I. Homosexual Love
Before we focus on the Proustian conception and depiction of homosexuality, we
propose to sketch out the frame of love of the same sex. We will provide a
general view, from several angles, of what homosexuality is.
At the start, we will try to set up a
definition. What does it mean when someone is defined as homosexual? Does it
mean that this person has (had) homosexual relations? Or is it enough that he
has such desires? And could there not be reluctant homosexuals? All these
questions indicate the complexity of the problem – a complexity based on total
subjectivity: there are as many definitions of homosexuality as there are
people in the world. Look, for example, at the definition given by the American
army:
By declaring that homosexuals could be
admitted [into the American army] on condition that they don’t say that’s what
they are, because that would in turn announce that they have the intention of
performing homosexual acts, those in charge in the military have given a
definition of homosexuality that assigns considerable importance to the self-declaration.
To say “I am a homosexual” would mean “I intend to perform homosexual acts.”
Consequently, to say is to do.1 But it is
therefore possible to “be” homosexual, on condition that one doesn’t say so,
and therefore does not allow anyone to think one has the intention of
performing homosexual acts.2
The Church treats the phenomenon in
similar fashion: homosexuals are tolerated; that is to say, they are not
considered such as long as they do not say that they love those of the same
sex.
To facilitate perfect understanding of
what follows, we want to stress the duality of the phenomenon: masculine
homosexuality is a completely different entity from its feminine counterpart. A
man who loves men is defined by his inversion, particularly when he chooses to
show it by adopting a deliberately effeminate appearance and bearing. He has
many problems in his social life, and the inconveniences pile up so that a good
number of homosexuals opt for a double life: they hide their tastes and reveal
them only in certain situations, e.g., within their circle of friends (cf.
1.4.2 The organization of homosexual life: friendship
in the city). Another situation entirely is imposed on women. They confront few
problems (legal sanctions against them are minimal or non-existent), and the
development of practical life skills enables them quite often to feel positive
about their “vice.” Exclusive taste for the same sex appears to be a rare
phenomenon among women. In most cases, they are bisexual.
Having emphasized the duality of
homosexuality, we will approach love of the same sex in different ways. We will
adopt at first a historical point of view, after which we will proceed by way
of culture, literature, myth and science. In this way, we hope to create a
theoretical framework that permits better understanding of the inversion of In
Search of Lost Time.
In the Symposium, Plato gives the
stage to Aristophanes, who narrates how, at the very beginning,
humanity was made up of three sexes. Each sex had a circular form with two
faces, four hands, four feet and two sexual organs. There were combinations of
two men, two women and one man with one woman. These primitive beings were
powerful, and they knew it. They tried incessantly to conquer the gods. One
day, Zeus had had enough and, to diminish their power, he cut each of these
creatures in two. From that time, individuals have gone in search of the half
which was cut away, in order to regain their original power. Desire to recover
their severed half had nothing to do with sexuality until Zeus noticed that the
human species was nearing extinction (as soon as they were separated from the
other half, individuals were unable to function and consequently they did not
survive). Zeus therefore moved to the front the genitals that used to be at the
back of the individual beings.
His aim was this: it was imperative that
union should culminate, if there was an encounter between a man and a women, in
generation and reproduction of the species, and, at the same time, if it was a
male with a male, that satiety should at the very least be the fruit of their
encounter, and that this time of parting, in turning them toward action, should
permit them to interest themselves in all the abundance of things in life.3
There you have the birth of two types of
sexuality: on one hand, you have homosexuality (men descended from a man-man
duo go in search of a man to recover in this way their original state, while
women originally attached to other women search for feminine partners); on the
other hand, heterosexuality (men and women who are derived from an androgynous
combination) are the heterosexuals.
One could conclude that, for Plato,
homosexuality is a natural phenomenon, a form of love that exists perfectly side
by side with and at the same level as heterosexuality. Nevertheless, a very
different image appears in the Laws, the last work of the philosopher.
Here, he speaks of homosexuality as a love contrary to nature: “… since the
attacks by males on males or by females upon females are against nature and
result from intemperance in pleasure.”4 Plato firmly condemns
homosexuality on the basis of the laws of nature. Sexual pleasure is not
permitted except with a view to procreation. To bow before homosexual desire is
considered inferior because it shows intemperance and therefore a lack of
self-discipline. Plato’s critique arises from the sociologic shift explained
under the point 1.3.1.1. In antiquity and does not therefore concern the
immorality of homosexuality but rather “incontinence in pleasure.”
We glance now at some theories of
homosexuality. It is a subject widely commented upon. For many reasons, it is
the subject of many more examinations and investigations than other
“perversions.” Homosexuality is the so-called perversion that was recognized
earlier than the others. In addition, homosexuals often enter into conflict
with society and the law because of their “anomaly,” and this means that they
often have a tendency to hide themselves. On the other hand, they have been
opened to the world; they hope that the many researches and studies on their
condition will help them to avoid these inconveniences.
So many explanations of homosexuality
have been given. All the sociological specialties are concerned with it:
philosophy (e.g., Schopenhauer), psychology (e.g., Chevalier, Binet) medicine (e.g., Magnan, Mantegazza, Bernhardi),
anthropology (e.g., Moll), anatomy (e.g., Steinach),
and so on. As a result, it is very difficult to do a summary of all the
theories of homosexuality. Since an exhaustive presentation would exceed the
needs of this work, we will limit ourselves to theories which Proust probably knew and on which he might have based the
staging of a homosexual scene in A la Recherche
du temps perdu.
