IV. The Homosexual Characters of the Search
In order to complete our work on inversion in the Search, in this final chapter we intend to explore the homosexual characters.1 We will also treat those who could be considered homosexuals.
As we do not wish to overload this work, we will limit the analysis of inverted characters to the elements that are peculiar to inversion. The presentations will thus be far from complete and will touch on only one aspect of the characters of the Search.
We structure this part on the basis of the quantity of information we have found. We begin, then, with the character most analyzed by Proustian criticism. Of those whom the critics seem to pass over in silence, we will content ourselves with a simple mention.
The character who narrates, who says “I” (and who is not I)…”3
With Les voix narratives dans la Recherche du temps perdu [The narrative voices in the Search for Lost Time], Muller devotes a whole book to the question of what the word “I” refers to in the Search. Is it the entity that relates all the stories or the one who lived them? Or is it both at the same time? Could it be that the “I” is Proust, or a mixture of Proust with invented elements? All these questions need answers and before concentrating on Marcel’s sexuality, we will try to resolve the complex problem of his identity.
In order to make the analyses more comprehensible, we start by proposing the four entities that “I” could represent. We borrow the following list from Muller,4 who enumerates and explains all the possible contents of “I.”
|
The Hero |
The “I” engaged in his own history, of which the future is not known. |
|
The Narrator |
The “I” who turns on his own past a retrospective gaze. |
|
The Intermediary Subject (sometimes the Insomniac) |
The “I” with whom an “overlap” is indispensable for the Narrator to be able to remember the Hero. |
|
The Protagonist |
The Hero, the Narrator, the Intermediary Subject, when the distinction among these three “I’s” is superfluous. |
This list shows why we have disregarded the figure of the author in this work: the “I” never refers to the author. It is true that many critics associate Marcel with Proust – the similarities between the two figures and the given name they share undoubtedly give credence to this – but we choose to follow the many other critics who reject all association between the two. This is because, as Barthes says, the paths of Marcel and Proust are analogues, not homologues.5 Those who make the distinction between Proust and Marcel are supported by the following words of Proust himself: “The character who relates, who says ‘I’ (and who is not I)…”6 There are many differences between the two, the most important undoubtedly being that the Search presents a heterosexual Protagonist who is not a Jew.
Apart from the distinction between Proust and Marcel, the most important distinction to make is that between the Hero and the Narrator. For the differentiation of these two entities, Muller is inspired by Spitzer, who speaks of an “erzãhltes Ich” and an “erzãhlendes Ich.”7 This involves “an I engaged in a story which he enters backwards, and an I who arrives at the end of this unfolding, of which he is no longer the one who acts but the one who chronicles.”8 The Hero is not the Narrator, but, as we have shown in the diagram, the distinction is not always clear. This is why Muller introduces the notion of “Protagonist,” a term we have opted for – or simply “Marcel” – throughout this work.
The narrator is sexually undetermined.9
As to the sexual nature of the Protagonist, the debate continues. Even though nothing at first sight indicates that Marcel’s sexuality should be questioned – the Search designates a heterosexual Protagonist – many critics nevertheless do so. Quite a few of them assert that knowing the sexual nature of the author impels them to focus on the question of Marcel’s sexuality. In other words, if Proust had not been known for his homosexual desires, the discussion of Marcel’s sexual nature would undoubtedly be much less elaborate. Lavagetto remarks in this connection that the author was aware that putting a heterosexual Hero onstage “will not be enough to guarantee to the narrator the desired immunity.”10 According to the critic, this is the reason why the following passage appears in the Search:
The poet is to be pitied, who must, with no Virgil to guide him, pass through the circles of an inferno of sulfur and brimstone, to cast himself into the fire that falls from heaven, in order to rescue a few of the inhabitants of Sodom! No charm in his work; the same severity in his life as in those of the unfrocked priests who follow the strictest rule of celibacy so that no one may be able to ascribe to anything but loss of faith their discarding of the cassock.11 Indeed is it not always the same for these writers. What physician of the insane will not, because of consorting with them, have his own nervous crisis? He is fortunate if he can assert that it was not a previous latent madness that led him to concern himself with them. The object of his studies, for a psychiatrist, often reacts upon him. But before that, before this object, what obscure inclination, what frightful fascination made him choose it?
In what follows, we look at the different theories that have been contrived to resolve the question of the Protagonist’s sexuality. We will examine first the theories that treat Marcel as a heterosexual. Then we will examine the elements that may suggest a homosexual Protagonist.
In the first instance, the Search
does not suggest a homosexual reading of Marcel. This is why many critics
highlight the elements that indicate his heterosexuality. Muller points to “the
dissociation of the scientific observer from the object of his study [in order
to]…protect the Narrator from all suspicion of complicity with the characters
displayed”12 – a thesis confirmed by Ton-That, who compares
Miguet-Ollagnier emphasizes the contamination of homosexuality, which appears not to infect Marcel. However, this is not enough to justify a definitive conclusion that the Protagonist’s orientation is heterosexual, according to the critic: for one thing, homosexuality is omnipresent in his life; for another, he does not relate what happens to him, but rather the “adventures” of people around him: “[Marcel] feels the need to give information about himself that is a bit bizarre and unnecessary.”16
Bonnet points to Marcel’s loves, which are directed toward the feminine sex. The liaison with Albertine should be the ultimate proof of the Protagonist’s heterosexuality. However, other critics evoke this same liaison to show that Marcel “is so.” Reille and Roger point out that the couple never make love.17 Rivers subscribes to this idea and goes so far as to assert that the apparently heterosexual liaison is fundamentally nothing but a “disguised homosexual experience.”18 For Roger, the absence of any consummation of the sexual act suggests the Protagonist’s impotence. The critic asks whether “his erotic behaviour is limited to what psychoanalysis calls ‘preliminary pleasure,’ oral (kissing) and manual (’caressing’)”19 The passages that tell of Marcel’s incessant masturbation give a negative response to this question.
Ladenson, Miller and Eribon return to the theory of the transposition of the sexes to show the inversion of the Protagonist: if one considers Albertine as the feminine transposition of a boy, Marcel is well and truly homosexual. Silverman proposes an inverse interpretation: it is not Albertine who is a man, but Marcel who is a woman. As the two characters enter into a relationship, the critic asks the following question: “Why not think of Marcel simply as a lesbian?”20 Ladenson proposes two arguments that refute this idea: first, Marcel gives no sign from which one could deduce that he conforms to the formula of Ulrichs.21 Second, Marcel never stops trying to understand Albertine, but nor does he ever succeed (cf. 2.2.2 Gomorrah).
One other relationship of Marcel’s that is evoked because it seems to say something about the Protagonist’s sexual nature is the one he had with Saint-Loup. Even though in the text the relationship is presented as purely friendly, Guenette – who goes so far as to say that “the major instance of homosexuality presented by the Recherche is that of the novel’s own narrator”22 – considers it amorous. The critic notes:
The narrator gives expression to his homosexual love in terms which appear as harmlessly heterosexual as those used to describe the libidinous tendencies of Julien Sorel. The guilty secret of the narrator’s love for Saint-Loup is masked in the text by a series of displacements and narrative tricks, ways of making the homosexually unspeakable writable and novelistically possible.23
Exactly like the (other) inverts, Marcel seeks to present himself as a hetero, with the difference that, if he is homosexual, he is the only one that is never unmasked. For Guenette, this does not mean that there is nothing to reveal, that because he was not unmasked, the Protagonist must be heterosexual. On the contrary, “through the heterosexual surface, occasional flashes of the eagerly hidden homosexual truth shine through.”24 It remains to be seen what these flashes are. On what does Guenette base his calling the relationship between Marcel and Saint-Loup homosexual? The critic lists several elements, of which we reproduce the most important. First of all, there is Marcel’s reaction when he meets Saint-Loup for the first time: “already I was imagining that he would have an instinctive feeling for me, that I was to be his best friend.”25 According to Guenette, such a reaction has nothing to do with friendship. On the contrary, it shows that “the narrator is hit by a homoerotic coup de foudre which he does not admit.”26 Another indicator of Marcel’s homosexual inclination in regard to Saint-Loup is hidden in the following conversation:
“Ah! You’d prefer to sleep here near to me rather than leave alone for the hotel, Saint-Loup said to me, laughing.
“Oh, Robert, you are cruel to take it with irony,” I said to him, “Since you know that it’s impossible and that I have suffered so much down there.”27
Compagnon is not entirely in agreement with Guenette’s reasoning. This critic admits the homosexual inclination in Marcel in regard to Saint-Loup, but that is all. They do not have a liaison, they do not make love. According to the critic, this is due to one of the fundamental laws of love in the Search: when one is loved, one must flee. Compagnon points out that it is very probable that Saint-Loup and Marcel love each other, but, since Marcel “is the loved object, and like all the loved objects in the Search, he seeks to be avoided,” the scene at Doncières does not lead to the conclusion that the Protagonist is homosexual, according to Compagnon.
Diamant starts with the relationship between Marcel and Charlus. As the name of the Baron can be shortened to “Mémé, which Diamant equates with “Maman” (“Mummy”), which is close to “même” (“same”,“self”), she concludes: “This suggests a conflation of Charlus with mother, and also with the narrator (if he is ‘même,’ implying identity, he is ‘self’ rather than ‘other’ to the narrator. This implies that the narrator is indeed a true successor to Charlus, both as homosexual and as artist.”29
According to Schuerewegen, the question of Marcel’s sexuality is presented in such a way that it is practically impossible to know his sexual tastes. There are indications that point toward heterosexuality as well as toward homosexuality. Schuerewegen points out that inversion and estheticism are strongly related. We return to the example of the oysters, of which the exterior is always described. Their description is generally centered on the artistic. It is thus that art succeeds in changing revulsion to attraction. Proust could be suggesting in this way that in turning toward art, the narrator aligns himself with the gays. Schuerewegen stresses yet another argument, namely homosexual contagion, in consequence of which, at the end of the Search, most of the characters are revealed to be homosexual. The idea that contagion could serve as an indication of Marcel’s homosexuality is shared by Eribon and Wittig.30
The word “contagion” comes also from Hayes’s pen, though in a completely different context. The critic remarks that contagion is not limited to characters but extends also to scenes. Accordingly, the homosexual metaphor of tea (“ to take tea”)(vide supra) succeeds in infecting the petite madeleine scene. Consider this passage:
No
sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a
shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary
changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses,
but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the
vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its
brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love
has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in
me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence
could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy?31
It is clear that the pleasure provoked is
erotic. Thus the pleasure felt because of the madeleine dipped in tea equals
that of Charlus and Morel when they go to take tea at Jupien’s. Kristeva takes
up the idea and reinforces it by stating that tea could be urine, since some
homosexuals have the ritual of dipping bread in urine.32 The
Protagonist could well be described as homosexual. And this is not all. When
interpreting the madeleine scene as Hayes does, the whole system of involuntary
memory is also infected. Memory is triggered by a sensation from the past and
tries to recreate a lost paradise. Why could this paradise not be
The petite madeleine scene is not the only “big scene” in the Search to be evoked with the aim of clarifying the Protagonist’s sexuality. The three great scenes of voyeurism that we have analyzed in the third chapter of this work also serve this end. After stressing the fact that all three of these scenes are homosexual, Roger indicates the ‘passive’ position of the Protagonist, which could indicate his homosexuality (cf. I. Homosexual love). He points out that, each time, it is a case of a homosexual scene. Schehr also bases upon this voyeurism the conclusion that Marcel’s nature is homosexual:
In a perverse way, to narrate is to be a voyeur and a sadist. To narrate oneself is to turn that sadism and voyeurism on oneself and to become, in the process, one’s own masochistic, exhibitionistic victim, a blissful homosexual heautosimoumenos, the Baudelairean bourreau de soi-même [self-torturer].”34
On the basis of the voyeuristic scene of Time Regained, Lavagetto too believes in Marcel’s homosexual nature. Beginning with Marcel’s words about Albertine: “That she should have promised her this, could only mean that Albertine wished it, or that the lady had known that by offering the introduction she would be giving her pleasure,”35 Lavagetto indicates that Jupien must have known that Marcel wanted to watch a flogging and that in proposing to the Protagonist that he watch the flogging of Charlus, he would give him pleasure.
