a sadistic desire to have more sex than the previous relationship, and engage in exactly the same type of sexual acts that you would not have been caught dead doing with your previous partner. So the inevitable decline in sexual frequency is less a slackening of desire but rather a cooling of the sadistic drive that fueled the early period.

My Year With Proust - Day 43

" . . . Presently she rose and came to the window, where she pretended to be trying to close the shutters and not succeeding.

   'Leave them open,' said her friend. 'I'm hot.'

   "But it's too dreadful!  People will see us.' Mlle Vinteuil answered.  And then she guessed, probably, that her friend would think that she had uttered these words simply in order to provoke a reply in certain other words, which she seemed, in deed, to wish to hear spoken, but, from prudence, would let her friend be the first to speak. . .

   'Oh, yes, it is extremely likely that people are looking at us at this time of night in this densely populated district! said her friend, with bitter irony. 'And what if they are?' she went on, feeling bound to annotate with a malicious yet affectionate wink these words which she was repeating, out of good nature, like a lesson prepared before-hand which, she knew, it would please Mlle Vinteuil to hear. 'And what if they are?  All the better that they should see us.'

   Mlle Vinteuil shuddered and rose to her feet.  In her sensitive and scrupulous heart she was ignorant what words ought to flow, spontaneously, from her lips, so as to produce the scene for which her eager senses clamoured.  She reached out as far as she could across the limitations of her true character to find the language appropriate to a vicious young woman such as she longed to be thought, but the words which, she imagined, such a young woman might have uttered with sincerity sounded unreal in her own mouth.  And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralyzed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech; while she kept on interrupting herself with: 'You've sure you aren't cold?  You aren't too hot?  You don't want to sit and read by yourself? . . .

   'Your ladyship's thoughts seem to be rather 'warm' this evening,' she concluded, doubtless repeating a phrase which she had heard used, on some earlier occasion, by her friend.

   In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle Vinteuil felt the sting of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and ran away; and then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking and crowing like a pair of amorous fowls. . . .'

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 170-171

As with so much from Proust, there are several fascinating things going on at once, some of which I'll be discussing in the continuation of this scene later. I want to revisit the sadism issue (even if it is merely posturing) which was raised earlier, and which is reintroduced in her desire to be the "vicious young woman" that she feels she should be.  However, we need to get to the conclusion of the scene, and this seemed like a good place to pause.  So, we'll come back to that issue.

At first blush, the most obvious theme of this exchange is Mlle Vinteuil's implied lesbianism, which might explain the harsh words of Proust's mother.  Several points jump to mind, none of which I feel I can fully answer here at this early stage because I need to read further in the novel and also study more on Proust's own life - and also spend more time reflecting upon these words.  That said: 1) Is Mlle Vinteuil a lesbian? [Well, that's a whole other question.  Linden in The Accidental Mind reports that something like 1/6th of all women have at least one homosexual experience leading to orgasm - the percentage in higher in men - but that's not the same as being consistently homosexual.  Of course, my feeling on this is that sexuality, much like the related topic of gender, exists on a sliding scale, so I'm always suspicious of labels one way or another.  As the novel unfolds maybe I'll learn more] 2) Does it matter if Mlle Vinteuil is a lesbian?  [Yes and no.  In the imaginary world where my favorite literary characters live I'd say No, because as long as Mlle Vinteuil is happy I'm happy.  In regard to why Remembrance of Things Past was such a groundbreaking novel, and why it remains such a present, meaningful novel today, I'd say Yes. It seems to me that Proust beautifully, but also naturally, talked about issues that people had hinted at before, and not usually in a positive way.  I would argue, and, again, this is not my field of study and I need to study it more, that Proust is opening the door for later writers.  Now, what makes this complicated is that since Proust is discussing this is the context of Mlle Vinteuil's complicated and, to use his term "sadistic" relationship with her father, the issue of her relationship with her friend becomes much more complicated. 3) Finally (well, not really finally, but these are the three that are in my mind at the moment), how does this relate to Proust's own homosexuality and the role that homosexuality plays in the novel.  That will require more reading and more outside study.

Mimi and the Boy

Just a picture from our recent trip south to visit family in Savannah. This picture brought back a funny memory from when we brought him home from the hospital, and we (mainly Brenda), in those first chaotic days, were, like all new parents, exhausted.  I can clearly remember Mimi one time coming over to take him from us when he was crying and saying, "Oh, here, give him to mom."  There was this funny pause because it was clear that she had defaulted to her as his mom, as compared to her as my mom.  It's probably a natural thing with first time grandmothers, but they have always been linked.  In turn, he's also really devoted to her and worries about her all the time, which explains why he was insistent on pushing for the trip over the holidays.

These two have been linked at the hip since he was born.

My Year With Proust - Day 42

   "And it is perhaps from another impression which I received at Montjouvain, some year later, an impression which at that time was without meaning, that there arose, long afterwards, my idea of what cruel side of human passion called 'sadism'.  We shall see, in the due course, that for quite another reason the memory of this impression was to play an important part in my life.  It was during a spell of very hot weather; my parents, who had been obliged to go away for the whole day, had told me that I might stay out as late as I pleased; and having gone as far as the Montjouvain pond, where I enjoyed seeing again the reflection of the tiled roof of the hut, I had lain down in the shade and gone to sleep among the bushes on the steep slope that rose up behind the house, just where I had waited for my parents, years before, one day when they had gone to call on M. Vinteuil.  It was almost dark when I awoke, and I wished to rise and go away, but I saw Mlle Vinteuil (or thought, at least, that I recognized her, for I had not seen her often at Combray, and then only when she was still a child, where she was now growing into a young woman), who probably had just come in, standing in front of me, and only a few feet away from me, in that room in which her father had entertained mine, and which she had now made into a little -sitting room for herself.  The window was partly open; the lamp was lighted; I could watch her every movement without her being able to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a rustling sound among the bushes, she would have heard me, and might have thought that I had been hiding there in order to spy upon her. . .

   At the far end of Mlle Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece, stood a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch, just as the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside, then flung herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little table on which she placed the photograph. . ."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 168-169

This scene is as troubling as it is voyeuristic, although I suspect that it was both more troubling and more voyeuristic a century ago upon its publication than it is today.  You probably don't need any more proof of the influence of Proust than the decidedly "modern" and "intimate" feel of this scene.  I'm having flashbacks to scenes from David Lynch's brilliant Blue Velvet.  It focuses on Mlle Vinteuil, who, at least according to Proust's mother, had virtually killed her father.  "Poor M. Vinteuil, he lived for his daughter, and now he has died for her, without getting his reward.  Will he get it now, I wonder, and in what form?  It can only come to him from her."