In 1868, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (Numa Numantius)
launched his celebrated definition of the homosexual in his treatise Memnon: Die Geschlechtsnatur
des mannliebenden Urnings: “anima
muliebris virili corpore inclusa.”7 The reverse holds for
lesbians. It is therefore a matter of hybrids or mental hermaphrodites.8
This hybrid state is caused by a prank of special glands resulting in the man’s
receipt of a woman’s spirit and vice versa. This mental hermaphroditism
is already completely developed at the time of the third week of embryologic
life. Thus, the preference for people of the same sex cannot be anything but
innate and therefore natural. This is why Ulrichs
demands recognition by the state and society that this love is congenital and
hence legitimate.
Ulrichs creates a neologism to denote the homosexual: uranian.
This word comes from the god Uranus, who is the father of Aphrodite, born
without a mother out of the spray of the sea, as Pausanius
recounts in The Symposium of Plato.
It’s a fact known by everyone that Love
and Aphrodite are inseparable… but, since there are two Aphrodites,
necessarily there are also two Loves… There is one, the more ancient, I
believe, who, without having had a mother, is the daughter of Uranus, of the
Sky, whom we also precisely surname Uranian, the
Celestial; there is another who is younger, that daughter of Zeus and Dione, whom we precisely call the Pandemic [of all the
people], the Popular. It has since then been necessary, in what also concerns
Love, that for the one who is the collaborator… the correct name should be Uranian. [For] the one who is rejoined to Uranian Aphrodite, … the male sex is the
object toward which those people turn who are inspired by that Love.9
Since the uranian
has the spirit of a woman, he behaves by definition in an effeminate manner. Ulrichs understands that there is something here that fails
to deliver (the uranian may not enter into contact
with other uranians because he is attracted, like all
women, to “true men”) and he begins to patch up his theory. He distinguishes
two extreme types of uranians: the Mannlinge (they possess a feminine soul and sexual
impulse; the rest of their personality is masculine) and the Weiblinge (only their sex is masculine). Between the
two extremes are found many intermediary types. Then, he draws attention to the
possible confusion between a Uranodioning
(a bisexual man) and a virilisierte Mannlinge (a homosexual who, after arduous training,
knows how to, and does, behave as if he were heterosexual). He distinguishes
two types of Uranodioning (the united
and the disunited) and adds to all that the Uraniaster,
the Dioning10 and a whole classification for feminine
homosexuality. The shambles is complete and the theory of men-women – called
also Zwischenstufen, the third sex or
the intermediate sex – is obviously moribund; it has become so complex
that the scientific world could never consider it a reasonable theory.
In 1886, Psychopathia
sexualis [The Psychopathology of Sex] appeared.
This book lists all the sexual aberrations, including homosexuality. The
author, Baron R. von Krafft-Ebing, explains that the
sexual apparatus is composed of the sex glands, spinal centers (which excite or
block the sexual glands) and the cerebral areas (where the processes of sex
life unfold) which are all primitively bisexual. Like nature, under the force
of the law of homologous sexual development (an empirical law which makes the
cerebral center correspond to the developed sexual gland), reproduced by monosexual individuals, one expects the elimination of the
opposite sexuality, which does not completely happen: the two sexes still
contain memories of each other and therefore of their original bisexuality (in
the man, this concerns the remains of the Müllerian
ducts and the nipples, while in the woman it is the paroöphoron
and the epoöphoron, the remains of the Wolffian ducts, that recall their bisexual origin.)
According to Krafft-Ebing,
homosexuality is a “phenomenon of degeneration”11 that brings to
those who “suffer” from it exceptional artistic gifts but, at the same time,
limits intellectual capacity. To explain homosexuality, Krafft-Ebing
has recourse to heredity (“Among men, the phenomena of contrasexuality
is not found except in abnormal individuals”12) after noticing that
the phenomena of sexual perversion show themselves quite often not only in an
individual but in many members of the same family. For Krafft-Ebing,
homosexuality is thus an inherited congenital anomaly which is not deployed
except when the situation favours its development. Onanism, for example, plays a role in the definitive
crystallization of homosexuality
Krafft-Ebing distinguishes four types of homosexuals. We leave out of
consideration the first category (mental hermaphrodites) because it relates to
what is now called bisexuals. The second category is that of true homosexuals:
they orient themselves only toward members of their own sex. Feminine charms do
not succeed in seducing them, and if they end up marrying, it is only for
external reasons or out of ethical considerations. Their sexual rapport is
established with men of a very low social stratum and with men of their own age
(contrary to what we will see under the point 1.3.1.1 In
antiquity). During the sexual act, they generally take the role which they
would have had during a heterosexual contact. Heredity figures enormously in
this category, and this type of homosexual often harbours
other perversions. The third category, that of the
effeminate, is distinguished from the other types because the men in question
feel female when they have to do with another man: they often take on the demeanour of a young girl and try in this way to offer
something that, in their opinion, pleases a man. Their personality suffers
considerably from the influence of abnormal sexual feelings, which are often
already observable in childhood (for example, the little boy who likes to play
with dolls). They are attracted by normal men or by non-effeminate homosexuals.