In regard to the flogging scene, Schehr, all the while dwelling on the hypothetical side of his proposition, remarks that it offers a reading that could point to a homosexual nature in Marcel. He starts with the following sentence:
It was not the Orient of Decamps, or even of Delacroix, that began to haunt my imagination after the Baron had left me, but the old Orient of the Arabian Nights that I had been so fond of; and little by little losing myself in the network of dark streets, I thought of the Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, seeking adventure[s] in the remote quarters of Bagdad.36
For Schehr, the word “adventures” could suggest that Marcel, just like the Caliph, is looking for sexual adventures.37 We skip the flogging scene, largely analyzed under the point 3.1.3, to come to the passage (which closes the flogging scene) where the homosexuals flee into the Metro. Here is the extract:
Some of [Jupien’s] habitués were tempted…by the darkness which had suddenly come over the streets. Several of these Pompeians, on whom the fire of heaven was already raining down, descended into the passageways of the underground railroad, which were as black as catacombs. They knew, as a matter of fact, that they would not be alone there. Now, the darkness…produces a result particularly tempting for certain people – it does away with the first stage in the process of sexual approach and makes it possible to attain right at the very beginning a degree of intimacy usually reached only after considerable time….But in the darkness…the hands, the lips, the bodies can come into play right from the start….If, however, one’s advances are welcomed, this instant response, the body that does not have to draw back but comes closer suggests to us that she – or he – whom we are silently courting is without restraint and corrupted with vice, a thought that augments the pleasure of biting right into the forbidden fruit, without first looking at it with coveting eyes or even asking permission. Meanwhile, the darkness continues…Jupien’s habitués felt as if they had travelled far and come to witness some natural phenomenon, such as a tidal wave or an eclipse; relishing, in place of the usual prepared and sedentary pleasure, the tang of a chance meeting in the midst of the great unknown, they celebrated secret rites in the darkness of the catacombs, as in some Pompeian place of ill repute, to the accompaniment of the volcanic thunder of the bombs….Already anticipating the end of the war, new styles of dancing were being developed everywhere and were being madly indulged in under cover of night, hiding in the darkness in order not to violate police ordinances too openly.38
Regarding this passage, Schehr says that it is impossible for Marcel to describe what he sees: in the utter darkness of the Metro corridors, only the sense of touch that remains. Consequently, the events described by Marcel could only have been known to him through his participation in them. Even if he does nothing, it is very probable that he will be accosted by one or several homosexuals present down there. Schehr joins Diamant’s attitude: “Far from being a ‘mere’ observer, he is a necessary participant.”39
About the three scenes of homosexual
voyeurism, Lavagetto, unlike Schehr and Diamant, remarks that Marcel is always
situated “outside the homosexual space.”40 Sedgwick also stresses
this position of Marcel’s, so as to believe that he is permitted “to
incriminate the narrator (and the reader) of complicity in the name of the
adage it takes one to know one.”41 Lavagetto claims that,
because of a lapse during the flogging scene, Marcel is no longer outside the
scene. This is the problem: Marcel rents Room No. 43 in the
In short, his desire to be chained up and beaten, for all its ugliness, betrayed in him a dream as poetic as does in other persons the desire to go to Venice or to keep a chorus girl as a mistress. And M. de Charlus was so determined that this dream should give him the illusion of reality that Jupien had had to sell the wooden bed that was in Room 14A and put in its place an iron bed, which harmonised better with the chains. [The translation by Frederick A. Blossom footnote says “The French text reads ‘43.’” This is the “lapse” cited by Lavagetto.]
Lavagetto constructs his theory around that fact that this passage concerns the bed in Room No. 43 (the one Marcel rented). The critic concludes:
This lapse is as typical and transparent as it is “catastrophic.” Proust’s plan is thrown into disarray. Marcel escapes from his control; so I appears in the homosexual scene, and all the maneuvers by which he had tried to manage his position rigorously are in vain.43
So, for Lavagetto, it is clear: there is no possible doubt about Marcel’s homosexual nature. According to Compagnon, Lavagetto is too quick to exult – he “dramatizes that lapse as if it nullified the whole defensive system so carefully elaborated by the narrator.”44 The fact is that “the lapse establishes nothing.”45 Compagnon uses three arguments to refute Lavagetto’s theory. First of all, it could well be that Charlus has himself beaten in Room 43 from time to time. Secondly. Room 14A need not be the only “torture chamber.”46 Finally, Compagnon accentuates Lavagetto’s doubt: is it Marcel’s or Proust’s slip?47 For Compagnon, it is clear: it’s the author’s mistake – Proust made others (e.g., during the trip to La Raspelière, Cottard interrupts a conversation between Brichot and the princess, although several pages earlier, Marcel relates that the doctor was in a different car) – which “proves nothing about the narrator.”48
Before concluding, we look at Schuerewegen’s “Les huîtres gay de Monsieur Marcel” (“Monsieur Marcel’s gay oysters”) which, in speaking of the idea that the Search is a Bildungsroman, sets out an analysis of the possible evolution of the sexuality of the narrator, dwelling on the way Marcel’s distaste for oysters disappears with age. According to Proust, there are cases in which homosexuality is curable (cf. 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion). Consider for example this extract from on of the notebooks for the Search:
In certain very rare cases, the problem is not congenital…and in such a case, superficial, it can heal. Sometimes it comes from a difficulty in making love with a woman who has an anatomical abnormality, yet certain asthmas are cured by destruction of adhesions in the affected person’s nose; other times the cause is distaste for women, a revulsion caused by their smell, by the quality of their skin, a revulsion which can be overcome, as certain children who feel ill on seeing oysters or cheese end up liking them very much…49
Schuerewegen believes that “one can overcome homosexuality in the same way that one can conquer a food aversion. In short, whether learning to eat oysters or becoming hetero, it’s the same thing, Proust suggests.”50 The critic adds that, in the Search, we watch an evolution in three stages: there is a gastronomic set, an esthetic and a sexual. This third set causes problems: if one assumes that an evolution necessarily advances from minus to plus, how does this apply to the Protagonist? As Schuerewegen remarks, Marcel is presented to us as a hetero. How does evolution progress toward a plus? There is only one possibility, namely, that Marcel evolves towards homosexuality, which is from that time considered acceptable. Schuerewegen makes clear the hypothetical character of this theory, since Proust does not describe Marcel’s inversion. Nevertheless, the value lies in the fact that the author always leaves the acting out implicit.
In order to complete this presentation of Marcel’s sexuality, we conclude with Schuerewegen, who leaves the question open. The Search makes possible many interpretations of Marcel’s sexuality, but in the work “I am homosexual” is never said.51 Complications arise because the reader expects such a confession for narratological reasons (Proust is not Marcel, but there is a resemblance between them), for genetic reasons (there are differences between the text and the avant-text) and stylistic (Proust is an author of novels, not a scientist). As we have tried to show, the sexuality of the Protagonist is a complex question. It lends itself to many hypotheses, but we will never know the definitive truth.
The virile pederast, in love with virility, detests effeminate young men, detests, to tell the truth, all young men, just as men who have suffered at the hands of women are misogynist.52
Concerning Baron de Charlus, there is no possible doubt: he is an invert, and, more particularly, using Kristeva’s classification, which we explained in the second chapter of this work, he is a “solitary”53 – although surrounded by others. Modelled on Robert de Montesquiou – at least, if a good number of critics are to be believed54 – the Baron is “full of artistic refinement, sensitivity, kindness.”55 Proust describes the character as follows:
I try to paint the homosexual in love with virility because, without knowing it, he is a Woman. I do not in any way pretend that this is the only homosexual. But this is one who is very interesting and who, I believe, has never been described. Like all the other homosexuals, he is different from other men, in certain things worse, in many others, infinitely better. Just as one can say “There is a certain relation between the arthritic or nervous temperament of such and such a person and his gifts of sensitivity, etc.,” I am convinced that it is to his homosexuality that Monsieur de Charlus owes his understanding of so many things that are closed to his brother the Duke de Guermantes, being more refined, more sensitive. I have noted this from the start. Unfortunately, the effort I made to be objective, in this as throughout, will make this volume particularly detestable. In the third volume, in effect, where Monsieur de Charlus…takes up a considerable amount of space, the enemies of homosexuality will be revolted by the scenes which I will paint. And the others will not be happy either because their virile ideal is presented as a consequence of a feminine temperament.56
However, in the first instance, Charlus is represented entirely differently. In Homosexualities and French Literature, we find a good description of the Baron at the beginning of the Search:
Charlus, rude, disagreeable, hard on those
of his own sex, swift to chastise them for the slightest error, but a friend to
women, gallant, enterprising, so handsome in his youth that legend says he had
a thousand good fortunes. Saint-Loup, not without pride, laments the fate of
Mme de Charlus: ‘But I know well enough that he was unfaithful to my poor
aunt.’ Nobly faithful to her memory, however, he goes to the cemetery in
A completely contrary image emerges after Marcel discovers Charlus’s true nature.58 Since the latter is unaware that he is exposed, he continues to mask his true nature, before letting it appear little by little. Van de Ghinste points out in this connection that “this protective mask is sometimes even reinforced by a human screen: the Baron, in society, often shelters behind a beautiful and elegant woman, who serves him as both bulwark and alibi.”59 In order to maintain the mask, the Baron – otherwise entirely inverted, according to the critic – goes so far as to lie: “he feigns…a virility that is contrary to his nature.”60 We examine an extract in which Marcel relates how the Baron condemns effeminate men because61 he is one himself:
I gathered that the particular fault which he found in the young men of the period was their extreme effeminacy. “They’re absolute women,” he said with scorn. But what life would not have appeared effeminate beside that which he expected a man to lead, and never found energetic or virile enough? (He himself, when he walked across country, after long hours on the road would plunge his heated body into frozen streams.) He would not even allow a man to wear a single ring. But this profession of virility did not prevent his having also the most delicate sensibilities….[My grandmother] found in M. de Charlus a delicacy, a sensibility that were quite feminine.62
Marcel is not alone in “seeking to learn the secret of M. de Charlus, which other men did not carry inside them”63 to be “fascinated by him.”64 Consider for example this comment of Marcel’s:
Whereas in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where M. de Charlus was so well known, nobody ever referred to his morals (of which most people had no suspicion, others remained doubtful, crediting him rather with intense but Platonic friendships, with behaving imprudently, while the enlightened few strenuously denied, shrugging their shoulders, any insinuation upon which some malicious Gallardon might venture), those morals, the nature of which was known perhaps to a few intimate friends, were, on the other hand, being denounced daily far from the circle in which he moved… Moreover, in those professional and artistic circles where he was regarded as the typical instance of inversion, his great position in society, his noble origin were completely unknown.65
Ski is the first to allude to the Baron’s “vice.” Mme Verdurin seems equally up to date on the Baron’s lifestyle. She says before offering him a book: “Look, here is a book that has just come, I think you’ll find it interesting. It is by Roujon. The title is attractive: Life among men.”66 Rivers points out that the allusions made by the Verdurins accord with an attack on the Baron: “The Verdurin[s] attack Charlus because they see how the homosexuality he tries so hard to conceal can be used to get him out of the way and facilitate their own social rise.”67 Rivers touches on an important point by introducing the social dimension. For Charlus does not limit himself to men of his own social class: he has a liaison (unilateral: it is possible that Charlus loves Morel with all his heart while Morel is in it only for the money) with Morel, a violinist, and Jupien, a vest-maker. In Homosexualities and French literature we find: “Charlus lowers himself to the rank of servants and waistcoat-makers. But these, being very snobbish, reconstitute a hierarchy of their own advantage, raise themselves in their fancy to the level of their partners.”69 Eribon indicates that this is not so very striking: “the social mixture”70 is characteristic of the lifestyle of homosexuals, according to this critic. The social dimension returns to center stage in Charlus’s life at the end of the Search when he is spurned by all and suffers as a result a degrading social evolution. He falls ill and Jupien is the only person who stands by him (cf. 4.1.5 Jupien).
