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MARCEL THE MENACE: A CHILD’S ROMANCE

A gay man’s reading of Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du temps perdu

By Tim Campbell

©October 7, 2014

I am reading À la recherche du temps perdu in the 1999 paperback edition in one volume. text of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. I give page references first to this editon in French then to the Random House edition in English in 2 volumes. Almost all my quotes come from the first volume in the Random house edition. Bibliography toward end of this blog post.

Robert Proust at 6 with curls Marcel at 8 sans curls

Marcel warns us on page 459 that he was already “dangerous” at this age.

“Tu es trop beau pour un garçon!”

PART I: INTRODUCTION and MAIN IDEAS

In my opinion, one of Marcel Proust's unique contributions to world literature is that he wrote a novel that included a lot of stories about childhood sexuality…and that he did this in an autobiographical novel. That take’s kutspah!

In the first half of Temps retrouvé, I will identify nine or ten stories about Marcel having sex while younger than fourteen. Marcel tells us he was already a sexual danger at about seven. We will also learn that Marcel cruised the streets for sex regularly. Fortunately, we never learn how often he scored doing this.

Those stories include sex with little cousins before the age of nine; implied sex with a great uncle perhaps even younger than nine; masturbation at about age nine; coveted sex with Gilberte at about seven or at Tansonville; sex with Gilberte when Marcel was about nine; dreams of sex with Gilberte who might equal Bloch at about eleven; implied sex with Bloch at about the same time or earlier; sex with Charlus at about eleven; sex with Albertine at about eleven; and ultimately, sex with Saint-Loup at Doncières at about eleven.

We will also look at stories at Doncières where Marcel seems to have found an Eden-like gay community. Those scenes seem to take place after 1895 when Marcel was 25 or older. This study will not be worrying much about the volumes of Temps perdu published after Proust’s death. I think Proust was more interested in getting the first half of the novel out than the rest of it because he hoped young boys would read it in large numbers. That never happened!

A secondary theme the reader will find in these notes is that much of the vocabulary we use today for gays meaning homosexuals , particularly the word gay was already in use in the oral speech of both English and French gays long before a written record of the word with the meaning homosexual was found by word scholars. This will lead me to suggest a very special meaning to the final line in Un Amour de Swann:

“Dire que j’ai gâché des années de ma vie, que j’ai voulu mourir, que j’ai eu mon plus grand amour, pour une femme qui ne me plaisait pas, qui n’était pas mon genre!” (Page 305)

I ask myself, was Proust using the word genre here to mean type to some but gender to others?

Conclusion: this study leads me to the conclusion that it is quite appropriate to abbreviate the long title of this novel to Temps perdu or Time Wasted. I hope it is not a waste of your time to surf this blog. (More on this conclusion at the end of Part III. in this blog.)

PART II: MARCEL’S TEN EARLY SEX SCENES

Disclaimer: This author is a seventy-five year old gay identified American. Life has taught me to take with a grain of salt anything self-proclaimed bisexuals say about their sex lives. Lots of them, like young Marcel, lie any time they get in a pickle. Sometimes they lie out of pure bravado. In fact, lots of people lie about their sex lives. That may one price of civilization. While reading these stories, never forget they are all fiction, with just a wink at any basis in real life.

However, in the case of Proust, examination of his life along with his fiction is particularly compelling because at the age of thirteen, he answered a written questionnaire about himself, which has been preserved and made public, and which asked: “For what human failing do you have the most tolerance?” Proust answered: “For the private lives of persons of genius.” That answer convinces me Proust got caught doing something very naughty before he filled out that questionnaire. Moreover, I think Temps perdu is the by-product of that trauma. (Harold Bloom, Editor, Marcel Proust p. 115.) (In fact, Tadie talks of an incident on the Champs-Elysees where young Proust is recorded to have scared another little boy.)

1. Marcel's claimed first sexual pleasure at about seven p. 459 Fr., p. 439-440 En.

Marcel tells us his very first sexual pleasure was on his aunt Léonie’s bed in Combray with a little girl cousin and that he did not know where to put himself. This passage comes quite far along in the novel, page 459, just fifty pages before the end of À l’Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs in a section called Autour de Mme Swann in this new Pléiade edition.