Almost never do they combine their perversion with others and they show the
stigmata of hereditary faults. The last category goes even further than the
effeminate: it is not only the personality of the androgyne
that reveals abnormal sexuality but also the body itself. It concerns an
anatomy approaching the female that can be noted in the structure of the
skeleton, in the form of the face and the voice of the androgyne.
Where the primary sexual characteristics (the genital organs) are normally developed,
the development of the secondary sexual characteristics (the skeleton, the
hair, the larynx, the distribution of fat and the quality of the skin), which
depends on the endocrine glands, makes one think of a hormonal dysfunction.
… we have been
led to see in each fixed deviation from normal sexual life a certain amount of
inhibition of development and of infantilism.14
In order to see clearly in the swarm of
sexual aberrations, Freud poses the question of whether the perversions are
innate or acquired. After the observation that psychoneuroses prove tendencies
to all perversions – it’s a question of unconscious forces – Freud remarks that
“the predisposition to perversions [is] the original and universal
predisposition of the human sexual urge, from which sexual behaviour
develops during maturation under the influence of organic modifications and
psychological inhibitions.” 15 To find an adequate answer to the
innate-or- acquired question, the psychoanalyst will erect a whole theory of
infant sexuality: man is born bisexual. From his birth he begins to evolve
sexually. Infantile sexuality is characterized by derivation of pleasure and
autoeroticism in which all the zones of the body receive equal attention.
Later, the individual undergoes a double influence: on one hand, the genital
zone takes the dominant role; on the other, sexual ejaculations begin to
function for procreation. The Oedipus complex is a prominent feature of this
evolution: between his second and fifth years, the boy directs his phallic
impulses at his mother. He starts to compete with his father for her love. The
reverse is the case for the girl. Thus, Freud creates a harmonious path that
one must follow, moving through the prescribed stages to arrive at a “normal”
sexual life. Sexual aberrations are inserted into this mix as simple fixation:
“Each step on the long road of development can become a point of fixation.”16
The invert does not succeed in traversing the narcissistic stage and
consequently he wants the object of his love to have the same genital organs as
himself. Freud notes that homosexuality occurs also when a child has not known
the Oedipus complex (e.g., because the father is dead).17
Freud distinguishes three types of
homosexuals, each of which has a different behaviour
according to orientation. The first class – the most extreme – is that of the
absolute invert. The other sex leaves them cold. These men do not succeed in
performing the sexual act with women. The
second class is that of the “ambisextrous” invert. It
is made up of psychosexual hermaphrodites or bisexuals. Finally, there are also
occasional inverts whom Freud describes as follows:
“Under certain external conditions, among which inaccessibility of a normal
sexual object and imitation come first to mind, he happens to take for a sexual
object a member of the same sex and to get satisfaction from the sexual act
consummated with him.” 18 According to Freud, only the absolute
inverts can attribute their deviance to innate causes. For the other two classes,
it’s a matter of acquired perversion. This theory is underpinned by three
facts: homosexual behaviour often manifests itself
after a bad experience with a representative of the opposite sex. With others
it is the price paid for “favourable and inhibitory
external influences of existence.” 19 Here, Freud is thinking, for
example, of wartime promiscuity, detention in prison or celibacy. Finally, he
notes that “inversion can be suppressed by hypnotic suggestion, which would
seem very astonishing in the case of an innate characteristic.” 20
… in those days
to fall in love with a young man was like, in our day (Socrates’s
jokes reveal this more clearly than Plato’s theories), keeping a dancing girl
before one marries and settles down. M. de Charlus
himself would not have understood, he who confused his mania with friendship,
which does not resemble it in the least, and the athletes of Praxiteles with obliging boxers. He refused to see that for
the last nineteen hundred years … all conventional homosexuality – that of
Plato’s young friends as well as that of Virgil’s shepherds – has disappeared,
that what survives and increases is only the involuntary, the neurotic kind,
which we conceal from other people and disguise to ourselves.21
It seems interesting to us to look at
the evolution of love of the same sex from classical times to our own: today,
reference is often made to ancient
In Greek iconography, one finds many
images showing men having sexual intercourse with
adolescents. Homosexuality was treated in a way very different from today. To
show that homosexuality was considered perfectly natural, legitimate and even
indispensable, it is enough to recall Plato’s words (cf. 1.1 Homosexuality from
the mythical point of view), those of Plutarch (“if ‘through the freshness and
grace of a body’ one perceives the beauty of a soul, and this in turn,
recalling the heavenly spectacle, gives wings to our soul, why should the
difference between the sexes have any bearing here, where it is not a question
of ‘beauty’ or of ‘the excellence of the natural’?”)22 or of Aristophanes, who “characterizes
homosexual desire as ‘natural necessity’ for the same reason as heterosexual
desire, the need to eat, to drink and to laugh.” 23 Homosexuality
enjoyed a very important social role in Greek society. It constituted an
experience that young people had to undergo in order to complete their
intellectual and moral training: “a young boy, the loved one, offered his
beauty and his favours to a man of mature years, the
lover; in exchange the latter taught his protégé ‘the art of the citizen.’ ”24
This type of homosexual relation was therefore not at all condemned. On the
other hand, Greek morality – in jurisprudence no homosexual relation was
punished – deeply disapproved of sexual practices between two mature men. This
reveals the fact that the man who played the passive role in such an act was
judged weak and therefore politically unfit.