Throughout the Search, M. de Charlus is linked to the Bible, by many different routes. Consider the passage in which Morel rescues Charlus from a flower girl:
The musician, turning with a frank, imperative and decided air to the flower-seller, raised a hand which repulsed her and indicated to her that they did not want her flowers and that she was to get out of their way as quickly as possible. M. de Charlus observed with ecstasy this authoritative, virile gesture, made by a graceful hand for which it ought still to have been too weighty, too massively brutal, with a precocious firmness and suppleness which gave to this still beardless adolescent the air of a young David capable of waging war against Goliath.71
Mingelgrün says, in regard to the comparison of Morel with David, “a hero of great youth and beauty but also virile and courageous to the point of having vanquished the Philistine giant in single combat,” that the Baron “literally changes the gender”72 of the violinist. Charlus strives to convince himself that he is in love with a “real man.” (Cf. 1.2 Homosexuality from the scientific point of view; 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion.) A second connection between the Baron and Bible is hidden in the language of the Book of Daniel. Kristeva notes that “the transmutation of Charlus into a woman is described in a long digression that explicitly cites the language of Daniel.” Her remarks are based on the following passage:
Nothing upon the blank, undocumented face of this man or that could have led them to suppose that he was precisely the brother or the intended husband, or the lover if a woman of whom they were just going to remark: “What a cow!” But then, fortunately, a word whispered to them by some one standing near arrests the fatal expression of their lips. At once there appear, like a Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, the words: “He is engaged to,” or “he is the brother of,” or “he is the lover of the woman we ought not to describe, in his hearing, as a cow.” And this new conception will bring about an entire regrouping, thrusting some back, others forward, of the fractional conceptions, henceforward a complete whole, which we possessed of the rest of the family.74
A final biblical element concerning Charlus is the presence of the archangels. Marcel relates that the archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are chosen by the Baron as patrons:
M. de Charlus had chosen as his patrons and intercessors the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, to whom he made frequent appeals that they would convey his prayers to the Eternal Father, about whose throne they stand.75
After the death of the Baron, Marcel gets his hands on a letter of Charlus’s – a rather significant letter in relation to the link between the Baron and the Bible. Charlus’s text is peppered with biblical elements. He uses paraphrases (for example, “save from disaster the supereminence of a just man”77 and literal quotations (for example, “Inculcabis super leonem et aspidem” 78). In the letter, Charlus invokes the archangel Michael:
I doubt not that the intercession of the Archangel Michael, my patron saint, played a great part therein, and I now pray to him to forgive me for having so neglected him these many years and for having so illy requited the boundless bounty he has bestowed upon me, most especially in my battle with sin. I owe it to this faithful protector – and I say this in the fullness of my faith and my intelligence – that the Heavenly Father inspired Morel not to come.79
The archangels, patrons of Charlus, have a connection to Morel. This rapprochement cannot be arbitrary: it is probably rooted in the myths of homosexual love (cf. 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion.)
We have already spoken of the mask of the Baron and the fact that, in spite of this, his true nature is exposed. This is because Charlus does not succeed in hiding his femininity. Apparently, the Baron is conscious of the fact that his eyes – which are the mirror of the soul – could easily divulge his true nature:
I noticed then that his eyes, which were never fixed on the person to whom he was speaking, strayed perpetually in all directions, like those of certain animals when they are frightened, or those of street hawkers who while they are bawling their patter and displaying their illicit merchandise, keep a sharp look-out, though without turning their heads, on the different points of the horizon from any of which may appear, suddenly, the police.80
The Baron’s eyes are “like two crevices, two loopholes which alone he had failed to stop.” Consequently, “in vain might M. de Charlus hermetically seal its expression,” his eyes “made one think of some incognito, some disguise assumed by a powerful man in danger.”81 Without a doubt, as Erman indicates, his lapses also play an important role: “I’m as happy as a queen.”82 S. François points out in this connection “The language of a man bears witness both to what he is and to what he would like to be.”83 To this is added the voice of the Baron – a “sexualized voice” according to Erman – that leads the Protagonist to some reflections:
…his voice itself, like certain contralto voices which have not been properly trained to the right pitch, so that when they sing it sounds like a duet between a young man and a woman, singing alternately, mounted, when he expressed these delicate sentiments, to its higher notes, took on an unexpected sweetness and seemed to be embodying choirs of betrothed maidens, of sisters, who poured out the treasures of their love. But the bevy of young girls, whom M. de Charlus in his horror of every kind of effeminacy would have been so distressed to learn that he gave the impression of sheltering thus within his voice, did not confine themselves to the interpretation, the modulation of scraps of sentiment.85
D’Entrevaux considers the voice “the supreme indicator of belonging to the brotherhood”86 of inverts. He draws attention to the fact that Marcel guesses the sexual nature of M. de Vaugoubert from his voice. Yet the critic puts the reader on guard since there is no system for deciphering homosexual signs. The mystery is maintained through the entire series of novels.
As the voice is important in the field of linguistics, we seize the opportunity to return for an instant to the linguistic metaphor of homosexuality which we developed under the point 2.2.1.2 Metaphors. The Baron’s inversion is present also in his language. To illustrate this phenomenon, Ladenson quotes the following passage in which Charlus says about the wife of Philippe d’Orléans:
“One might base upon her the lyrical synthesis of ‘Wives of Aunties.’ First of all, the masculine type; generally the wife of an Auntie is a man, that is what makes it so easy for her to bear him children.”87
Ladenson points out the ambiguous use of two repetitions of the pronoun “lui” [him/her], which enables the sentence to carry two meanings: either it is easy for mannish women to have children with inverts, or it is easy for inverts to have children with virile women. Rivers stresses also the ambiguous use of language by the Baron. He quotes the following passage, in which Charlus says:
“You yourself, Brichot, who would thrust your hand in the flames to answer for the virtue of some man or other who comes to this house and whom the enlightened know to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you feel obliged to believe like every Tom, Dick and Harry in what is said about some man in the public eye who is the incarnation of those propensities to the common herd, when as a matter of fact, he doesn’t care twopence for that sort of thing. I say twopence, because if we were to offer five-and-twenty louis, we should see the number of plaster saints dwindle down to nothing. As things are, the average rate of sanctity, if you see any sanctity in that sort of thing, is somewhere between thirty and forty per cent.”88
The word “saints” makes a problem: are these the men who have never had homosexual desires or those who have an impeccable reputation in spite of their homosexual habits? This is not all: even the general message is not drawn clearly. What is Charlus talking about? His words could be interpreted as “if there is enough money involved, all men could be considered inverted”; but it could also mean that, “ if one has money, one can ruin the whole reputation by accusing just anybody of being homosexual.” According to Rivers, this linguistic ambiguity is not accidental: it shows that one has to “be so” to understand the commonplaces of the homosexual world.
Fernandez permits us to widen Charlus’s ambiguous language to his whole person: the Baron is infinitely doubled. As an example, we point out that Charlus is very hard on effeminate men while he puts on his own face “a faint layer of powder [that] gave almost the appearance of a face on the stage.”89 Fernandez indicates also that ambiguity, considering the contradictions of the character, is not limited to the Baron’s appearance: psychologically as well he lives in a dual state. The critic attributes this to the competition between his sensitivity (derived from his inversion) and his intelligence (which wishes at all costs to hide his sensitive character). Fernandez concludes: “M. de Charlus is double. M. de Charlus is in himself a dialogue and a duo.”90 According to this critic, the doubling within the character Charlus has important consequences. We quote:
[Physical ambiguity] means that the invert is the way he is by an affliction of his nature, by an accident in his begetting, and that the esthetic, spiritual, even moral justification that he will be able to invent to give notable value to his tastes will never be anything but a more or less skilful, more or less touching costuming, seasoning, or orchestration of that first inexorable misfortune.91
Fernandez is not the only critic to apply a
trait of Charlus to all inverts. Rivers does so also: he remarks that the Baron
is represented “backwards”92 before generalizing each description to
all inverts. This way of representing the invert was inspired by the Koran,
where, because of the particular lifestyles of its inhabitants,
…a man of about forty…who…kept fastened
upon me a pair of eyes dilated with observation. Every now and then those eyes
were shot through by a look of intense activity such as the sight of a person
whom they do not know excites only in men to whom, for whatever reason, it
suggests thoughts that would not occur to anyone else… He trained upon me a
supreme stare at once bold, prudent, rapid and profound, like a last shot which
one fires at an enemy at the moment when one turns to flee, and, after first
looking all round him, suddenly adopting an absent and lofty air, by an abrupt
revolution of his whole body turned to examine a playbill…94
Starting with these characteristics of the Baron, Van de Ghinste generalizes and concludes that “the invert, more than a normal being, feels the need to enter into communication with those he desires.”95 The critic adds at the same time that this excess of contact between “ peers” is balanced by a “deliberate distancing between the invert and the rest of the world.”96 (vide supra.)
If Charlus tries to distance himself from his “peers,” his family name brings him close to them. We will speak of this soon, but his given name (Palamède) merits our attention as well since it associates the character with “that diplomat who, with Ulysses and Menelaus, tries to prevent the Trojan War.”97 Most of the characters use the Baron’s given name, shortened to “Mémé.” With Ladenson, we ask why that particular abbreviation is chosen. Doesn’t the name itself rather invite the nickname “Papa”? According to the critic, the Baron is anything but a father figure. The abbreviation also allows the establishment of a connection between the Baron and Marcel’s grandmother since francophone children traditionally address their grandmothers in this way. Charlus’s (nick)name thus reflects the femininity of the character. Concerning the Baron’s family name, we will proceed by way of comparisons. The resemblance between “Charlus” and “Charles” is clear. Erman notes that “in the manuscript sent to Grasset in 1913, Saint-Loup was named Charles, and from Charles to Charlus there is only a us or…a custom.”98
From the preceding, we conclude with Fernandez that Charlus takes on the function of witness “to a form of sexual deviation that permits the illustration by his example of one of the blind and fatal mechanisms of love.”99 The critic points out elsewhere yet other functions of the Baron, but since these have nothing to do with the inversion of the character, we content ourselves with taking note, nothing more.
