"The curtain sweeps down"

Zhuangzhi (Chuang-Tzu) dreaming of being a butterfly

So, I was reading through some blogs today and found this:

For a long time, I've wondered how to write when the cognitive resources required have been already exhausted. Mostly I think it's an excuse: isn't this what real writers do all the time – work hard despite the damage it delivers? Think of Nietzsche and his headaches, Henry James and his tendinitis, the late Christopher Nolan. What ever the answer, the physical response is the same: the curtain sweeps down. (for a link to the article click here)

As the Proust seminar I have been taking at the UofT comes to a close, I cannot help but think of what the effects of exhaustion are not just on writing, but also on reading. Indeed, Proust is (has been) an exhausting read. But now, as ‘the curtain sweeps down’ on one of its significant venues, the reading is in one sense over: has my reading of Proust, then, been exhausted? Or is exhaustion just another form of reading, not an end but a beginning to a different framework for observation? The curtain typically marks the end of a performance, but what if the curtain itself has its performative (phenomenological) potentialities? I’m sure there is a lot to be explored here, with regards not only to exhaustion and reading, but also with regards to a re-evaluation of the meaning of ‘the end’.

Anyway, the writer of the blog continues:

I wonder if fatigue should be regarded as an obstacle. If work is the activity that shuts everything down, then can writing be done when it isn't work? Haven't I always found the most promising ideas arrive when I am farthest from purposeful thought: strolling along the seafront, sitting in silence waiting for a train, drifting off to sleep?

I thought to myself that 'this guy needs to mention Proust'. Then, I thought, why does everything come back to Proust?

I was watching an episode of Mad Men, the HBO series about ad executives in the 60s, and was struck by another Proustian moment. One of the characters, Paul Kinsley, is working late in his office trying desperately to come up with an idea for an ad campaign. He tries masturbation, whiskey, listening to jazz, but it's only when he gets up to go get (steal) an apple from the office fridge and runs into the custodian, Achilles, that it hits him. He stumbles over the fridge while Achilles is trying to tell him a story about his family, and suddenly ... "I've just come up with the idea for Western Union." How Proustian, I thought, it's like he just stumbled over some uneven cobblestones.

Is everything, after Proust, footnotes to Proust? How many have actually read Proust, and if they haven't, how is it that they are so Proustian? Maybe one day we will all wake up and find that, in fact, our real lives are just dreams, and that we are all really characters in Proust's Recherche. A disturbing thought, indeed.

In any case, the blog article has some other interesting things to say about tiredness and its effects on seeing -- the weary gaze, which 'wants nothing from' its object, reminded me of an earlier post by Eva-Lynn about an object of the gaze that is "not trying to be the object of fantasy". The gaze that 'wants nothing from' its object seems to be the inversion of this. Their material, turned inside or out, is sleep, fatigue. In any case, this renews my belief in the importance that the experience of tiredness, sleep, boredom, fatigue, has for Proust's (mostly bed-ridden) writing.

You Can Go Your Own Way

In Alison Bechdel’s multiple award winning 2006 graphic novel memoir, Fun Home, she tells her coming out story along side an outing of her father’s closeted homosexuality. In the story, she makes frequent references to numerous classic novels, including In Search of Lost Time. In one particular section, she describes Marcel’s childhood in Combray and the event of having to choose to take his walk either along Swann’s (Méséglise) Way or the Guermantes Way, routes which are “diametrically opposed.” Bechdel takes the choice of direction as a figurative one and associates the two directions with binary oppositions: “bourgeois vs. aristocratic, homo vs. hetero, city vs. country, eros vs. art, private vs. public.” She then uses Proust’s classic as a filter through which to portray her own childhood and the choices with which she felt the need to identify.