From this description it clearly follows
that Greek homosexuality differs enormously from the phenomenon as we perceive
it today.25 In classical society, the homosexual had to reserve his
desire (a word which is in any case badly-chosen since desire and love did not
really enter the picture: Greek homosexuality had essentially a pedagogic
function) for adolescents, though this did not mean that he could not love or
desire women. He had to undertake the active role in the sexual act and he had
to introduce the adolescent in this way to the world of adults and particularly
to an elite world. The homosexual act functioned therefore as a sort of
initiation and opened the way to the highest social classes. From the 15th
century, a sociological shift resulted in the fall of noble homosexuality into
a vulgar form of sexual pleasure: the rural exodus – caused by urbanization –
meant that many men began to support themselves sexually. That which had been
until then a practice reserved to the elite generalized and spread through all
social classes.
Feminine homosexuality is another matter.
Unlike the masculine variant, it was not a strictly codified system, even
though the initiation value played an important role here also. For the rest,
we do not know a great deal: “neither tolerated, nor disapproved of, nor
condemned, feminine homosexuality is simply passed over
in silence.” 27 Feminine homosexual acts hardly appeared in the
iconography, and literature did not grant it much interest. Nevertheless, the
phenomenon existed, as is shown by the descriptions of Sappho,
of Plutarch or of Plato. These few passages do not always allow the separation
of lesbianism from the shadow of its masculine counterpart, and the reduced
number of people who treated the subject shows clearly that the phenomenon was
not accepted. Masculine homosexuality was therefore tolerated, but lesbianism
was not. Since feminine homosexuality proved that women were not born the
natural servants of men and that a non-heterosexual society was feasible, it
was viewed as menacing. This was why many literary and iconographic productions
revealing such a culture were systematically destroyed or hidden.
We add also that neighbours
of the Greeks, the Romans, had no problem either with (masculine)
homosexuality. They treated it with complete indifference. In the Classical
Age, (masculine) homosexuality is therefore perfectly accepted and integrated
into society. According to Boswell, the question that must be posed then is
“why modern people, who have inherited from Roman society practically all
aspects of their culture and organization, have excluded indifference in regard to
homosexuality from the legacy.” 28
Boswell’s question is apropos. What
happened to make it so that nowadays one no longer has the tolerance for homosexuals that the
Ancients had?
It was the emperor Justinian who declared
the first repressive laws in 533: homosexual relations were considered like
adultery and this was punishable by law. Few people worried about it and
homosexual passions continued unchecked.
The 11th century saw the
development of a whole homosexual culture due to the birth of cities and the
extension of individual liberty. An abundant literature on homosexual love
appeared, for example the poem of Pierre Abélard
about David and Jonathan (cf. 1.5 Homosexuality from the literary point of
view).
In the 12th century, one sees
the emergence of a lot of poetry about homosexuality. The students of the time
were obliged to read Ganymède et Hélène, a study that compares the two types of love
(cf. 1.5 Homosexuality from the literary point of view).
The 13th century changed
direction: the rise of homosexual culture was brought to an abrupt end, and
tolerance was rejected. Five factors were responsible for this: the
reinforcement and centralization of power, the standardization of opinions and
institutions, the establishment of rigid dogma and the creation of the
Inquisition. From that moment, all the minorities were hunted. Homosexuals
suffered more than the others: because of filth and lack of hygiene, illness
and death are omnipresent in medieval society. According to some, this made men
feel a great need to reproduce himself in order to
guarantee the survival of the human species. As a result, sexual practices
“toward other ends” were not tolerated. Homosexuals kept quiet for fear of
being punished, and from that time one finds very few writings that sing the
praises of homosexual love. The first repressive laws against lesbianism also date from this period: one can read in Li
livres di jostice et de plet
(the civil code of Orléans) of 1270: “The woman
who does this must each time lose one of her limbs and the third time must be
burned.” 29
Until the end of the 18th
century, three separate codes govern sexuality, namely canonical law, Christian
pastoral law and civil law. At the end of the 18th century,
homosexuality emerges from its silence because the intervention of the Church
in sexuality loses much of its emphasis. Medicine begins little by little to
interest itself in the field of “sexual aberration,” but it does not have the
power to forbid it nor does it impede “coming out.”
In the 19th century, the
juridical situation in
From the second half of the 19th
century, the “medicalization of homosexuality” began
to be discussed:31 The discreet medical
attempts of the previous decades were converted into specialized and deepened
research. This was concentrated most of the time on the same questions (e.g., is homosexuality
innate or acquired? Is it a cause or a consequence of madness?) and the answers found by medicine were not very favourable to homosexuals. There is, for example, the Etude médico-légal
sur les attentats aux mœurs [Medico-legal study of attacks on morals] written in 1857 by A. Tardieu. In this
book, the doctor describes the revulsion he feels before the homosexual sin.
For Tardieu, it is impossible to use positive words
for the “frightful” subject of his studies. The conclusions he draws from them
are not very constructive.32 For doctors,
hunting season on homosexuals is now open. As a result, it is hardly surprising
that the “scientific” theories covered by the point 1.1 Homosexuality from
the scientific point of view originate in the second half of the 19th
century.
