Introduction
In this dissertation, we will concern
ourselves with the representation of homosexuality in the work of Marcel
Proust. To start with, we will take a look at homosexual love as a social and
cultural phenomenon. We will do this by means of a five-pronged approach. First
of all, we will range through the ideas of certain authorities to consider
homosexuality from a mythic (Plato) and a scientific point of view (Ulrichs,
Krafft-Ebing, Freud). Next, we will search history for turning points in
the evolution of homosexuality. We will work our way back toward the “origins”
(the most ancient information we have found dates from classical times), after
which we will make a “tour of the centuries” up to the beginning of the
Twentieth Century (the period during which Proust wrote In Search of Lost
Time.) During this historical excursion, we will examine not only “the
ravages of time” but also other elements which played a specific role in the
evolution of same-sex love. Among these, we encounter religion, social factors,
economic, judicial
and other elements. Following this historical approach, we will consider
homosexuality from the cultural point of view. After our attempts to respond to
the question of whether homosexuality is a natural or a cultural phenomenon, we
will stress the importance of friendship in the life of the homosexual. This
cultural section will end with a short reflection upon “how the sodomite
becomes gay.” From culture to literature is only a small step.
Homosexuality is for us at once a cultural and a literary phenomenon. After
ascertaining what “homosexual literature” is, we will skim a number of authors
and literary works which treat love of the same sex before moving on to the
body of this work.
After this theoretical part, we will
place under the microscope the way In Search of Lost Time was received
by Proust’s contemporaries. If one thing emerges from the study of these
reactions, it is polemic: no one remains indifferent to the Search.
Those who do not care for Proust often cite the presence of homosexuality in
the novel-cycle. The question that will preoccupy us will be why love of the
same sex presents such a problem. That the homosexual scenes are not
unanimously appreciated goes without saying. It is still necessary to explain
what it is about Proust that is shocking, and why.
How can one best begin to analyze
homosexuality in the Search if not by a fundamental explanation of the
theory of inversion proposed by Marcel: Sodom
and Gomorrah I? Since this part of the novel-cycle is preceded by a title,
a summary and an epigraph, we will approach those elements first. Then we will throw
ourselves straight into our subject. At first, we will consider the “dual
basis” of the theory (the mythic and the scientific), after which we will
analyze the different types of homosexuality and homosexuals in the Search.
Then we will focus on the botanical metaphor and the English influences in Sodom
and Gomorrah I. After the analysis of this first part of Sodom and
Gomorrah, we will expand our territory and take into consideration the
numerous metaphors that color
After theory, we must move on to
practice. In the third chapter, we will analyze three homosexual scenes
(Montjouvain, the meeting of Charlus and Jupien at the Guermantes residence and
the flogging scene) involving meetings between homosexual partners. Before
drawing the necessary conclusions from these, we will review the characters who are said or supposed to be homosexual.
Now that we have indicated the path we
will follow in this dissertation, we feel obliged to make a few preliminary
remarks. First of all, we must stress the fact that we draw a clear distinction
between “Marcel” and Proust. In our analyses, we speak only of the former and
totally disregard the latter. In this, we follow not only a good number of
critics but also Proust himself, who said: “The character who relates, who says
‘I’ (and who is not me)….”1 Secondly, we point out that we use the
term ‘Protagonist’ to designate Marcel. The how and the why of this choice will
be explained under point 4.1.1 Marcel. In the third place, we halt for
an instant at two other terms used in this work: though they are not entirely
the same thing, we use the words “homosexuality” and “inversion” as synonyms,
for stylistic reasons. Marcel would
undoubtedly disagree: throughout the whole of the Search there is a
problem with the terminology that designates homosexuals. Because the use of
the word “tante” [“aunt”] would be “a gesture of disrespect toward the French
reader” – Balzac used it many times in Splendeurs et Misères
des courtisanes (A Harlot High and Low) – Marcel does not make use of it:
This term [“auntie”] would be particularly
apt, in all my work, where the characters to whom it would be applied, being
nearly all old, and nearly all high society, are at society engagements where
they chatter, magnificently dressed and looking ridiculous. The aunties! ….