Indeed, Marcel discusses the walks he took as bearing great significance not only on his daily life as a child, but also on his development and memories; for it was at the end of a walk down Swann’s Way that he first spotted and fell in love with Gilberte, and it was also along Swann’s Way that he first took a stab at writing. The Guermantes Way was much longer but had just as many wonderful things about it. The lingering effect of these experiences and the trauma of having to choose one “way” remained throughout his life:

“No doubt, by virtue of having permanently and indissolubly united so many different impressions in my mind, simply because they made me experience them at the same time, the Méséglise and Guermantes Ways left me exposed, in later life, to much disillusionment and even to many mistakes” (Swann’s Way 202).

But what “mistakes,” what “disillusionment” is he referring to?

Although I agree that Bechdel’s reading of the “diametrically opposed” choices we are given in life resemble Marcel’s choice of promenade, for me the two “ways” refer to something more concrete in his childhood than the option of being gay or straight—a sexual binary that he was perhaps unaware of until he was a bit older. For me, the Méséglise Way and the Guermantes Way rather refer to the two pillars of importance in his life at Combray: his father and mother:

“So the ‘Méséglise Way’ and the ‘Guermantes Way’ remain for me linked with many of the little incidents of the life which, of all the various lives we lead concurrently, is the most episodic; the most full of vicissitudes; I mean the life of the mind” (Swann’s Way 200).

Since his parents openly disagreed on different rules of his upbringing and had very different personalities, they influenced the young Marcel in very different ways. It would seem that a child would then feel he had to choose to follow in the footsteps of one or the other; to choose one after whom he would model himself.

I invite others to challenge me or to offer their analysis of the two “Ways”…

Not a Love Story

In response to Jonathan's post below, and in keeping with my comic book theme for the week, I think it is important to think about unromantic stories of neurotic people, people with disabilities or the ill. Two of my favourites are Black Hole (see image above), which is about a fictional STI the symptoms of which vary for each infected person, and l'Ascension du haut mal, a story about an epileptic boy and his family. In both of these stories, like in Proust, illness is not used to trigger a tearful response from the reader - rather the artist/writer seeks to engage in the mystery, the day to day life and the sometimes comical social symptoms of illness and disability. Some of you probably remember my recent blog post called "Playing the Illness and/or Disability Card" wherein I complained about academics "selling out" to a trendy literary analysis. I was talking about the exploitation of illness and disability, a topic that Todd Solodz illustrates well in his movie Storytelling:

In Search of Lost Time is no love story, that is for sure. But is it a tragedy? As we have discussed before, it seems that there is so much humour in Marcel's narrative style. As Prof. Jagoe articulated, "he says too much!" His illness, like his father, only shows up on occasion, and even then, it plays a small role next to his daily musings about nature, sleep, Gilberte, Albertine or art. Like many of his quasi reflections about his father, his illness is something he only half-thinks about, in a mysterious way. Searching for some semblance of what he is going through physically, I found, in Within a Budding Grove, a passage wherein he only gestures implicitly to his illness, while assessing the physical prowess of St-Loup:

In moral and physical agility which gave so much grace to his kindness, in the ease with which he offered my grandmother his carriage and helped her into it, in the alacrity with which he sprang from the box when he was afraid that I might be cold, to spread his own cloak over my shoulders, I sensed not only the inherited litheness of the mighty hunters who had been for generations the ancestors of this young man...

This is only one example where Marcel describes the solid dependability of St-Loup's physical and moral strength. Although he is not comparing him to himself explicitly, I wonder if there lingers some juxtaposition. Oddly, as jealous as Marcel is about Albertine and her lesbian love affairs, he does not seem to envy St-Loup's physical strength and health. In this book, Marcel is still very young, and yet he is put on the same level as his grandmother in terms of physical capability. But why doesn't he talk more about his illness? Was it a sign of weakness in the early 1900s, and therefore did not have the same sympathy-inducing power as it does in literature today? No, that does not make sense because Proust did not show any desire to "fit in" with the writers of his day. Also, to which genre does In Search of Lost Time belong?