At the beginning of the 20th
century, the idea of homosexuality as shown by Proust
in In Search of Lost Time begins to
take form. The phenomenon is perceived as a simple inversion of gender: the
homosexual renounces his masculinity, the lesbian her femininity. The war
played an important part in this conception of love for the same sex:
promiscuity and lived experience profoundly transformed homosexual culture. But
the war is not the only event to be aware of: during that time, homosexuality
was a subject widely commented upon in the European press. The whole of
On
In 1895, Oscar Wilde was condemned to two
years at forced labour. This homosexual got involved
in a lawsuit following his reaction to an insult by the Marquis of Queensberry.
The latter was the father of Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s lover. After having
written on a card “Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite,”33 the marquis
had him thrown out of his club. In spite of attempts to calm him by his
friends, Wilde reacted in an alarming manner: under the influence of Douglas,
who hated his father, he sued the marquis for defamation. The decision was not
very favourable to Wilde: the trial turned against
him because the law supports abuse of those who depart from the norm. Wilde
expressed it forcefully in De Profundis:
Of course once I had put into motion the
forces of society, society turned on me and said “Have you been living all this
time in defiance of my
laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those
laws exercised to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.” 34
After the second trial – the first did
not succeed in leading the jury to unanimity – Wilde received the most severe
punishment for a “crime of ‘grave immorality’ ” 35: two years at
forced labour. After this condemnation, the American
poet Stuart Merrill launched a petition to demand mitigation of the penalty. In
The change in the concept itself and,
attached to it, the events that took place in Europe like the Eulenburg affair and the trial of Oscar Wilde, made
homosexuals, little by little, open
themselves to the world.
Foucault masterfully summarizes the
situation of homosexuals and of all the other “perverts” of this period:
From the end of the 18th
century until our own times, [homosexuals] run along the cracks of society,
followed but not always by the law, often but not always locked up in prison,
ill perhaps, but scandalous, dangerous victims, prey to a strange disease that
carries also the name of vice and sometimes of misdemeanor.37
“Homosexual culture” is the daughter of
fear and shame. 38
Someone says publicly that he is
homosexual in order not to be considered heterosexual any more. Which is always
the case if he does not say he is homosexual, since heterosexuality is
perceived as evident and always presupposed in all individuals. 39
Most people are of the opinion that
humans are by nature heterosexual. As a result, homosexuality can only be a
cultural phenomenon. There are even those who say that love of the same sex is
seen only in decadent times40 – which proves that it is not a
natural phenomenon. But are they right? Is homosexuality naturally or
culturally determined?
The Church has always stigmatized
homosexuality as against nature. It bases this on the stories of the Bible that
recount the punishment of homosexuals (such as Genesis XIX, Leviticus XX, 13,
Romans I, 1, 24-32). Pierre Damien goes so far as to assert that love of the
same sex is prompted by the Devil.41 It is striking to see that
homosexuality is apparently created in the highest classes of society far more
than on the lower levels. Look for example at Leonardo da
Vinci: born into a working class family, he climbed the echelons of society as
if he knew that he could only reach full self-realization in a higher social
category. Homosexuals who find themselves caught up in a scandal all occupy
considerable positions in society. Authors also accentuate this fact: they often
situate homosexuals on the upper social rungs. It is therefore easy to believe
in the cultural basis of the phenomenon:
Without a climate subtly perverted by
luxury and elegance, abnormal tendencies would not bloom, just as certain
venomous plants need the artificial warmth of greenhouses to avoid fading.42
But isn’t this a little too simple? An
argument of capital importance has been forgotten:
The absence of witnesses mentioning
scandalous conduct among the lower classes does not mean that homosexuality is
a prerogative of the characters passed in review by Tallemant
des Réaux or Saint-Simon, but very simply that the
petit-bourgeois of Paris, villagers, and country folk do not have a single Tallemant des Réaux or
Saint-Simon to describe their customs.43
The idea that homosexuality is cultural
thus remains open to question. And yet, we should not jump to conclusions.
Plato provided an argument on which we have not yet touched. After having
praised love of the same sex, the philosopher was not convinced that humans are
by nature homosexual. At the moment when he declared that homosexuality is
against nature, he invoked the animal world: since animals couple only to
reproduce themselves, he believed in the heterosexual nature of living beings.
This reasoning appears perfectly acceptable at first sight, as long as
naturalists do not discover that animals also commit homosexual acts. The
platonic argument does not stand up, therefore. We have spoken of Plato’s ideas
under the point 1.1 Homosexuality from the mythic point of view.
A completely different argument, which
brings public opinion into question, and which takes homosexuality as something
cultural and heterosexuality as part of human nature, is the model imposed on
humans from their infancy: parents buy dolls for their daughters and soldiers
for their sons. At school, they hear the stories of Adam and Eve and Romeo and
Juliet, but they are not offered the romances of David and Jonathan or of Verlaine and Rimbaud. This is why it is impossible to
respond unequivocally to the question of whether humanity opts by nature for a
homosexual or heterosexual relationship. Since there is no such thing as free
choice, we can never know.