Morel can be all things to all people.100
Morel is undoubtedly the most difficult character of the Search to define. If Rivers calls him at the start “double” (Morel is cruel101and sensitive, humble and proud…), the critic understands quickly enough that the character exceeds the twofold characterization. As we will see in what follows, Morel is much more, particularly in love. Like all inverts, the violinist102 has feminine and masculine qualities. These are pleasing to different types of people. So Morel’s masculine qualities attract both women (who consider him a regular man) and homosexuals (precisely because Morel is attractive to women, which the homosexuals consider proof of his masculinity). One could therefore conclude that Morel is bisexual. However, matters are more complicated: “Morel is not so much bisexual as trisexual.”103 For Morel also pleases lesbians because of his feminine qualities. According to Rivers, this makes Morel impossible to put into a definite sexual category: “Is he ‘a homosexual’ or ‘a heterosexual’? There is evidence to support either case.”104 For Ladenson, matters are clear: she considers Morel “lesbian” (cf. Marcel, who is considered by Silverman to be a lesbian [vide supra]). The critic bases her opinion on the following passage:
The Baron had been plunged in grief and stupefaction by a letter which he had opened by mistake and which was addressed to Morel. This letter…was written by the actress Léa, notorious for her exclusive interest in women. And yet her letter to Morel…was written in the most impassioned tone. Its indelicacy prevents us from reproducing it here, but we may mention that Léa addressed him throughout in the feminine gender, with such expressions as: “Go on, you bad woman!” or “Of course you are so, my pretty, you know you are.”…What most disturbed the Baron was the word “so.” Ignorant at first of its application, he had eventually, at a time already remote in the past, learned that he himself was “so.” And now the notion that he had acquired of this word was again put to the challenge. When he had discovered that he was “so,” he had supposed this to mean that his tastes, as Saint-Simon says, did not lie in the direction of women. And here was this word “so” applied to Morel with an extension of meaning of which M. de Charlus was unaware, so much so that Morel gave proof, according to this letter, of his being “so” by having the same taste as certain women for other women.105
When Charlus intercepts the letter, he understands that Morel is “lesbian.” Rivers points out in this connection that Morel has been able to invert his own inversion and become, in effect, a kind of male lesbian.”106 Leriche does not share this opinion. She does not consider Morel an invert. According to this critic, the desire of the character is oriented toward young girls. It appears that it does not matter to Morel who is his “partner” (cf. 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion): a man is substituted for a woman or a girl without any trouble. The violinist illustrates in this way the phenomenon of “impersonal sexuality.”107 Another example of this substitution of another occurs in the scene at the Doncières station, where Charlus says: “I give 500 francs for the evening, that might perhaps be of some interest to one of your friends.”108 The individual is of little importance.
Morel “uses” the whole sexual gamut at his disposal for a multiple purpose. Thus, “the way in which Morel was one of the brotherhood was – so far as I have been able to discover – that he was sufficiently fond of both women and men to satisfy either sex with the fruits of his experience with the other.”109 He went so far as to seduce women for Albertine, at least if we can believe Andrée:
She had met a nice boy at Mme. Verdurin’s, Morel. They understood each other at once. He undertook (with her permission to enjoy himself with them too, for he liked virgins) to procure little girls for her. As soon as he had set their feet on the path, he left them. And so he made himself responsible for attracting young fisher-girls in some quiet watering-place, young laundresses, who would fall in love with a boy, but would not have listened to a girl’s advances. As soon as the girl was well under his control, he would bring her to a safe place, where he handed her over to Albertine. For fear of losing Morel, who took part in it all too, the girl always obeyed, and yet she lost him all the same, for, as he was afraid of what might happen and also as once or twice was enough for him, he would slip away leaving a false address. Once he had the nerve to bring one of these girls, with Albertine, to a brothel at Corliville, where four or five of the women had her at once, or in turn. That was his passion, and Albertine’s also.110
These sexual experiences of all kinds allow Morel to know immediately whether someone is homo- or heterosexual:
Morel … thought it best to change the conversation and to give it a sensual turn: “There, look at the fair girl selling the flowers you don’t like; I’m certain she’s got a little mistress. And the old woman dining at the table at the end, too.” “But how do you know all that?” asked M. de Charlus, amazed at Morel’s intuition. “Oh, I can spot them in an instant. If we went out together in a crowd, you would see that I never make a mistake.”111
Because of this great sexual diversity,
Morel is defined by many critics as an intermediary figure. A bridge between
This liaison between
Compagnon and Rivers accent the importance of the character in the theory of inversion. Compagnon notes:
Like Albertine and with her, he
[becomes] an agent of liaison between
Hence Morel permits the generalization of the man-woman metaphor:
For who can say whether someone who loves Morel loves the male or the female in him? Different people see different things, and any definition we attempt to apply falls short of the ambiguous network of desires and feelings which constitutes sexual reality…[the] characters ultimately escape from all labels and expand into the infinite.114
In this way, Rivers takes up once more the peculiarity of Morel that we analyzed at the beginning of this presentation of the violinist: sexually, he is more than the other inverts of the Search. Though Morel does not seem an invert entirely like the others, yet he does have elements in common with them. Van de Ghinste notes that, like the other inverts, Morel wears a mask – an idea proved by the following passage from the Search:
Morel could not help presenting an image of his life, but one that deliberately, and unconsciously too, he so darkened that only certain parts of it could be made out.115
Morel is in a complementary relationship with the other inverts. Thus, Marcel “felt that [Charlus] would furnish Morel, marvellously endowed as to tone and virtuosity, with just those qualities that he lacked, culture and style.”116 In his turn, the violinist functions as complement to Saint-Loup: “It may be that Morel, being exceedingly dark-complexioned, was necessary to Saint-Loup, as the shadow is to the ray of sunlight.”117 A final “homosexual element” in his personality, is that he knows very quickly if someone is homosexual. Schehr speaks in this context of a “gaydar,” a “gay radar,” a kind of sixth sense of homosexuals, who recognize their “own kind” without any trouble.
Regarding the name of the character, we have also something to observe. Consider the passage in which Charlus proposes to Morel that he change his name:
M. de Charlus would have liked Morel to take everything from himself, including a name. Going upon the facts that Morel’s other name was Charles, which resembled Charlus, and that the place where they were in the habit of meeting was called les Charmes, he sought to persuade Morel that, a pleasant name, easy to pronounce, being half the battle for artistic fame, the virtuoso ought without hesitation to take the name Charmel, a discreet allusion to the scene of their intimacy. Morel shrugged his shoulders. As a conclusive argument, M. de Charlus was unfortunately inspired to add that he had a footman of that name.119
The condensation of Charlie and Morel
is clear in the name the Baron wants to give his protégé. Gaubert points out
that “the given name Charles hides and reveals at the same time a homosexual
nature.”120
Names allow characters to be distinguished from each other, but they do not offer complete individualization (vide supra). The proof of this is given by the resemblances of so many of the names in the book – resemblances that even go so far, sometimes, as to be anagrams. We note the following passage, in which the Protagonist compares Rachel with Charlie Morel:
Had the resemblance between Charlie and Rachel – invisible to me – been the plank which had enabled Robert to pass from his father’s tastes to those of his uncle, in order to complete the physiological evolution which even in that uncle had occurred quite late in life?121
This quotation makes Gaubert believe in the
oneness of the two characters. He argues that the resemblance called invisible
is exposed by the nearness of the two first names. For Gaubert, “Rachel is
Charles.”122 This identity of two characters of different sexes is
not an accident, according to the critic. He is convinced that Proust wanted to
make clear the fragility, the indeterminate and nebulous frontier between the
two sexes (cf. 2.2.1.1 General introduction:
In order to complete the presentation of Morel, we mention once again the probable models for the character, proposed by several critics. The names most often cited are those of Gabriel d’Yturri, the South American secretary to Montesquiou, with whom the count had had a liaison for twenty years (they remained together until the death of d’Yturri in 1905), and of Léon Delafosse, a young pianist (a protégé of Montesquiou). If one consents to admit that the character(s) is(are) modelled on people the author knew, one will undoubtedly have no problem in affirming that the Search is more than a simple fictional novel; the author was inspired by real life (e.g., the Dreyfus affair, the war). The comparison of Morel to Maximilien Hardin (cf. 1.3 Homosexuality from the historical point of view) probably fits in with this source of inspiration. So, in a group of articles, Morel accuses Charlus of homosexuality and sympathy with the enemy:
A little while before the war, short chroniques,
transparent for the “initiated,” as they were called, began to do M. de Charlus
great injury. Of one of them, entitled The Misadventures of a Dowager in
–us; or, The Last Years of the Baroness, Mme Verdurin bought fifty copies
to lend around among her acquaintances, and M. Verdurin used to read it aloud,
declaring that even Voltaire did not write better than that. Since the
beginning of the war, the tone of these articles had changed. Not only was the
Baron’s perversion exposed, but also his alleged Germanic origin. “Frau Bosch”
and “Frau von der Bosch” were the nicknames usually given him. One article of a
poetic nature bore the title Une Allemande, borrowed from certain dance
tunes by Beethoven. Finally, two short stories, The Uncle from America and
the Aunt from Frankfort and Hero of the Rear, read in galley proof
by the “little clan” rejoiced the heart of Brichot himself, who exclaimed,
“Let’s hope the all-high and all-powerful Anastasia does not use the blue
pencil on us.”123
Even if Albertine is a man without a penis, that still isn’t a woman.124
“Albertine Simonet, the young girl in bloom,
the sinner of
Reille explains the problem of Albertine’s sex in the light of the following passage:
Before Albertine obeyed and allowed me to take off her shoes, I opened her chemise. Her two little upstanding breasts were so round that they seemed not so much to be an integral part of her body as to have ripened there like fruit; and her belly (concealing the place where a man’s is marred as though by an iron clamp left sticking in a statue that has been taken down from its niche) was closed, at the junction of her thighs, by two valves of a curve as hushed, as reposeful, as cloistral as that of the horizon after the sun has set. She took off her shoes, and lay down by my side.126
The critic says, in regard to the first sentence of this passage, that the lingerie is only drawn aside, so that it continues to hide parts of Albertine’s body.127 Reille indicates that throughout the whole of the Search, Albertine is never nude. There remains always some piece that conceals, minutely described by Marcel. Consequently, the visual descriptions of the passage quoted are not enough for Marcel to know Albertine’s gender for sure. In fact there are elements in the quoted passage that splinter the character’s femininity.128 Reille draws attention for example to the superimposition of the masculine sex: the Protagonist inserts a reference to “an incomplete man’s sex, useless for reproduction or paternity”129 since there is no question of testicles in the quoted passage. Albertine’s femininity is even more disconnected if one takes into consideration the dissociation of her breasts from her body, as shown by the second sentence in the passage cited. Reille asserts:
In this way, Albertine’s sex…appears not as an organ of coitus or of procreation, but in the way that a problematically superimposed penis would define its function. A penis conjured up as being absent, but at the same time described and imposed, while the place of its absence is disguised.130
This theory is embraced by Bentley, who says: Even if Albertine is a man without a penis, that still isn’t a woman.”131 It is clear that not much is needed to take the plunge from this idea to the theory of the transposition of the sexes (cf. 2.2.2.3 The transposition of the sexes): Albertine was inspired by a man. According to most of the adherents of this theory, Albertine is modelled on Alfred Agostinelli, Proust’s chauffeur and lover. Ton-That, for example, notes: “behind Albertine the acrobatic figure of Agostinelli is silhouetted.”132 Kristeva accepts the idea, but she adds that Albertine is much more than an “Agostinelli masked as Albert.”133 This means that she assumes a double function: on one hand, she betrays the Gomorrean side of Marcel (Albertine’s accomplice, delighted connoisseur of her pleasures and her betrayals, the narrator offers himself, through the mediation of Albertine, the subtle pleasure of depicting himself as a woman.”134); on the other hand, she always recalls Marcel’s dead mother. Compagnon refutes the idea of an Albertine modelled on Agostinelli, remarking that in the rough drafts of the Search, Albertine appears already (under the name of Maria). This proves that the character, who abandons Marcel and thus causes him a great deal of pain, could not have been modelled on Agostinelli since at that time the latter had not yet left Proust.