Proust vs. the World

I think I will start a comic book Proust week. I have recently been reminded of Proust in various comics—other than Stephane Heuet’s adaptation—and I think this seemingly odd connection needs attention. From me. No one else has to contribute; this is not a totalitarian blog; if you want to participate, feel free, but don’t feel you are an unwelcome blogger if you do not want to talk about comics. Now, I will address the most important question on my mind today: how did Proust conquer the French canon with such an angsty character as Marcel?

Consider a section in Within a Budding Grove when he speaks to Mme de Villparisis about his father. She recognizes Marcel as “the son of the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry” and instantly starts singing praises of his father. Somehow she knows far more than Marcel about the events of his “holiday” with his “travelling-companion,” M. de Norpois, despite the flow of letters Marcel and Mamma received from his father. Immediately following her complimentary spiel, Marcel muses to us, his readers…

…I wondered by what strange accident, in the impartial telescope through which Mme de Villeparisis considered, from a safe distance, the miniscule, perfunctory, vague agitation of the host of people whom she knew, there had come to be inserted at the spot through which she observed my father a fragment of glass of prodigious magnifying power which made her see in such high relief and in the fullest detail everything that was agreeable about him, the contingencies that obliged him to return home, his difficulties with the customs, his admiration for El Greco, and, altering the scale of her vision, showed her this one man, so large among all the rest so small, like that Jupiter to whom Gustav Moreau, when he portrayed him by the side of a weak mortal, gave a superhuman stature. 753-4.

Evidently, his response to Mme de Villeparisis still does not give us an adequate idea of how Marcel feels toward his father (something that I am currently researching), instead, he directs his criticism toward his interlocutor for having misjudged his father. But I will not try to analyse what this means as to his feelings toward his father, rather I want to highlight how satisfying it is to read this response that he never could have told Mme de Villeparisis due to the rules of conduct in which he dwells. What is it about hearing somebody vent—in Marcel’s case the opportunities are endless—that feels so good? Are we living vicariously through them? Or is it just humorous to us to bear witness to such sarcasm. I also think that Marcel pulls off the exaggerated irony better than most, and maybe he does this in spite of himself.

Are We the Mirror?

In our last class, Jonathan asked something like, “what are we supposed to do while Marcel is masterbating? What is the reader’s role in Marcel’s life?” For, so often as he is narrating about everyday events and observations, he will slyly lead us into situations that find him finishing off in “pleasure.” We, his shocked readers, then feel as though we have been tricked into reading about his insomnia, only to discover that he has actually been fondling his “misplaced thigh” in front of us. Like children, we are curious, but shocked. The readers-turned-voyeurs are constantly assigned the role of Marcel’s onlooker, as though he wants us to objectify him.

After considering Jonathan’s interesting presentation I decided that perhaps the reader is the person off whom Marcel reflects his thoughts, feelings and desires in an effort to be recognized as a sexual subject—perhaps we are the mirror in his sexual “mirror stage.” Lacan discusses the fantasies “that proceed from a fragmented image of the body to … [a] form of its totality” (78). As Darcy mentioned during his presentation, Proust’s writing is fragmentary, and in light of Lacan, the “misplaced thigh” is also quite the fragmented image, that, with our help, Marcel makes one with his body of words.

Marcel approaches his “I” with both confusion and fascination. The entire In Search of Lost Time could be considered an exploration into his own selfhood, as well as the universal selfhood of all people. In other words, his musing, his “comedy of manners”—as Jonathan has quipped—his curiosity toward human behaviour is very similar to the study of psychoanalysis itself. Indeed, he is searching for himself, or the closest thing to himself: his reflection. He mentions in The Captive that he was starting to make efforts to react less angrily toward Albertine, as she had described to him the ugly faces and terrifying voices he adopted at times of conflict. He had had no idea, and needed her to reflect back to him an image of himself. He constantly constructs his self-image out of the reaction of others toward him. Evidently, he was conscious that he was unconscious of some aspects/behaviourisms of himself.