With the help of Freud, we would like to
add that the question might well be rephrased to ask whether the phenomenon is
against nature or against culture. According to the psychoanalyst, humans are
born bisexual. At the moment when sexual
desire begins to orient itself toward one of the two sexes, this is done under
the influence of the culture in which the person lives: in most European
civilizations, homosexuality is considered a vice and as a result there will be
far fewer homosexuals than there are in a society that treats the phenomenon in
a positive manner. What is declared immoral in one society could perfectly well
be the greatest virtue in another. This is why we have the tendency to consider
homosexuality not so much against nature but against culture – though this does
not imply that humans are by nature homosexual.
Since love of the same sex is taboo, many
homosexuals opt for life in the city. In anonymity, they hope to be able to
live in peace, without the continuous contemptuous gaze of their neighbours.44
A literary mythology of the city was created because
of the masses of homosexuals who took refuge in
Friendship performs a double function in
the life of homosexuals: on one hand, it replaces to a great extent the family
ties which have often been rejected either by the homosexual or by his family;
on the other hand, it lightens the burden, the “melancholy”45 of the
inability to have children. If friendship reveals itself to be very important
for homosexuals who arrive in the city, it is equally the case for the old
homosexual who no longer goes to bars or to drag spots: “the classic theme of
the ‘solitude’ of the ageing homosexual is not only the product of homophobic
representation: it has for a long time corresponded to the lived reality of
many individuals.”46
Until now, we have used the word
“homosexuality” and its derivatives to designate this so-called perversion. In
order not to give the incorrect impression that this is the only possible name
for the “cursed race,” we take a look at the evolution and usage of the word
and its synonyms.
Chronologically, we must begin with the
word sodomy, which appears in the 6th century in Christian
Latin and is derived from
The word pédéraste
[pederast] has been used since 1580. In that year, it appeared from the pen of
J. Bodin. This loan-word from Greek was rarely used
until the 19th century. From then on, it acquired the false meaning
of homosexual and began to be abbreviated.48 [In French, “pédé” is a colloquial term for a homosexual. Tr.]
In 1934, Raspail
used the word tante as a synonym for “passive
homosexual.” Rey shows the whole system of
nomenclature of the time: The homosexual was called môme,
cousine or tante,
depending on his age. In Splendeurs et Misères des courtisanes [A Harlot High and Low], one of the Balzacian characters explains the slang word ‘tante’: “It’s the third sex, milord.” 49
In 1869, the word homosexualität
appeared for the first time in an anonymous text attributed to K. M. Benkert, a Hungarian writer. It is a barbarism (the Greek
root homo [the same] combined with the Latin word sexus)
that is synonymous with sodomy (in 2891, “homosexual” meant, according to Rey “a person who feels sexual desire more or less
exclusively for individuals of his own sex” 50 )
and is picked up by many languages more or less directly because it is both
repressive and liberal. Schehr notes:
The very words “homosexuality” and
“homosexual,” coined in 1869 by a Hungarian writer, Benkert,
signal the individual behind the action, as did the earlier nineteenth century
word “uranist” 51 as well as all the
neologisms produced since then. The advantage of the word “homosexual” was that
it seemed to have the additional quality of being scientifically neutral,
neither euphemistic, derogatory, nor culturally biased.52
In 1882, Charcot
used the word “inversion” for the first time in a sexual context: he spoke of
an “inversion in the genital sense.” 53 It is a synonym for
homosexuality. The derivation of the noun (invert) is asserted in 1894 by Raffalovitch, probably after its adjectival use in 1888 by Magnan (“sexuel inverti” 17)
During the ensuing period of time, the
three terms explained above remained current, although today homosexuals
themselves prefer the expression gay.
Proust’s work is not the only one to speak of homosexuality. Quite the contrary. Love of the same sex has an impressive
literary history. In order to show in what tradition In Search of Lost Time
was written, we will paint a historical picture of homosexual literature. This
we can’t do without a few prefatory remarks. Consider for a moment what
constitutes “homosexual literature”: does it consist of works about
homosexuality or books written by homosexuals? In the hope of finding a
response to this question, we turn to Woods:
In the absence of stable definitions and
the presence of unstable prejudices, the concept of “gay literature” has to be
seen as a movable feast. It often seems to exist in the spaces between texts,
shaped by a debate between pro- and anti-homosexual historians and critics,
continually reconstituted by new theoretical conceptions of both literature and
sexuality.55
One other question that must be posed is
why so many works treat the phenomenon of homosexuality. The response does not
really lie in esthetics but rather in morality: since the homosexual act is
performed purely for physical pleasure, according to common opinion, it
introduces the moral discussion of the survival of the human race.
Let us also add that one should not
forget the socio-religious influences that determine how sexuality is
portrayed. This means that homosexual literature must carry it out under three
kinds of censorship: some works suffer directly from censorship (for example,
passages are suppressed by the publisher); others consciously submit themselves
to censorship (transposing, for example, the sexes of their characters), while
still other writers are unaware of their own self-censorship. The latter
express themselves in such a vague manner that the reader is easily misled.
This allows interpretation to come into play: one person reads Flaubert as a
100% heterosexual author while another finds indications of homosexuality in
his books. The nature of the reader plays an essential role here.
The work which we wish to embark upon is
thus not at all easy, but we will try anyway to provide a short overview of
literary works that speak of homosexuality. The survey will certainly be
incomplete, but our principal objective is to show that Proust
is not the only important author to have written about love of the same sex.