‘But the French reader wants to be respected’ and, not being Balzac, I’m
obliged to content myself with invert.2
Marcel acts accordingly and speaks most
often of invert(s). There are many reasons for hardly ever using homosexual(s),
homosexuality. In 1907-1908, the Eulenburg affair3 received much
attention in the French press, and a lot of articles and books on homosexuality
appeared. The word is borrowed from German. Wanting to safeguard the purity of
the French language, the Protagonist does not like to propagate this Germanism:
“Homosexual is too Germanic and pedantic, only seen in France – except by
mistake – and translated no doubt from Berlin newspapers, … after the Eulenburg
trial.”4 Compagnon brings in a different element that could explain
why Proust opted for “inversion/invert”:
We have come to see, in the inversion of
Charlus, the product of heredity at work through many centuries. But this
heredity does not conceive of itself as degeneracy, rather as a resurrection,
and this shift in regard to medicine, or to its literary expression, as in
Zola, suffices to explain why Proust rejected the German term homosexuality,
which he used in the pre-war draft, for the term inversion.5
In addition, the Protagonist seems to be
conscious of the fact that he is not a witness to homosexual scenes: “… what is
sometimes, most ineptly, termed homosexuality.”6 The word is thus
viewed as periphrastic. Other uses of the term are permitted to the Baron de
Charlus – a phenomenon hardly surprising, according to Ladenson:
Charlus approves of the Germanic term both
because of his allegiance to things German and because the invert – and the
baron is, at least in theory, the consummate invert – is mired not only in
deviance but also in self-deception as to the nature of his deviance.7
Contrary to Ladenson,
Marcel himself creates a name for a
homosexual: a “Charlus”:
While, before she had even left the
vestibule, I was talking to Mme de Guermantes, I could hear a voice of a sort
which, for the future, I was to be able to classify without the possibility of
error. It was, in this particular instance, the voice of M. de Vaugoubert
talking to M. de Charlus. A skilled physician need not even make his patient
unbutton his shirt, nor listen to his breathing, the sound of his voice is
enough.8 How often, in time to come, was my ear to be caught a
drawing room by the intonation or laughter of some man, who, for all that, was
copying exactly the language of his profession or the manners of his class,
affecting a stern aloofness or a coarse familiarity, but whose artificial voice
was enough to indicate: “He is a Charlus,” to my trained ear, like the note of
a tuning fork.9
At the first manifestation of this
proper name used as a substantive, the reader has no difficulty understanding,
because Marcel has painted the baron de Charlus in such a precise and typical
way that everyone sees this character as the prototype, “the paradigmatic
incarnation”10 of the “auntie.” We shall see later that the root
“char” appears in many names in the Search (Charlie Morel, Charles
Swann) and that this is not arbitrary.
The designation “man-woman,” which
pleased Marcel very much because it has, according to Rivers, comic and satiric
potential – even though it appears only twice in In Search of Lost Time
– stands out because it puts an end to the dual categorization of humanity
(there are men and women) by introducing a third category, namely the
men-women. To understand the perfect legitimacy of this designation, we return
to the theory of Ulrichs, explained in our first chapter.
Before moving on to this first chapter,
we draw attention to the use of the following abbreviations in the references
to the Search:
CS: Du
côté de chez Swann [Swann’s Way]
JFF: A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
[Within a Budding Grove]
CG: Le
côté de Guermantes [The Guermantes Way]
SG: Sodome
et Gomorrhe [Cities of the Plain]
PRIS: La prisonnière [The Captive]
AD: Albertine
disparue [The Sweet Cheat Gone]
TR: Le
temps retrouvé [The Past Recaptured]
For all these references, we use the
Pléiade edition: PROUST M., A la Recherche du temps
perdu,
After all these thoughts and comments, we
feel ready to move on to the body of this work through which we hope to respond
to the expectations we have just generated.
[Translator’s note: I have translated any
footnotes that are not simple references to publications. In the case of direct
quotations from A la Recherche du temps perdu,
the English text is taken from the 1934 Random House two-volume edition of Remembrance
of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff; this is not a matter
of preference; it just happens to be the only complete edition I have.
Citations are given in square brackets as [RTP I or II, p# ]
immediately after the relevant footnote.]
[1] PROUST
M, Contre Sainte-Beuve, précédé de Pastiches et Mélanges et suivi de
Essais et articles, Paris, Gallimard, 1971, p558 (La Pléiade).
[2]
COMPAGNON A, Préface à Sodome et Gomorrhe, « Préface » in : Sodome et
Gomorrhe, Paris, Gallimard (Collection Folio), 1989, pV.
[3] Cf.
1.1.2 A l’aube du XXe siècle.
[4] This passage from Cahier 49, fos 60 ro-vo is cited in COMPAGNON A, Préface, Op. Cit., pXV.
[5] COMPAGNON A, Proust entre deux siècles, Paris,
Editions du Seuil, 1989, p274.
[6] SGI, vol. 3,
p9. [RTP II, p7]
[7] LADENSON E, Proust’s Lesbianism,
Ithaca (NY), Cornell UP, 1999, p38
[8] Further along in the Search,
the voice is enough to indicate to Marcel whether someone is homosexual. We treat this phenomenon
under the point 4.1.2 Baron de Charlus.
[9] SG vol. 3,
p63. [RTP II, p48]
[10] ERIBON
D, Réflexions sur la question gay, Paris, Fayard, 1999, p124.