In fact, I might argue that the mirror stage in our early development teaches us just that: that we are unconscious of many aspects of ourselves. Not only does a six-month-old become aware of his* body as being a separate entity from the people and things in the space around him, but he might also become aware of the fact that all he knew up to this point took place in his life without a consciousness of the self, which tells him that maybe there are other things yet to be discovered, other things that he is unconscious of, other “mirror stages” to go through.

But, according to Lacan, one’s coming into subjectivity during the mirror stage is the site of the development of the ego—the “I”. The once fragmented body now becomes one cohesive and “jubilant” subject. The infant’s joy at achieving selfhood places the ego, “in a fictional direction that will forever remain irreducible for any single individual” (95). However, Lacan points out that this “fiction”—the belief that we are granted complete consciousness thanks to the gestalt mirror reflection—is merely an instinctual response which is then further cemented by socialization and, of course, language. The truth is, we can never fully know ourselves or be completely conscious of everything we are because our knowledge is always based on duplicate evidence: a reflection that doubles what we are. The fiction is the belief that we can be totally conscious of ourselves.

Contrary to this “fictional direction” of the ego in most people, it seems that Marcel is not satisfied with his own perceptions of himself and is rather interested in being viewed by others; in being objectified. This desire parallels the moment at which, according to Lacan, “the specular I turns into the social I” (79), that is, when we start to see ourselves as others see us, compare ourselves to others and develop new emotions such as jealousy. Only in Marcel’s case, and in response to the question Jonathan asked in his presentation, it seems that he assigns his readers another role, a very queer, third person role. And we don’t tell him what image of himself he portrays to us, so we are a mirror that doesn’t reflect, or he pretends to hear our comments or reactions and plays our role along with us.

No, no. I think we are putting to much emphasis on ourselves. I think that it is the text itself that is the mirror that reflects back to him what a real mirror never could: all that he thinks and feels on the inside, his self-image that is much more warped than his body-image.

But what do you think, dear reader of mine, if Marcel perhaps never seems “jubilant” in his own self-awareness, could it be because he was so self-conscious that he was conscious of all that which is unconscious about himself? For that matter, why does he force us to witness his “coming” into sexual being?

*I am a huge feminist, I promise. I only use the male pronoun here for brevity and because I am, in my own way, referring to Marcel.

We Won't be Schooled!

As students at the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, we, the Proustitutes, find it hard to post on the Proust blog these days without mentioning or at least referring to the potential closure of our Centre. It has been more than a week now since we received an email from our director explaining Dean Meric Gertler's proposal to close the Centre.

Since then, we, the students who are directly affected by the disestablishment have been only barely coping. Some of us are angry, some sad, some are taking action. Shortly after the proposal, many students protested in the blogosphere and on social networking sites such as Facebook. The resistance reached the journalists at the Globe and Mail and this morning, the potential closure of the Centre for Comparative Literature made the front page of the paper. This media grand slam has inspired me to keep hoping that the decision will be retracted.

I liken the Centre's closure to a death, as Jonathan has insinuated. And the comments under the Globe's online article are filled with so much passion, they are helping to fuel our fight to keep the Centre alive. What started as about 40 students using every fibre of our compassionate selves to spread the word, express our desire and need for the Centre to remain open, has now expanded to include major national print media and the Globe's devoted 935 000 daily readers. The response, in the ten days since that earth shattering email, has been loud and clear. The resistance now has a nation behind it.

Dean Gertler's initial - and perhaps only (?) - argument that closing the Centre for Comparative Literature is necessary due to budget cuts (to the tune of between $900 000 and $1.5 million) is now considered to be a poor saving strategy by many. The people have responded to the Strategic Planning Committee and it is clear that the Centre for Comparative Literature is deemed a good investment not only by the students who study there, but also by a large chunk of the Canadian public.