Greek homosexual writers profited from
the fact that their god, Zeus, had a pedophile past: he transformed himself
into an eagle to kidnap Ganymede, the boy with whom he was in love. The writers
identified themselves with Zeus and in this way gave more prestige to their
works. Many Greek texts speak of homosexuality, and the mythology is full of
homosexual myths.
One source of famous examples of homosexuality
is the Iliad of Homer. Although heterosexuality is more fully treated
there than homosexuality, the latter occupies an important place in the whole
work. Think for example of the friendship between Achilles and Patroclus. It remains to be seen whether their relationship
can be considered chaste. Feminine homosexuality in ancient
It was not only the Greeks who wrote
about homosexuality. The Romans did so as well. Catullus
wrote – beside love letters to men – epigrams that refer to the homosexual
habits of other men. Where the Greeks try to mythologize love of the same sex,
this Roman author never ceases to debase the phenomenon with his vulgar
language and insults. Martial, in his turn, demands that men concentrate on
their women and not upon boys. He approaches homosexuality, omnipresent in
Roman society, in a satirical fashion, but does not fail to emphasize the
normality and indispensability of the phenomenon. In order to reach a larger
public, many authors introduced sexuality into their work in a humorous
fashion. Think for example of Juvenal and Petronius.
In the Satyriae, Petronius
satirically described the agreement between Encolpius
and Ascyltos, who were both in love with the same
boy. Virgil and Ovid certainly did not make fun of homosexuality. In the Aeneid, there is a poem about Nisus and Euryalus, while the Eclogues tell of Corydon and
Alexis. Ovid hardly speaks of homosexual love in the Amores
and the Ars Amatoria.
The Metamorphoses contains homosexual stories that were very influential
in classical times.
As we have already mentioned under 1.3.1.2
From the Middle Ages to the 19th century: an about-face, there
existed in the 11th century an abundant homosexual literature. Think
for example of Hildebert de Lavardin,
the archbishop of
In the 14th century, Dante
describes in The Divine Comedy (particularly in Purgatory) the
sodomites who pass through the fire. They revolve in the opposite direction
from heterosexuals. It is striking that Dante describes groups of sodomites. He
thus starts from the idea that homosexuals constitute subcultures and are not
isolated individuals. Boccaccio shows homosexuality
as something ridiculous in The Decameron,
while Chaucer treats sodomy only by implication. For example, his Pardoner, in Canterbury
Tales is homosexual, but this is revealed only by the fact that he has no
beard.
During the Renaissance, it is necessary
to read between the lines. Marlowe and Shakespeare did not dare dramatize
homosexuality openly.
Libertine times announce themselves, and Pietro Aretino writes Il amrescalco, a
comedy that shows homosexuality in a favourable
light. Théophile de Viau
wrote many erotic epigrams, of which many were of a homosexual orientation. The
most remarkable author of that time was undoubtedly the Marquis de Sade. Perversions constituted for him an unlimited source
that he never ceased to draw on. We could mention, for example, The 120 days of
The reticence of most writers about
putting homosexuality into their works is probably due to the tendency of the
public to confuse fiction with reality: a writer who writes on inversion is
commonly considered to be homosexual. Also, since the French Revolution, sexual
“perversion” has been considered dangerous. One could say that until the
To return to literature that treats
masculine homosexuality: the Goncourts make
themselves safe by using irony, and Flaubert carefully hides all traces that
might refer to homosexuality. However, there are others who deal openly with
homosexuality. Gautier (Mademoiselle de Maupin) permits his protagonist
to fall in love with a man (who will be revealed to be a woman later, but that
is another matter59). Neither do Verlaine or Rimbaud omit homosexual love from their
writings. The Saturnian Poems of Verlaine leave nothing to the imagination – Saturn being
the patron of homosexuals. Verlaine’s audacity is not
always appreciated: in the Complete Poetic Works of Verlaine,
Pléiade simply suppresses the section Hombres,
which contains homosexual poetry. Rimbaud, for his part, subjected himself to
quite severe self-censorship. Nevertheless, he wrote with Verlaine
the Sonnet du trou du cul (“asshole sonnet”).
In 1895, the literary treatment of love
of the same sex takes a spectacular turn: homosexuality acquires considerable
public visibility because of Oscar Wilde. After The Portrait of Dorian Gray
– a novel that treats the homosexual theme in an extremely fine and prudent
manner – and the imprisonment of the author (cf. 1.3.2 At
the dawn of the 20th century), Wilde was transformed into a
mythical founding figure of homosexual culture. At the beginning of the 20th
century, Proust and Gide
place homosexuality in full view. This breakthrough of homosexuality into
literature is not only due to scandals that were produced in neighbouring countries (for example, the Eulenburg affair, the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde), but
also to the adoption by the bourgeoisie of a less severe attitude.
[1]
Cf. Austin, How to do things with words
[2] ERIBON D, Op. Cit., p80
[3] PLATO, Symposium, Tr. Alexander Nehamas and
Paul Woodruff,
PLATON, Le
Banquet, Oeuvres complètes, Paris, Les belles lettres, 1929, 191b [Translated from the French version.]
[4] PLATON, Les
Lois, Op. Cit., I, 636,c
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Proust took so many notes before writing that it
would be practically impossible to survey all the theories that he referred to.