Sachs proposes a completely different solution from the attempts to determine the sex of Albertine which we have explained above. He catalogues Albertine neither under the masculine nor under the feminine sex. For Sachs, the character is of no definite sex: “she is Love itself, and each reader can lend her the image which is dearest to him.”135 Rivers notes the feebleness of this theory: in essence, Sachs does not say what Albertine is but what she is not. Appignanesi begins also by saying what Albertine is not (she is neither a disguised homosexual nor an androgyne), but she then asserts that Marcel’s great love represents the Eternal Feminine.136
If the gender of Albertine remains enigmatic to the critics, her habits are no less so. It is Marcel who speaks of their troubling nature:
Albertine might indeed exist in my memory only in the state in which she had successively appeared to me in the course of her life, that is to say subdivided according to a series of fractions of time, my mind, reestablishing unity in her, made her a single person, and it was upon this person that I sought to bring a general judgment to bear, to know whether she had lied to me, whether she loved women, whether it was in order to be free to associate with them that she had left me. What the woman in the baths would have to say might perhaps put an end for ever to my doubts as to Albertine’s morals.138
In the whole of the Search, Albertine is never surprised in flagrante delicti. Marcel relies only of unfounded suspicions, since he finds no proof of Albertine’s homosexual nature. He even went so far as to organize a veritable examination of the morals of the young girl in bloom, but the results were meager: Aimé, in charge of the inquiry, sent a letter to Marcel in which he related the following story, which came from the bath-woman who looked after Albertine at Balbec:
According to her the thing that Monsieur supposed is absolutely certain. For one thing, it was she who looked after (Mlle. A) whenever she came to the baths. (Mlle A.) came very often to take her bath with a tall woman older than herself, always dressed in grey, whom the bath-woman without knowing her name recognised from having often seen her going after girls. But she took no notice of any of them after she met (Mlle. A). She and (Mlle. A.) always shut themselves up in the dressing box, remained there a very long time, and the lady in grey used to give at least 10 francs as a tip to the person to whom I spoke. As this person said to me, you can imagine that if they were just stringing beads, they wouldn’t have given a tip of ten francs. (Mlle. A.) used to come also sometimes with a woman with a very dark skin and long-handled glasses. But (Mlle. A.) came most often with girls younger than herself, especially one with a high complexion. Apart from the lady in grey, the people whom (Mlle. A.) was in the habit of bringing were not from Balbec and must indeed often have come from quite a distance. They never came together, but (Mlle. A.) would come in, and ask for the door of her box to be left unlocked – as she was expecting a friend, and the person to whom I spoke knew what that meant. This person could not give me any other details, as she does not remember very well, “which is easily understood after so long an interval.”138
If at an earlier time, this story convinced Marcel of the lesbian desires of Albertine, he began once more to doubt:
Fortunately I found most appropriately in my memory…I discovered, as a craftsman discovers the material that can serve for what he wishes to make, a speech of my grandmother's. She had said to me, with reference to an improbable story which the bath-woman had told Mme. de Villeparisis: “She is a woman who must suffer from a disease of mendacity.” This memory was a great comfort to me. What importance could the story have that the woman had told Aimé? Especially as, after all, she had seen nothing.139
This is why Marcel sent Aimé to Bontemps. The neighbours’ chambermaid and a renter of carriages declare they have never seen anything, and “a young laundress in the town [said] that Albertine had a peculiar way of gripping the arm when she brought back the clean linen. ‘But,’ she said, ‘the young lady never did anything more.’”140 One day after these declarations, Aimé send a letter refuting the words of the laundress:
At first the young laundress refused to tell me anything, she assured me that Mlle. Albertine had never done anything more than pinch her arm. But to get her to talk, I took her out to dinner, I made her drink. Then she told me that Mlle. Albertine used often to meet her on the bank of the Loire, when she went to bathe, that Mlle. Albertine who was in the habit of getting up very early to go and bathe was in the habit of meeting her by the water’s edge, at a spot where the trees are so thick that nobody can see you, and besides there is nobody who can see you at that hour in the morning. Then the young laundress brought her friends and they bathed and afterwards, as it was already very hot down here and the sun scorched you even through the trees, they used to lie about on the grass getting dry and playing and caressing each other. The young laundress confessed to me that she loved to amuse herself with her young friends and that seeing Mlle. Albertine was always wriggling against her in her wrapper she made her take it off and used to caress her with her tongue along the throat and arms, even on the soles of her feet which Mlle. Albertine stretched out to her. The laundress undressed too, and they played at pushing each other into the water.141
The inquiry into the habits of Albertine could be considered closed if Andrée had not come. When Marcel asked her if they had ever had sexual relations she replied negatively, adding:
I swear to you that I never did anything with Albertine, and I am convinced that she detested that sort of thing. The people who told you were lying to you, probably with some ulterior motive,” she said with a questioning, defiant air.142
Marcel will never know the definitive truth about the habits of the young woman he loved. Dubois refutes this idea, saying that Albertine shows herself many times over to be “gomorrean.” To argue his position, the critic recalls the dance with Andrée (cf. 2.2.2 Gomorrah) and the following words of Albertine: “[se] faire casser…”143 Although Marcel does not understand what Albertine meant, she was undoubtedly on the point of saying “se faire casser le pot.” According to Dubois, this language, which Kristeva calls masculine,144 illumines the lesbianism of the flowering young girl – an idea upheld by Ladenson, who also considers Albertine as a homosexual character, although she believes she is a sodomite, not a lesbian. The critic interprets “se faire casser [le pot]”145 as expressing the wish to consummate the act of sodomy. Ladenson deduces this from the fact that the words pronounced by Albertine mean “to submit to passive anal sex” (cf. 1.3 Homosexuality from the historical point of view).
Dubois believes it is impossible to enroll the character on either the homo- or the heterosexual side and asks whether Albertine is not bisexual: the narrator finds no proof that she has relations with women, but he cannot prove the contrary either. This does not prevent her from forming a tie with Marcel. It is possible that the young girl in bloom is attracted as much to men as to women. This is also revealed in her name, if we may believe Fónagy. He is inspired, in Les bases pulsionelles de la phonation [The basic drives of speech] (1971), by a test carried out among children from four to six years old. The author ascribes his conclusion to the results: “R is a man, L is a woman.”146 It remains to be seen whether this thesis permits belief in the bisexuality of the characters named Albertine, Charlus, Morel…. A. Roger says no, and argues that “inquiries bearing on isolated letters are useless, and it is not necessary to devote one’s life to phonology to sense that the l in Albertine is not that of Rachel.”147 He opts therefore for a study of phonological sequences. Roger stresses the root “albe,” which gives Marcel’s love the whiteness of the hawthorn [aubépine]. The link between the young girl and the flower is indispensable for interpreting what follows, in which the critic displaces the accent toward the suffix “-pine” (which in vulgar language means “virile member”). It is an impolite movement of Gilberte’s that forms an anticipation of Albertine as “aubé-pine lesbian”:148
…she allowed her eyes to wander, over the space that lay between us, in my direction, without any particular expression, without appearing to have seen me, but with an intensity, a half-hidden smile which I was unable to interpret, according to the instruction I had received in the ways of good breeding, save as a mark of infinite disgust; and her hand, at the same time, sketched in the air an indelicate gesture, for which, when it was addressed in public to a person whom one did not know, the little dictionary of manners which I carried in my mind supplied only one meaning, namely, a deliberate insult.149
Roger goes even further: he pushes his analysis to the point of asserting that the generative link between the names Gilbert and Albertine is exemplary for the Search as a whole. For example, in the following passage, Marcel mistakes a letter from Gilberte for one from Albertine because of the poor handwriting of the name:
Meanwhile I had recognised Gilberte’s hand
on the envelope which I had just taken from my pocket-book. I opened it.
Gilberte wrote to inform me that she was marrying Robert de Saint-Loup. She
told me that she had sent me a telegram about it to
Gaubert proposes an analysis of this passage analogous to that of Roger, but he pushes it further: according to him, the two women occupied the same place in Marcel’s heart (cf. 4.1.3 Morel, where we explained impersonal sexuality [Schehr]). Gaubert returns to the Search to find corroboration of his interpretation: “…a certain similarity exists, although the type evolves, between all the women we love….”151
Prince Charming of homosexual fantasies152
Robert de Saint-Loup, nephew of the Baron de Charlus and a member of the Guermantes family, is first presented in the Search as a hetero. He has a relationship with the actress “Rachel when from the Lord.”153 At the end of the Search, the soldier Saint-Loup marries Gilberte and they have a child (Mlle de Saint-Loup), but this does not stop him from deceiving his wife. All the same, Rachel’s Saint-Loup is not the same as Gilbert’s Saint-Loup: he has undergone a change. At a given moment, Saint-Loup is revealed as homosexual. He has a relationship with Morel, whom he supports, and a brief hypothetical romance with a liftboy at Balbec. Like Charlus, he has intellectual tastes (he reads Nietzsche and Proudhon). Mézaille says about this character that he fits into a “solar symbolism” that “hides a homosexual shadow.”154
Although Greek homosexuality no longer
exists, according to Marcel, Rivers considers the Marquis a representative. The
critic ventures to contradict Marcel here; it is a matter of developing an idea
in order to refute it:155 “Earlier volumes of the novel have
declared that Greek love no longer exists. But here, it seems, is Greek love
redivivus, at least in one of its aspects.”156 Why does Rivers
consider Saint-Loup a representative of Greek homosexuality? He bases this idea
on Saint-Loup’s characteristic heroism, which entails two consequences. First
of all, his heroism makes Saint-Loup look like a soldier of the army of
Marcel admires Robert de Saint-Loup. This admiration goes so far, according to Guenette, that Marcel is in love with him (cf. 4.1.1 Marcel). However, this sentiment does not succeed in offering an entirely positive image of homosexuality, for two reasons, allied to the heroism we have just discussed: on one hand, homosexuality must be sublimated before being accepted, seen in a positive light (the sublimation of Saint-Loup’s homosexuality is achieved through his heroism): on the other hand, this same heroism causes death (Saint-Loup dies trying to protect his soldiers, who were retreating from the front).
To round out the presentation of Saint-Loup’s inversion, we make two further remarks. First, according to many sources, the character is modelled on Louis d’Albufera (a friend of Proust’s). Second, we indicate with Rivers that, unlike the Baron de Charlus, Saint-Loup dares to wear clothing that could be called effeminate: “Dressed in a clinging, almost white material such as I could never have believed that any man would have the audacity to wear.”160 Marcel observes further that even without this choice of clothes, Saint-Loup has an effeminate air:
Because of his “tone,” of his impertinence befitting a young “lion,” and especially of his astonishing good looks, some people even thought him effeminate, though without attaching any stigma, for everyone knew how manly he was and that he was a passionate “womaniser.”161
Modelled on Gabriel d’Yturri162 and/or Albert le Cuziat,163 – the critics are still at it – Jupien is, on the occasion of the grandmother’s torn dress, introduced in the Search as “a most distinguished man, the finest [the grandmother] had ever seen.”164 Compagnon points out in the Pléiade edition that the reader will discover later that Marcel’s grandmother has not judged Jupien any too correctly. This is the reason, according to the critic: the waistcoat-maker will be found mixed up in many homosexual scenes.
