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?

The Vulture that Didn’t Fly

Virginia Woolf and I have very little in common as writers. But there is at least one confession she makes in Moments of Being that I can relate to. Her admission to loathing her own writing shortly after having written it seems to be a reality in which I too constantly dwell.

However, the script I recently wrote for my class presentation entitled, “The ‘Mother-Cake’: Warm, Porous and Somehow Blue,” was quite rare. I loved it. It pleasured and prided me to read the words aloud and to revel in an uncommon confidence in my own turn of phrase. Ideas-wise, I was also on the mark. A tidy package, I thought I had, wrapped in playful wit to keep attention spans from waning.

“…I thought I had…”

When I did present my own bundle of joy to my classmates/you, I noticed some nods and smiles at different moments as I spoke. But after the crux of my argument had already been laid out, I read the two lines that described one aspect of Freud’s interpretation of Da Vinci’s Madonna and Child with St. Anne – A.K.A. the vulture analysis. The series of comments that followed were directed toward my paper, and toward this vulture analysis in particular.

One person said that he/she didn’t buy Freud’s vulture thing, but that maybe I didn’t write about it well enough since my listeners got lost half way through… Another said that maybe the confusion came from too many theoretical voices who were only cluttering up my writing, and that it would be better to focus on one voice and to use the others in footnotes. Many people nodded in agreement. Another person claimed my facts were wrong about Freud’s view that Da Vinci was a perfectionist. Another person insisted I need more evidence from Proust’s writing to buttress my argument that Marcel is nostalgic – perhaps incestuously – for his mother. Another person said that she once read an article by Freud and did not like it.

In short, the vulture didn’t fly.

Yes this series of comments was directed toward my paper, but I absorbed them as a part of myself, because that is just how self-absorbed I am.

Ignoring the proper academic code - of accepting criticism and admitting ruefully that it is all my own fault and I will seek to improve and give thanks to those who generously offer their dislikes of my work - for the moment, I will confess to my true feelings.

It hurt.

As I sat, listening to my classmates’ comments, I could not think about whether they were right or not. I rather was concentrating on maintaining a performance. A poker face that expressed welcome to my colleagues, a face that nodded and said, “ok thank you, yes, I should consider that,” and “oh, I apologize for my lack of clarity here…” It was a different script that I was reading. It was a survival script in the face of criticism that we are not allowed to take personally. I had a few things going on in my mind, behind this face. I was wondering if anyone liked my initial question of “what is Marcel nostalgic for?” I was wondering if anyone truly understood any of Freud’s psychoanalytic writing that I so dogmatically loved (yes, I admit it). I wondered if there was anything salvageable in my entire presentation, and if so, why didn’t anyone, anywhere say so? I wondered why it is automatically and entirely the writer’s fault if a listener gets lost. Most of all, I wondered, how I could have been so completely off the mark? I loved this one set of ideas, the writing, the question and the creation of my compiled voices of theory and literature so much that I had been sure others would enjoy it. So I was not prepared when they did not.

For the days following and since that presentation, I have wallowed in a mix of bewilderment and self-pity. The complete range of emotions I found myself tangled in tugged at me from every direction and in all states of mind. My poor husband became the target of my emotional purge and out-stream of questions. With hot tears I half yelled, half whispered to him in church, “I read the paper to you the day before I presented it. Why didn’t you tell me it was garbage?!” He has been patient and encouraging and honest toward me the whole time. Then he told me I have to let go…

My work means a lot to me. In fact it is not even different from me, it is a part of me. I know I am pathetic about my work because I am so emotional about it, but I am learning to let go. Or, I should be more precise: I am learning to let go of the emotions that limit my abilities, and hold on to the ones that fuel my passion. I love my work, this work. I want to hand-write the word love because I cannot press the keys on my computer down hard enough. In writing down all my colleagues’ comments on my presentation, in seeing them mirrored back to me in the black and white linear type on my computer, free from the gnarly vines and shrouding thicket that bound them when they stayed trapped in my heart, I am able, only now, to address them in a constructive way. I am able, after whining to my husband, after writing and after finding humour in my own pathetic-ness, to honestly thank my classmates for their thoughtful concern and generous attention to my work. I will rework my presentation. I will graciously accept your comments.

Thank you.

And now, if you are still reading, you have tasted just a crumb of the neurosis I embody. So please, praise my patient husband who puts up with it every day!