It is for this reason that we limit ourselves to the “pioneers,” to the
fundamental theories of inversion.
[7]
“The soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man.” We found these words of Ulrichs in STAMBOLIAN G. [ed.], Homosexualities
in French Literature: Cultural Contexts, Critical Texts,
[8]
Today, spiritual hermaphroditism is defined as
bisexuality (Cf. 1.2.2 Krafft-Ebing). Contrary
to Krafft-Ebing (who considered spiritual
hermaphrodites as a homosexual category), Ulrichs
uses the term as a general designation.
[9] PLATON,
Le Banquet, Op. Cit., 180d-181b. [Translated from the French version.]
[10]
We found all these designations of Ulrichs in
KENNEDY, H.C., “The ‘Third Sex’ Theory of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs”
in: LICATA S.J. et al., Historical Perspectives on Homosexuality,
[11]
HARTWICH A., Krafft-Ebing, Les déviations sexuelles (psychopathia
sexualis), Bruxelles, Hovitas,
1949, p236.
[12]HARTWICH A., Op. Cit., p235
[13]
We are aware of the fact that Proust never read the
works of Freud. See his letter to Allard,
[14] FREUD
S, Trois essais sur la théorie sexuelle, Paris, Gallimard, 1987, p180
[15]
Ibid., p179-180.
[16]FREUD
S., Op. Cit., p185.
[17]
Note that most of the psychologists who studied Freudian theories disagree with
this point: they see homosexuality mostly as an Oedipus complex of long
duration.
[18]
FREUD S, Op. Cit., p39.
[19]
Ibid., p44.
[20]
Ibid.
[21]
PRIS, vol. 3, p710. [RTP p.524]
[22]
Plutarch is cited in
FOUCAULT M, Histoire de la sexualité, 3 vol. ,Gallimard,
1976, III, p235.
[23]
FERNANDEZ D, Le rapt de Ganymède, Paris, Grasset, 1989, p11.
[24] ERNOULT
N, « L’homosexualité féminine chez Platon » in : Revue Française de
Psychanalyse, vol 58, 1, 1994, p207.
[25]
Proust’s narrator knows this: “We will explain later…
for what reason a Greek of the time of Socrates, a Roman of the time of
Augustus, could be what one knows they were yet all the while remain absolutely
normal men, and not men-women like those one sees today.” (SGII, vol. 3, p344)
[RTP II, p251]
[26]
This change in the concept of homosexuality explains why Plato changed his
opinion of the phenomenon. As we explain under the point 1.1 Homosexuality
from the mythic point of view, he considers it first as something perfectly
normal before firmly condemning it.
[27]
ERNOULT N, Op. Cit., p208.
[28]
FERNANDEZ D, Op. Cit., p141
[29]
These words are cited in LICATA S.J., Op. Cit., p13.
“The woman who does this must each time lose one of
her limbs and the third time must be burned.” (That “this” refers to “the
homosexual act between women” is proved by the sentence which preceded this one
and which condemn masculine homosexuality).
[30] PROUST
M, Contre Sainte-Beuve, chap. XIII « La race maudite ».
[31]
KEILSON-LAURITZ, Homoseksualiteit voor
beginners,
[32]
Tardieu has examined only a few cases of homosexuals,
so he bases his theories on a small sample.
[33]
ERIBON D, Op. Cit., p206
[34]
WILDE O, De Profundis,
[35]
ERIBON D, Op. Cit., p205
[36]
FERNANDEZ D, Op. Cit., p81
[37]
FOUCAULT M, Op. Cit., I, p55
[38] FERNANDEZ D, Op. Cit., p221
[39] ERIBON D, Op. Cit.,
p153
[40]
FERNANDEZ D, Op. Cit., p9
[41] Universalis Encyclopédie, CD-rom,
‘homosexualité’.
[42]
FERNANDEZ D, Op. Cit., p9.
[43]
FERNANDEZ D, Op. Cit., p10
[44] Cf. «
L’enfer c’est les autres » (Sartre)
[45] ERIBON
D, Op. Cit., p61
[46] Ibid., p58
[47] REY A.,
Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris, Le Robert, 1992, Tome 2,
p1960.
[48] Ibid.
[49] BALZAC
H de, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, La comédie humaine, Paris,
Gallimard, 1977, p840 (La Pléiade).
[50]
Ibid., p1937.
[51]
We do not mention this designation here because of its narrowly restricted use.
Also, we have spoken of it under the point 1.2.1 Urichs.
[52]
SCHEHR L, The Shock of Men. Homosexual
Hermeneutics in French Writing., Stanford University Press,
[53]
REY A., Op. Cit., tome 1, p 1049
[54]
Ibid.
[55]
WOODS G, A history of gay literature, Yale University Press,
[56]
The words of Lavardin are cited in WOODS G, Op. Cit.,
p46.
[57]
“I remain the prisoner of an armed cavalier.” These words of Michelangelo are
cited in FERNANDEZ, Op. Cit., p222
[58]
We note that this verse of Michelangelo’s has been changed by one of his
relatives in order to hide his homosexuality. As we have already said,
censorship plays an essential role in homosexuality literature.
[59] For more information about transvestism around 1830, see the thesis of Kim Hilgert (UIA)