Today has been a good day.

Bored "Stiff"

My dear Proustitutes, how happy our class yesterday made me! Do I sound like Marcel today? If I do, it is only because he is so particular a character that he makes imitating him a fun activity. Anyhow, when we departed yesterday, I promised to show you the scene in The Guermantes Way where Marcel and St. Loup seem to “get it on.” I found the scene this morning on page 68 of my Vol. 2 of the 1982 Vintage Books, New York “Collector’s Copy.” I say it is a “Collector’s Copy” because I am merely taking advantage of the terminology. In fact all books are soon to be collector’s items according to a new series in The Globe and Mail.

All sad prophesies aside, let me get on with the scene:

I thought that St. Loup might come and sleep that night at the hotel at which I should be staying, in order to make the first shock of contact with this strange town less painful for me. One of the guards went to find him, and I waited at the barracks gate, in front of that huge ship of stone, booming with the November wind, out of which every moment, for it was now six o’clock, men were emerging in pairs into the street, staggering as if they were coming ashore in some exotic port where they found themselves temporarily anchored.

St. Loup appeared, moving like a whirlwind, his monocle spinning in the air before him. I had not given my name, and was eager to enjoy his surprise and delight.

‘Oh, what a bore!’ he exclaimed, suddenly catching sight of me, and blushing to the tips of his ears. ‘I’ve just had a week’s leave, and I shan’t be off duty again for another week.’

And, preoccupied by the thought of my having to spend this first night alone, for he knew better than anyone my bed-time agonies, which he had often noticed and soothed at Balbec, he broke off his lamentation to turn and look at me, coax me with little smiles, with tender though unsymmetrical glances, half of them coming directly from his eye, the other half through his monocle, but both sorts alike testifying to the emotion that he felt on seeing me again, testifying also to that important matter which I still did not understand but which now vitally concerned me, our friendship.

…

‘I assure you that I fully understand and sympathise with what you are going through. I feel wretched,’ he went on, laying his hand affectionately on my shoulder, ‘when I think that I could have stayed with you to-night, I might have been able, by chatting with you till morning, to relieve you of a little of your unhappiness.’

…

‘I must say a word to the Captain,’ whispered Saint-Loup. ‘Be a good fellow, and go and wait for me in my room. It’s the second on the right, on the third floor. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

… I was shown Saint-Loup’s room. I stood for a moment outside its closed door, for I could hear movement—something stirring, something being dropped. I felt the room was not empty, that there was somebody there. But it was only the freshly lighted fire beginning to burn. It could not keep quiet; it kept shifting its logs about, and very clumsily. … I sat down in the room and waited. … It was here in this charming room, that I could have dined and slept with a calm and happy mind.

[Here, Marcel muses about noise, music, love and sleep].

The silence, altogether more relative, which reigned in the little barrack room where I sat waiting was now broken. The door opened and Saint-Loup rushed in, dropping his monocle.

‘Ah, my dear Robert, how very comfortable it is here,’ I said to him. ‘How nice it would be if one were allowed to dine and sleep here.’

…

‘So you’d rather stay with me and sleep here, would you, than go to the hotel by yourself?’ Saint-Loup asked me, smiling.

‘Oh, Robert, it’s cruel of you to be sarcastic about it,’ I answered. ‘You know it’s not possible, and you know how wretched I shall be over there.’

‘Well, you flatter me!’ he replied. ‘Because it actually occurred to me that you’d rather stay here to-night. And that is precisely what I went to ask the captain.’

‘And he has given you leave?’ I cried.

‘He hadn’t the slightest objection.’

‘Oh! I adore him!’

‘No, that would be going too far. But now, let me just get hold of my batman and tell him to see about our dinner,’ he went on, while I turned away to hide my tears.

We were several times interrupted by the entry of one or other of Saint-Loup’s fellow-N.C.O.’s. He drove them all out again.