The Art of Political Performance

You will be glad to hear that I recently bought my very own copies of the In Search of Lost Time books from the BMV on Bloor. At $9.99 a piece they were a bargain. Today, as I leaf through them, trying to locate certain key quotations and passages, I am struck by a section of The Guermantes Way in which the Marquis de Norpois – who, according to Patrick Alexander, is an ex-ambassador, a friend of Marcel’s father, lover of Mme de Villeparisis and a “pompous stuffed-shirt” – offers an opinion:

As you know, the Academy is very hide-bound; it takes fright at anything that smacks of novelty. Personally, I deplore this. How often have I not had the occasion to say as much to my colleagues! I cannot be sure, God forgive me, that I did not even once let the term ‘stick-in-the-mud’ escape my lips. (267)

Although he is talking about “The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences” (morality is a science?), in the haste of my skimming I trippingly thought he was talking about the university Academy, for sometimes – and I cannot stress enough the “some” part of the word – I too feel that certain governing bodies “take fright at anything that smacks of novelty."

I relate to the things Norpois is saying and I likewise deplore the conservativism of the university administration right now, however, Marcel or “The Narrator” (as Mavor refers to him) makes sure his readers know that Norpois is only trying to win us over and his apparent open-mindedness is just a trick.

For Marcel, being conservative is not a system of beliefs or the situating of oneself a little right of centre, rather it is hidden in gestures; it is political performance. The actual content of what conservatives say is not indicative of their conservatism; rather it is the timing of what they say, the body language and tone of voice in which they dress what they say that points to their conservatism. For the convictions of a conservative can change depending on how convenient and self-serving an argument in question might be – and especially depending on who is listening.

Directly after the Norpois quotation noted above, Marcel describes him as an actor, stating that he spoke, “…with a scandalized smile in an undertone, almost an aside, as though on a stage, giving the Prince a rapid, sidelong glance from his blue eyes, like a veteran actor studying an effect on his audience.” In other words, Norpois is only saying what he thinks will please some of his listeners, in this case the Prince. Marcel perceives the conversation as he would a play at the theatre – and he shares his true opinions, glazed with delicious sarcasm:

One may mock at the pedantic silliness which makes diplomats of the Norpois type go into ecstasies over some piece of official wording which is to all intents and purposes meaningless. But their childishness has this compensation: diplomats know that, in the scales which ensure that balance of power, European or otherwise, which we call peace, good feeling, fine speeches, earnest entreaties weigh very little; and that the heavy weight, the true determinant consists in something else, in the possibility which the adversary enjoys, if he is strong enough, or does not enjoy, of satisfying a desire in exchange for something in return.

I commend Marcel’s honesty and perceptiveness. Though it may not be rare that people in positions of power have good intensions, it is rare that their good deeds do not have strings attached. Perhaps Marcel is trying to inform his readers that unconditional giving does not exist, and that those who claim it does, are merely pretending, acting. The truth is that maybe we are all actors and we are just performing our different roles of “academic,” “sister,” “Catholic,” “communist,” et cetera. But when it comes down to it, we all just give a little of ourselves every day for a little of the world in return.

Some people give years of their life and thousands of dollars to finish their doctorate and to be, for the rest of their life, somebody else – a “doctor.”

But just what do we embody in our roles and titles?

Marcel, later in The Guermantes Way, describes Dr. Dieulafoy (a name which – perhaps ironically – literally translates to “Dr. God-the-faith”), as “the embodiment of tact, intelligence and kindness” (355). Like Norpois, he is a doctor not so much because he completed his schooling and works to diagnose and treat the ill – in this case, Marcel’s grandmother – but because he fits the role:

Dr. Dieulafoy may indeed have been a great physician, a marvelous teacher; to the several roles in which he excelled, he added another, in which he remained for forty years without a rival, a role as original as that of the confidant, the clown or the noble father, which consisted in coming to certify that a patient was in extremis. His name alone presaged the dignity with which he would sustain the part, and when the servant announced: ‘M. Dieulafoy,’ one thought one was in a Molière play… Other physicians, other professors, may have rivaled, may indeed have surpassed him. But the ‘capacity’ in which his knowledge, his physical endowments, his distinguished manners made him supreme exists no longer, for want of any successor capable of taking his place.

The titles we (will) possess have a lot to do with how we embody the roles to which they defer. Therefore even those of us who are not interested in politics must learn the political game if we want to adequately fulfill our roles. Dr. Dieulafoy was not the best at the science of medicine, but he excelled at performing the role – at making people believe he was the best. He was a political creature, and in a world where one’s success is dependent on being elected or chosen or hired by others, it is an important example to follow. The difficulty lies in negotiating what others want to hear and what we want to say: where, in the game of politics, lies the balance between one’s personal values and the desires of others? Does the end always justify the means? And, most importantly, when we do perform our political roles, is it the same as lying, even if we admit to it?

Monty on Proust

Since no one has posted it yet, and in light of recent University of Toronto disappointments, here is some humour at the expense - and in admiration - of Proust.

-natalie