Zéphir finds Jupien as effeminate as the Baron de Charlus. The critic notes about this character that he “also belongs to the ‘cursed race,’ having in his personality no less coquetry and feminine allure than had so struck Proust’s hero in Charlus.”165 Zéphir draws on the following passage:
Meanwhile Jupien, shedding at once the humble, honest expression which I had always associated with him, had – in perfect symmetry with the Baron – thrown up his head, given a becoming tilt to his body, placed his hand with a grotesque impertinence on his hip, stuck out his behind, posed himself with the coquetry that the orchid might have adopted on the providential arrival of the bee.166
Jupien not only seems as effeminate as
Charlus but also appears split in two: on one side, he is a habitual
manipulator (for example, with the Baron de Charlus he accomplishes his
“mission”167 to surprise Morel, he hides Marcel in the wings of the
At that
very moment, Mme. de Saint-Euverte, whom the Baron formerly had not considered
stylish enough for him, drove by in her victoria, doubtless on her way likewise
to the Guermantes’. Jupien, who took care of M. de Charlus like a child,
whispered in his ear that it was an acquaintance of his, “Mme. de
Saint-Euverte.” And straightway, with great effort and with the determination
of a sick person who wants to shew that he is now able to make any movements,
although they are still difficult, M. de Charlus raised his hat, bowed and
saluted Mme. de Saint-Euverte with as much respect as it she had been the Queen
of France.168
If the
Baron was attracted by young men, Jupien for his part was drawn to men older
than himself. Citing the following passage, Rivers observes that this is not
strange. The Protagonist relates that:
…the
existence of a subvariety of inverts destined to guarantee the pleasures of
love to the invert who is growing old: men who are attracted not by all other
men, but – by a phenomenon of correspondence and harmony similar to those that
precede the fertilisation of heterostyle trimorphous flowers like the lythrum salicoria – only by men considerably older than themselves. Of this subvariety,
Jupien had just furnished me with an example.169
Aron and Kempf accentuate the singular character of the waistcoat maker and cite his words: “‘Aren’t you naughty!’ said to the Baron with a smiling, emotional, superior and grateful air: ‘All right, you big baby, come along!’”170 Lavagetto has also discovered a rather special character trait, at least if one compares Jupien to other inverts. The critic notes: “Jupien’s indiscretion is a trait of his character; yet it is in astonishing contradiction to the ‘extreme mystery with which [homosexuals] surround their actions to hide them from [non-homosexuals]’.”171 At the beginning, Jupien was much more reserved. Like all the characters, Jupien undergoes a considerable evolution.
Mme de Vaugoubert constitutes a special case: although she is a woman in the body of a woman with mannish traits, she desires effeminate men. This is to say that she is an invert (in the “strict” sense: as we will see, she is a man enclosed in a feminine body) without homosexual tastes. Although she is not a lesbian, we put her in our catalogue of inversion because she “is the closest the Recherche comes to depicting an actual invertie; she exemplifies the gender dysphoria component of inversion but does not exhibit a corresponding desire for others of her biological sex.”172
Ladenson remarks that Mme de Vaugoubert illustrates the model “Wife of an auntie”173: “a woman who is inverted with respect to the desiring subject – that is, a woman who is ‘really’ a man – desires not women but feminine men.”174 This is the case for Mme de Vaugoubert. From one of the first appearances of the character, Marcel says: “Mme de Vaugoubert was really a man.”175 Nevertheless, she is married. This seems to reintroduce homosexuality, which is confirmed by Ladenson: being at bottom a man desiring men, Mme de Vaugoubert is a sodomite.
According to Ladenson, there are two type of mannish women: among some, the masculine air is innate, while among the others it is owed to their husbands.
Whether she had always been one, or had grown to be as I saw her, matters little, for in either case we have to deal with one of the most touching miracles of nature which, in the latter alternative especially, makes the human kingdom resemble the kingdom of flowers. On the former hypothesis – if the future Mme. de Vaugoubert had always been so clumsily manlike – nature, by a fiendish and beneficent ruse, bestows on the girl the deceiving aspect of a man. And the youth who has no love for women and is seeking to be cured greets with joy this subterfuge of discovering a bride who figures in his eyes as a market porter. In the alternative case, if the woman has not originally these masculine characteristics, she adopts them by degrees, to please her husband, and even unconsciously, by that sort of mimicry which makes certain flowers assume the appearance of the insects which they seek to attract. Her regret that she is not loved, that she is not a man, virilises her.176
Apparently, Mme de Vaugoubert belongs to the second category.177 As Marcel says:
One of the reasons which enhance still further the masculine air of women like Mme. de Vaugoubert is that the neglect which they receive from their husbands, the shame that they feel at such neglect, destroys in them by degrees everything that is womanly. They end by acquiring both the good and the bad qualities which their husbands lack. The more frivolous, effeminate, indiscreet their husbands are, the more they grow into the effigy, devoid of charm, of the virtue which their husbands ought to practise.178
Eribon is the only critic we have encountered who proposes an analysis of M. de Vaugoubert. He starts from the following passage:
And yet, heaven knows that M. de Charlus did not care to go about with M. de Vaugoubert. For the latter, his monocle in his eye, kept gazing in all directions at every passing youth. What was worse, emancipating himself when he was with M. de Charlus, he employed a form of speech which the Baron detested. He gave feminine endings to all the masculine words and, being intensely stupid, imagined this pleasantry to be extremely witty, and was continually in fits of laughter. As at the same time he attached enormous importance to his position in the diplomatic service, these deplorable outbursts of merriment in the street were perpetually interrupted by the shock caused him by the simultaneous appearance of somebody in society, or, worse still, of a civil servant. “That little telegraph messenger,” he said, nudging the disgusted Baron with his elbow, “I used to know her, but she’s turned respectable, the wretch! Oh, that messenger from the Galeries Lafayette, what a dream! Good God, there’s the head of the Commercial Department. I hope he didn’t notice anything. He’s quite capable of mentioning it to the Minister, who would put me on the retired list, all the more as, it appears, he’s so himself.”179
The strange character of this dialogue
resides in the fact that the interlocutors, to be able to conduct such a
conversation, would have to be aware of their own true natures. As this is
quite a rare phenomenon in the Search (“M. de Vaugoubert was one of the few men
[possibly the only man] in society who happened to be in what is called at
To complete the portrait of M. de Vaugoubert, we add that he is married (to a rather mannish woman – cf. 4.1.7 Mme de Vaugoubert) and that he expresses himself sometimes in Racinian verse (cf. Jewish metaphor, which we developed under the point 2.2.1.2 Metaphors).
Mademoiselle Vinteuil…vague as a shadow through the whole set of novels.182
Of the “gomorreans” in the Search Mlle Vinteuil is one of the most “pure”: she loves only women and most particularly her nameless friend. According to Ladenson, this lesbian illustrates the Ulrichs theory (Cf 1.2.1 Ulrichs): Mlle Vinteuil is a woman with a masculine appearance (therefore a woman enclosed in a masculine body). Apparently, Mlle Vinteuil represents another enclosure as well: for Brigitte Mahuzier, she is a masochist enclosed in the body of a sadist. Ladenson ascribes this opinion to the fact that the character does not represent corporeal inversion but rather its moral equivalent. As we have already largely described the sadistic aspect of Mlle Vinteuil under the point 3.1.1 The scene at Montjouvain, we refer the reader to the third chapter of this work.
Halberstadt-Freud describes Mlle Vinteuil as follows:
The rough and the tender are two sides of her personality that never stop contending. Of an impetuous nature, but at the same time very sensitive, her education made her prudish. She holds herself in for fear of wounding others with her enthusiasm. Her sensitivity cautions her. The split always surfaces: spontaneity and premeditation succeed each other. It is cruelty that is not truly taken into account and that is acted out in sadistic episodes.183
The critic defines the daughter as the opposite of M. Vinteuil, who was “very severe for ‘the deplorable type of neglected young people, in the current view’” and was of an “intense prudishness.”184 This “seditious” attitude of Mlle Vinteuil against her father is also considered in the third chapter.
In regard to Charles Swann, we have found
only one critic who attributes a hidden homosexual nature to this character.
Kristeva contents herself with posing the question: “Is Swann not homosexual?”185
Beginning with the first name of the character, Gaubert wonders if Swann “does
not resemble…Charlus,”186 This is because Swann and Charlus have a
tendency to use the same vocabulary. Gaubert is here inspired by Justin
O’Brien, who “notes the Baron’s taste for scatological expressions,”187 but
he adds immediately that Swann uses them far less than Charlus. Besides,
Gaubert tells us, Swann “knows the Baron de Charlus better than anyone.”188
We mention by way of example the fact that Swann has no difficulty with the
friendship between Odette and Charlus, even though everybody says that they are
lovers: “He knew that between M. de Charlus and her nothing untoward could ever
happen, that when M. de Charlus went anywhere with her, it was out of
friendship for himself.”189 So why could it not be that Swann had
“once himself also played his part in the world of
Regarding the love of Marcel’s childhood, we can be rather brief because the critics tend to pass over Gilberte in silence. Miller is the exception. Pointing to the reading of The Girl with the Golden Eyes, “a story of feminine homosexuality,”191 the critic constructs a subtle connection between Gilberte and love of the same sex – a connection supported by the following passage in the Search:
Did Gilberte say this in order to hide from me the fact that she herself, according to what Albertine had told me, loved women and had made advances to Albertine?…Either way, Gilberte’s remarks, from the “fast” ways she used to hint at to her present guarantee of good character and habits, followed a line of development quite opposite to the statements of Albertine, who in the end had very nearly admitted partial relations with Gilberte.192
If this passage is to be believed, it could very well be that Gilberte is a lesbian; but, as in most cases, one must reserve judgment, for there is no formal proof whatever.
Nissim Bernard is described by Ladenson as “the soul of discretion,”193 which is characteristic of most homosexuals, as we have seen. He rises above his social class: he keeps a clerk at the Grand Hotel of Balbec.
So far, we have analyzed quite a few inverted characters. Nevertheless, the Search has many more in its cast. As we have found no information about these characters, we content ourselves with simply mentioning them. Among the “gomorreans,” we have laundresses, Bloch’s sisters, Esther Lévy, Léa, Gisèle, the chambermaid to the Baroness Putbus, Odette Swann,194 and probably Andrée (although the habits of the latter may be more doubtful). Concerning the sodomites, we mention the Duke of Châtellerault, Léonor de Cambremer, the Viscount Adalbert de Courvoisier, Monsieur Eugène, Prince de Foix and his son,195 Prince Gilbert de Guermantes, Count Leblois de Charlus, Legrandin, Maurice, His Excellency the Duke of Sidonia and Théodore.196
In order to locate the presentation of inverted characters within the theory of inversion (cf. 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion), we revisit the important points that we have encountered in the homosexual portraits.
The length of the list confirms what we explained during the analysis of Marcel (4.1.1 Marcel) and in the second chapter of this work: many characters are affected by or suspected of inversion.197 There are many critics who assert that the Search challenges by this means the idea – current at the time – that homosexuals constitute a minority. Eribon remarks with just cause that at the end of the Search practically all the characters are revealed as homosexuals.