‘Get out of here. Buzz off!’

I begged him to let them stay.

…

Later on, looking at Robert, it struck me that he too was a little like the photograph of his aunt, by a mysterious process which I found almost as moving, since, if his face had not been directly produced by hers, the two had nevertheless a common origin. The features of the Duchesse de Guermantes, which were pinned to my vision of Combray, the nose like a falcon’s beak, the piercing eyes, seemed to have a pattern for the cutting out—in another copy analogous and slender, with too delicate a skin—of Robert’s face, which might also be superimposed upon his aunt’s. I looked admiringly at those features of his so characteristic of the Guermantes…Robert, without being aware of its cause, was touched by my affection. This was moreover increased by the sense of well-being inspired in me buy the heat of the fire and by the champagne which simultaneously bedewed my forehead with beads of sweat and my eyes with tears…

I hope you are still with me. I realize this quotation is long, but I am hoping my taking such a liberty will be forgiven in light of the extreme and indulgent structure of In Search of Lost Time as a narrative and all of its embedded narratives. This event of Marcel sleeping in Saint-Loup’s room is actually much longer and I have edited the more than ten pages down to this segment above. It is amazing to me, that today, it is so necessary for me to edit sections of his writing so much just to communicate one complete thought or memory of Marcel’s. There is so much layering of themes on top of the actual “story” of Marcel’s life. Amidst all that is going on in Marcel’s exterior life upon his arrival to Paris and this first night there with Saint-Loup, we, the readers, are blasted with endless musings from his interior world. He thus forces us to practice our reading skills and especially the retention of the “story” as he fills in the spaces of his life with embedded thoughts, philosophizing, yearning, etc.

But back to the scene. Now that I think about it, I am not convinced this is a sexual scene at all. Now that I read it again, it seems to me to be more homosocial than homosexual. And all of The Guermantes Way is homosocial, for that matter, given that Saint-Loup and his military boys are constantly around and jostling Marcel because he is so “different.” Saint-Loup admires Marcel and equates this “difference” with his talent as a writer and his artistic appreciation. And, I should not forget, his illness – something that Saint-Loup always mentions and toward which he is very sympathetic. So then, Marcel is more queer than gay, isn’t he? He’s not being all that homosexual here, but rather he is quite unusual. This passage fills me with questions, but I am not sure if they are a result of my short-sightedness that can be accounted for by my own cultural context being so different from that of Marcel. Why is he such a pansy here? I mean, we all knew he was willy nilly, but we though he was only that way in his writing, in what he only exposed to us. Now he is uninhibited in his weakness in front of Saint-Loup. Also, why does he want other officers to stay in the room with them? What is happening in the room!?

Another thought that has occurred to me is how I mis-remembered the passage. I thought it was much more explicit than it actually is. In fact, the scene seems to encircle or trace out some sexual tension, but there is a complete avoidance of anything overtly sexual or even analogous to it. It just goes on and on, teasing us with possibilities. Could it be that Marcel set up the stage for us, only to give us the director’s wand with which our own imaginations could complete the scene as we wish? Could it be that through “boring” us as readers, he is actually provoking our minds to wander into their own rooms of the unconscious? When we are bored, our minds wander uninhibited, perhaps leading us to think about sex or to imagine sex. And he is giving us this freedom by giving us someone to blame for it. I did it myself, in fact: I blamed him, yesterday in class, when I mentioned this scene, stating that Marcel and Saint-Loup had engaged in raunchy sex. I didn’t want to think about it, oh no! I am too civilized, pure and married. But Proust wrote it and made me - forced me - and so now I am introducing the rest of you to it.

Only now, when I revisit the scene in writing (not in memory) do I see more clearly, that it is I who “wrote” it or created the scene from the characters and stage that Proust provided me.

In any case, I should finish up – I don’t want to bore you…Or do I?