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.