It is clear…that the narrator wishes to convey the impression that the number of people susceptible to homosexual experience is legion. First of all, the novel eventually gives us cause to suspect almost every character we meet of homosexual desire, activities or both – even Swann does not escape innuendo… Then, too, the narrator explicitly declares that the number of homosexually oriented people is astronomical.198
Barthes defines the phenomenon as “a pandemic of inversion” since Proust speaks himself of homosexuality as being “an expanding movement.”199
Undoubtedly, inheritance (cf. 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion) of homosexuality plays a role in the elevated rate of inversion in the Search. To be able to believe in the hereditary aspect of love for the same sex, it is enough to remember the Guermantes (for example, the Baron de Charlus, Saint-Loup, Gilbert, the Prince of Guermantes), of whom Marcel tells us:
It would not be M. de Charlus that we ought to style a Guermantes marked with a blemish and expressing it to a certain extent by means of traits peculiar to the Guermantes race, but the Duc de Guermantes who would be in a perverted family the exceptional example, whom the hereditary malady has so effectively spared that the outward signs which it has left upon him lose all their meaning.200
The social classes are mixed in the invert milieu: the Marquis de Saint-Loup pursues a romance with a liftboy, the Baron de Charlus keeps the violinist Morel (who is the son of a valet) and is bound to Jupien, the waistcoat maker. Van de Ghinste points out that “all differences of class and education are abolished.”201 This is only normal in homosexual life, according to Eribon. Rivers notes:
In the Recherche Proust makes extensive use of the Prince and the Pauper theme. Practically all the homosexual liaisons in the novel are between members of different social classes.202
A. Henry accentuates the unifying power of
homosexuality: minutely drawn distinctions are dissolved by inversion, which
does not respect social categorization. A. Henry notes: “everyone ends up
belonging to
In this romantic, anachronistic life the ambassador is a bosom friend of the felon, the prince, with a certain independence of action with which his aristocratic breeding has furnished him, and which the trembling little cit would lack, on leaving the duchess’s party goes off to confer in private with the hooligan; a reprobate part of the human whole, but an important part, suspected where it does not exist, flaunting itself, insolent and unpunished, where its existence is never guessed; numbering its adherents everywhere, among the people, in the army, in the church, in the prison, on the throne; living, in short, at least to a great extent, in a playful and perilous intimacy with the men of the other race, playing with them by speaking of its vice as of something alien to it; a game that is rendered easy by the blindness or duplicity of the others, a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal, on which these lion-tamers are devoured….”203
D’Entrevaux speaks of a “brotherhood”204 characterized by three elements: it constitutes a free-masonry (they have their own language [cf. 2.2.1.2 Metaphors, 4.1.1 Marcel]); the brotherhood is secret; homosexuals are numerous).
Many inverts overcome not only the limits
of their social level but also those of their sex. Thus Charlus was married, while
Saint-Loup marries Gilberte toward the end of the Search. Albertine seems
also to be gifted with an apparent bisexual orientation, just like the Prince
of Guermantes, Morel, Andrée…. This is undoubtedly why
Almost all the characters… are, have been, will be, as we say today, improperly as it happens, “bisexual,” those who one had thought solidly fixed in their sexuality, whatever it was before, suddenly are revealed, by fact or by hearsay, to be in love with the “other” sex, that is, with their own in most cases, but just as well the reverse.207
Kristeva supports this idea and expands the double aspect of bisexuality to the whole personality of the characters: “Each sex like each person…would be a bundle of partitioned differences, joined incompatibilities.”207
Finally, we emphasize the importance of the social dimension. We have already remarked that inverts are not limited by their social class. This is not all; homosexuals have a tendency to move from one social level to another. The Baron de Charlus, for example, undergoes a degrading evolution while Morel seems to enjoy more prestige at the end of the novel-series. However, we are not speaking of a characteristic inherent only in homosexuality, since all the characters evolve.
By underlining the major points encountered in the portraits of many characters, we hope to have clarified matters a little more and to have shown that, in the Search, “ça prend,”209 everything is connected – no character is what he is except as a function of the whole.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] We are aware that in fact all the characters could be considered homosexual, or at least bisexual.
[2] For a deeper study of the identity of Marcel, cf. chap. III (L’énigme du narrateur) in FRAISSE L., Op.
Cit., pp 53-61.
[3] PROUST
M, Contre Sainte-Beuve, Op. Cit., p558.
[4] MULLER
M, Les voix narratives dans la Recherche du temps perdu, Genève, Droz,
1983, p8.
[5] These words of Barthes are cited in the course “Proust entre deux siècles” (SCHUEREWEGEN).
[6] PROUST
M, Contre Sainte-Beuve, Op. Cit., p558.
[7] These terms appear in MULLER M, Les voix narratives, Op. Cit., p10
[8] Ibid.,
p9
[9]
BOWIE M, Freud, Proust and Lacan: Theory as Fiction,
[10]
LAVAGETTO M, Op. Cit., p39
[11]PRIS,
vol. 3, p711. [RTP II, p525] [We have translated the remainder of the passage,
which we have not found in the Random House English edition we are using.]
[12] MULLER M, Op.
Cit., p471.
[13]
TON-THAT T, Op. Cit., p150
[14] This expression reappears many times in Sodom and Gomorrah. Cf. The linguistic metaphor that we have developed under the point 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion.
[15] PRIS, vol.
3, p553.[RTP II, p408]. Cf. Ibid.
[16]
MIGUET-OLLAGNIER M, Op. Cit., p67.
[17] We indicate in this connection that Marcel seems to indulge in solitary pleasure lying next to Albertine, but we do not consider this solitary pleasure an indication that there were sexual relations between the two of them.
[18]
RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p212.
[19] ROGER A, Op.
Cit., p95
[20] SILVERMAN K,
Op. Cit., p386
[21] “Anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa..” Cf. 1.2.1
Ulrichs
[22] GUENETTE M,
"Le loup et le narrateur: The Masking and Unmasking of Homosexuality in
Proust's A la Recherche du temps perdu" in: Romanic Review, 80
(1989), p229
[23] Ibid.,
p230.
[24] Ibid.
[25]
JFF, vol. 2, p87. [RTP I, p551]
[26] GUENETTE M, Op.
Cit., p233
[27] CG, vol. 2,
p377.
[28]
COMPAGNON A, « L’amour, l’amour, toujours l’amour » in: NRP, 49, 1994, p79.
[29]
DIAMANT N, Op. Cit., p186.
[30] We point out in this regard that Proust himself spoke of homosexuality as “a movement of expansion.” (These words were cited in the course “Proust entre deux siècles” [SCHUEREWEGEN].)
[31]
CS, vol. 1, p44. [RTP I, p34]
[32] KRISTEVA J, Op.
Cit., p34.
[33] Leriche and Mauriac Dyer are in agreement with the thesis of Hayes,
and they stress once more the lexicological point of departure. (LERICHE F., MAURIAC DYER N, « Les Proust
aux ‘lieux’ » in : BIP, 31, 2000, p69).
[34] SCHEHR L.R.,
Op. Cit., p47
[35] SGII, vol.
3, p483. [RTP II, p.357]
[36] TR, vol. 4,
p388. [RTP II, p951]
[37] The critic is supported by the two meanings this words can have: aside from its general meaning, the word “aventure” can also be interpreted in an erotic sense (“a sexual adventure”). In view of the scene that introduces this phrase, Schehr believes that it is probably in its erotic sense that the word should be understood.
[38] TR, vol. 4,
pp413-416. [RTP II, p969]
[39] DIAMANT, Op.
Cit., p189.
[40] LAVAGETTO M,
Op. Cit., p115
[41]
COMPAGNON A, « La dernière victime du narrateur » in : Critique, Mars
1997, 598, p134
[42]
TR, vol. 4, p419. Our emphasis. [RTP II, p973]
[43]
COMPAGNON A, « La dernière victime du narrateur » Op. Cit., p119
[44] Ibid.,
p142
[45] Ibid.
[46] Ibid. p143 Lavagetto seems opposed to this idea since he puts the definite article before these words and in so doing makes them into “a single room.”
[47] In his book, Lavagetto seems to associate the lapse with Marcel rather than with Proust while the sub-title (Un lapsus de Marcel Proust) points toward the author. The review thus has a terminological problem. As we have seen under the first point in the presentation of Marcel, it is very difficult to distinguish the different narrative voices and the different referents of “I.”
[48]
COMPAGNON A, « La dernière victime du narrateur », Op. Cit., p144
[49] This sketch is repeated by SCHUEREWEGEN F, Op. Cit., p69.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.,
p75.
[52] Letter to Gallimard cited in ZAGDANSKI, Op. Cit., p34.
[53]
Cf. 2.2.1.1.2 The
theory of inversion.
[54] According to Erman, the character also owes certain aspects of his
character to Balzac’s Vautrin. The critic adds that “Charlus is not a mythical
figure like his model, a sort of Mephistopheles, a cynical type.” (ERMAN M, Poétique du personnage proustien, Op.
Cit., p392.) As for Balzac, A. Henry points out
that the Baron “satisfies his pederasty platonically, perpetually citing
Balzac’s novels that treat the matter.” (HENRY A, Op. Cit., p170)
Yoshida expresses the opinion that the Baron is also
modelled on Diaghilev, the Russian producer. The critic accentuates his
corpulence and the taste for the theatre that the two share, in order to
illustrate this thesis. Besides, Diaghilev appears in the Search:
Moreover a
manager, M. de Charlus,…modest in regard to his true merits, but possessing
talents of the first order, contrived to place this virtuosity at the service
of a versatile artistic sense which increased it tenfold. Imagine a merely
skillful performer in the Russian ballet, formed, educated, developed in all
directions by M. Diaghileff. (SGII, vol. 3, p303.) [RTP II, p224]
[55] SGII, vol.
3, p398. [RTP II, p291]
[56] PROUST
M, GIDE A, Autour de la Recherche – Lettres, Bruxelles, Ed.
Complexes, 1949, pp39-40.
[57]
STAMBOLIAN et al., Op. Cit., p155
[58] Cf.
2.2.1 Sodome
[59] VAN DE
GHINSTE J, Rapports humains et communications dans A la recherche du temps
perdu, Paris, Nizet, 1975, p94
[60] Ibid.
[61]
Cf. “at the heart of every homosexual, there is an
anti-homosexual” (PROUST
M, Contre Sainte-Beuve, Paris, Gallimard [NRF], 1954, p259.) Zagdanski notes: “ M. de Charlus is revolted by
effeminate pederasts for the simple reason that he himself is a woman.” (ZAGDANSKI S, Op. Cit., p39).
[62] JFF, vol. 2,
p121. [RTP I, p576]
[63]
FERNANDEZ R, Proust, Paris, Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1943, p141
[64] ERIBON D, Op.
Cit., p85
[65] SGII, vol.
3, pp 294-295. [RTP II, p215]
[66] SGII, vol.
3, p433. [RTP II, p316]
[67]
RIVERS J.E, Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p223
[68] Yoshida points out that the Charlus-Morel liaison makes one think of
the Diaghilev-Nijinski couple. Diaghilev had a relationship with the young
dancer Nijinski (vide
supra).
The critic also
stresses the fact that this liaison transcends the carnal to reach the cultural
level. (Cf. Plato, for whom pure love is intellectual symbiosis.) Yoshida says
regarding this relationship: “It was archetypally symbiotic.” (YOSHIDA J, « Proust et les ballets russes » in: BIP,
n°31,2000, p61).
[69] STAMBOLIAN
et al., Op. Cit., p154
[70] ERIBON D, Op.
Cit., p15
[71] SGII, vol.
3, p257. [RTP II, p188]
[72] MINGELGRÜN
A, Op. Cit., p151
[73] KRISTEVA J, Op.
Cit., p191
[74] SGII, vol.
3, p16. [RTP II, p12]
[75] SGII, vol.
3, pp 425-426. [RTP II, p312]
[76] As this letter is quite long, we do not reproduce it here. It can be
found in TR, vol. 4, pp 384-385. [RTP II, p948]
[77]
TR, vol. 4, p384. Cf. Genesis, VI, 9 and Matthew, XIII, 43 [RTP
II, p948]
[78][Trampling the lion and the serpent] TR, vol. 4, p384. Cf. Psalms 90. [RTP
II, p948]
[79] TR, vol. 4,
p384. [RTP II, p948]
[80] JFF, vol. 2,
p118. [RTP I, p574]
[81] JFF, vol. 2,
p120. [RTP I, p575]
[82] PRIS,
vol. 3, p726. [RTP II, p534]
[83]
FRANCOIS S, Le dandysme et Marcel Proust, Bruxelles, Palais des
Académies, 1956, p177.
[84] ERMAN
M, Le personnage poétique, Op. Cit., p400. We point out
that Charlus sexualizes not only his voice but also his name, according to
Kristeva. (KRISTEVA J, Op. Cit.,
p112)
[85] JFF, vol. 2,
pp 122-123. [RTP I, p577]
[86]
D’ENTREVAUX M.B., Op. Cit., p108.
[87] PRIS,
vol. 3, p808. Cf. 4.1.7 Mme de Vaugoubert [RTP II, p591]
[88]
PRIS, vol. 3, p801. [RTP I, p586]
[89] JFF, vol. 2,
p120. [RTP I, p575]
[90] FERNANDEZ
R, Op. Cit., p142
[91] Ibid.
[92]
RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p214
[93] CG, vol. 2,
p586.
[94] JFF, vol. 2,
pp 110-111. [RTP I, p568]
[95] VAN DE
GHINSTE, Op. Cit., p93
[96] Ibid.,
p94
[97] KRISTEVA J, Op.
Cit., p192.
[98] ERMAN
M., “Poétique du personnage proustien”, Op. Cit., p390.
[99]
FERNANDEZ R, Ibid., p144
[100]
RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p201
[101]
Cf. 3.1.3 The flogging scene. Leriche
indicates that there is a “driving back of perversity onto Morel” (LERICHE F, Op. Cit., pXII)
[102] Referring to his artistic talents, Tadié remarks “Morel, himself
also an artist, had come to resemble Baudelaire as Proust imagined him, that
is, as invert, but fascinated by feminine homosexuality.” (TADIE J.-Y., Biographie, Paris,
Gallimard, 1996, p888. Cf. “[Proust] told me of his
conviction that Baudelaire was a uranist. ‘The way he speaks of
[103]
LADENSON E, Op. Cit., p101
[104]
RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p44
[105]
PRIS, vol. 3, p720. [RTP II, p529]
[106]
RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p201
[107] SCHEHR
L, Un amour de Charlus, conférence à Nimègue (14/03/01)
[108] SGII, vol.
3, p255. [RTP II, p187]
[109] SGII, vol.
3, p 302. [RTP II, p221]
[110]AD, vol. 4,
p179. [RTP II, p803]
[111] SGII, vol.
3, p396. [RTP II, p289]
[112] PROUST
M, Contre Sainte-Beuve, Op. Cit., p633.
[113]
COMPAGNON A, Préface à Sodome et
Gomorrhe, Op. Cit., pXXX
[114]
RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., pp201-202
[115] SGII, vol.
3, p463. [RTP II, p339]
[116] SGII, vol.
3, p343. [RTP II, p250]
[117] TR, vol. 4,
p283. [RTP II, p878]
[118] Un
amour de Charlus, conférence de L.R. Schehr à Nimègue (14/03/01)
[119] SGII, vol.
3, p449. [RTP II, p328]
[120]
GAUBERT S., “Le jeu de l’Alphabet” in: Recherche de Proust, Paris, Seuil
(Points), p79.
[121] AD, vol. 4,
p265. [RTP II, p863]
[122] GAUBERT S.,
Op. Cit., p75.
[123] TR, vol. 4,
pp346-347. [RTP II, p921]
[124]
BENTLEY, cited in RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of
love, Op. Cit., p9
[125] DUBOIS J, Op.
Cit., p23
[126] PRIS, vol
3, p587. [RTP II, p432]
[127] Cf. 2.2.2
[128] We mention parenthetically that it is possible that Albertine was not a character, in the realistic sense, but a vision, an evanescence.
[129] REILLE, Op.
Cit., p174
[130] Ibid.,
pp174-175
[131]
BENTLEY is cited in RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art
of love, Op. Cit., p9
[132]
TON-THAT T, Op. Cit., p151
[133] KRISTEVA J,
Op. Cit., p105.
[134] Ibid.
[135]
SACHS is cited in RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of
love, Op. Cit.,
p8
[136]
APPIGNANESI is cited in Ibid., p9.
[137]
AD, vol. 4, p95. [RTP II, p743]
[138]
AD, vol. 4, pp 96-97. [RTP II, p744]
[139]
AD, vol. 4, pp 101-102. [RTP II, p748]
[140]
AD, vol. 4, p105. [RTP II, p750]
[141] AD, vol. 4,
pp 105-106. [RTP II, p751]
[142] AD, vol. 4,
p129. [RTP II, p767]
[143] PRIS, vol.
3, p842 [RTP II, p618]
[144] KRISTEVA J,
Op. Cit., p98.
[145] PRIS,
vol. 3, p842 [RTP II, p618]
[146] Cité
dans ROGER A., Op. Cit., p110
[147] Ibid.
[148] Ibid.,
p137.
[149]
CS, vol. 1, p139.[RTP I, p108]
[150] AD, vol. 4,
pp234-235. [RTP II, p840]
[151] JFF, vol.
2, p248. [RTP I, p670]
[152] GUENETTE, Op. Cit., p230
[153] Cf. 2.2.1.2 E. The Jewish metaphor. We point out parenthetically that “Rachel when from the Lord” owes her name to F. Halevy’s La Juive:
“Rachel, when from the Lord the tutelary grace
To my trembling hands confided your cradle
I vowed my whole life to your happiness
And it is I who delivers you to your
torturer!”
Halévy is cited in SCHEHR L, « Rachel quand du Seigneur » in : L’esprit créateur, 1997, vol. XXXVII, 4, p83.
[154] www.chez.com/mezaille This is how the critic develops the idea that the colour blond (a colour present in almost all the homosexual characters), which is the colour of the sun, serves to put in the shadow the inversion taboo.
[155] In this work, we have seen on many occasions that this is a common technique of Marcel’s.
[156] RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p202
[157] Ibid.
[158] Ibid.
[159]
GUENETTE, Op. Cit., p231
[160] JFF, vol. 2, p88. [RTP I, p552]
[161] JFF, vol. 2, p88. [RTP I, p552]
[162] The lover of Robert de Montesquiou, a friend of Proust’s.
[163] A friend of Proust’s who has a
mansion in
[164] CS, vol. 1, p20. [RTP I, p18]
[165] ZEPHIR, Op.
Cit., p170
[166] SGI, vol.
3, p6. [RTP II, p5]
[167] SGII, vol.
3, p465. [RTP II, p340]
[168] TR, vol. 4,
p438. [RTP II, p986]
[169] SGI, vol.
3, p30. [RTP II, p23]
[170] SGI, vol.
3, p12. [RTP II, p9]
[171] LAVAGETTO M, Op. Cit., p97
[172] LADENSON E,
Op. Cit., p45
[173] Ibid.,
p44
[174] Ibid.
[175] SGII, vol.
3, p46. [RTP II, p35]
[176] SGII, vol.
3, p46. [RTP II, p35]
[177] A well-known invert of this
second category is the Princess Palatine, wife of Philippe d’Orléans. She gets
her virility from her husband (for example, she always dresses in riding
habit). Marcel alludes to the Princess, introducing her himself into “the
acquired or predestined type” of invert. (SGII, vol. 3, p47.)
[178] SGII, vol.
3, p47. [RTP II, p36]
[179] PRIS, vol.
3, p555. [RTP II, p409]
[180]
SGII, vol. 3, p43. [RTP II, p33] However, these words
are contradicted in The Captive, where the Baron exchanges “furtive
talk” with two dukes, a general, a great writer, a doctor and a lawyer. (PRIS, vol. 3, p748)
[181]
SGII, vol. 3, p43. [RTP II, p33]
[182] HALBERSTADT-FREUD H.C., Op. Cit., p56. We have translated [into French, then English].
[183] Ibid.,
p63.
[184] CS, vol. 1,
p111. [RTP I, p82]
[185] KRISTEVA J,
Op. Cit., p39.
[186] GAUBERT S, Op. Cit., p83
[187] Ibid.
[188] Ibid.
[189] CS, vol. 1, p310. [RTP I, p242]
[190] GAUBERT S.,
Op. Cit., p83.
[191] MILLER, Op.
Cit., p100
[192] TR, vol. 4,
pp 285-286. [RTP II, p880]
[193] LADENSON E, Op. Cit., p67
[194] For her part, Odette has the name of a lesbian countess in Le roman de Violette by Mme Mannaery d’Ectot (1883). Her surname, which she got from her husband, is pronounced like the English word “swan.” Ton-That (Faune et flore proustiennes) remarks that the swan is a hermaphroditic animal, which makes it a sign of the double sexuality of the character.
[195] The Prince de Foix tries without success to save his son from homosexuality. (Cf. The hereditary factor explained under the point 2.2.1.1.2 The theory of inversion).
[196] Théodore is the brother of Mme Putbus’s chambermaid.
[197] Borel indicates in this connection : “Forbidden love involves many more characters in the Search than the other; it becomes more and more invasive. The Balzacian line of descent is here too evident to need underlining. Proust certainly did not need anyone to give him an idea about it, to teach its modalities, to divine its psychologies, but what counts for a writer is the relationship between things and literature. Balzac had opened the way, The Human Comedy not wanting to be ignorant of any of the mysteries of individual psychology and the most secret acts of social life. The series of Vautrin-Carlos Herrera, the novel The Girl with Golden Eyes, etc., had largely discovered this domain where Proust would pursue a tireless and quite obsessive investigation.” (BOREL J, Op. Cit., p104.) Cf. 1.5 Homosexuality from the literary point of view.
[198] RIVERS J.E., Proust and the art of love, Op. Cit., p174
[199] These words of Barthes and Proust are cited in the course Proust entre deux siècles (SCHUEREWEGEN F)
[200] AD, vol. 4,
p265. [RTP II, p863]
[201] VAN DE
GHINSTE, Op. Cit., p97
[202] RIVERS J.E., Proust and the
art of love, Op. Cit., p178
[203] HENRY A, Op.
Cit., p141.
[204] SGI, vol.
3, p19. [RTP II, p15]
[205]
D’ENTREVAUX M.B., « Sodome et Gomorrhe : M. de Charlus et les confréries », Op.
Cit., p 101.
[206] BOWIE M, Op. Cit., p57 Cf. 1.2.3 Freud. Mézaille belongs to the same league, while adding another point of view: on the surface, everyone appears heterosexual while most of them are homosexual. The conflict between the real and the apparent is doubtless inspired by Plato or Kant.
[207] ROGER A, Op.
Cit., p155.
[208] KRISTEVA J,
Op. Cit., p97.
[209]
BARTHES R, " Ça prend" in: Magazine littéraire, 1997, vol.
350, p45.