By the time most readers get this far into Temps perdu, they will probably chuckle at the narrator’s claim the experience was with a girl cousin. In addition, the narrator assumes we already know he’s quite a Marcel the Menace in matters sexual and offers us a laugh on that theme. Here’s the passage. Marcel has just told us that he gave Tante Léonie’s bed to the brothel where he first encountered Rachel quand du seigneur and never went back there again because it was too painful for him to think of his old aunt when seeing that old bed. Marcel's claim here made me chuckle…and squirm.

“…bien des années auparavant j’avais connu pour la première fois les plaisirs de l’amour avec une de mes petites cousines avec qui je ne savais où me mettre et qui m’avait donné le conseil assez dangereux de profiter d’une heure où ma tante Léonie était levée.” (p. 459 Fr,, p. 439-440 En.)

Here, Marcel describes himself as already “assez dangereux” before this cousin suggest’s a little fun. That brag reflects comments made years later to biographers by junior high classmates that Proust was constantly trying to involve them in sex. (Painter, George D., I., Chapter 5, pp. 62-63. Daniel Halévy told Painter about Proust’s oral and written propositions. He said Proust even did coitus.)

Tante Léonie died before Marcel had his first asthma attack at age nine on the Champs-Elyées in Paris. Léonie’s old servant, Françoise, was already established in Paris with Marcel’s family by and was with Marcel when it happened. The sex with Gilberte happened just before the asthma attack. (p. 394-396 ). More details about that sex scene later.

Throughout much of the novel, Marcel is presented as basically heterosexual. However, I think that Proust intended readers naïve enough to believe that to do so. I also think Proust intended for smarter readers to see right through that and say to themselves: “I bet that was a boy cousin that first took on Marcel and I bet Marcel was on the receiving end.” Gilberte seems to have known this when she sends him a get well note on lovely stock printed with the message “Per viam rectam.” That’s Latin for “Through good living!” but it also suggests “Take rectally!” There’s a French saying Honi soit qui mal y pense. (Shame on those who see evil there.) Proust’s variation on that theme should be Honi soit qui mal n’y pense pas. (Shame on those who don’t see evil there.)

Later on in the Doncières analysis, Proust again suggests Marcel was popular with Saint-Loup (Saint-Wolf )and other soldiers because he enjoyed passive sex. Marcel spends one night with Saint-Loup and soon after, Saint-Loup is calling him “jeune cochon” in tasteless jest in front of his soldier friends. Cochon not only means pig, it is used as an insult for dirty old man. Among gays, that always has a special flavor. In this case, Saint-Loup is also making reference to Marcel’s street cruising right there at Doncières. Saint-Loup is complaining about having to be out working on duty while Marcel simply cruises around. Here’s the whole quote:

Si j’avais le temps de te raconter à ce point de vue les guerres de Napoléon, je t’assure que ces simples mouvements classiques que nous étudions, et que tu nous verras faire en service en campagne, par simple plaisir de promenade, jeune cochon; non, je sais que tu es malade, pardon! bien,…(p. 833).

Later, the soldiers who were present when Saint-Loup talked this way to Marcel express eagerness for Marcel to come back to visit them, even when Saint-Loup is absent. Some readers will imagine what those soldiers want to do with this young pig. Farm boys will probably understand this line faster than city-slickers.

As regards Marcel’s claim that the sight of Tante Léonie’s bed in the brothel caused him untold suffering, I don’t believe that one moment. Instead, it seems to me Proust put some stuff in here out of shere pastiche of the romance idyll. That BS is for the naïve to believe while others chuckle. I think Proust is pulling our leg with the sob-story part of that passage.

Perhaps this quote will help you understand Proust's own early experiences with sex better:
p. 43 “A little boy ( J.-E. Blanche) who used to play with him has told us that he was gripped with fear when he felt Marcel take him by the hand and tell him all about his needs ‘in an all enveloping and tyrannical way.’” J.-E. Blanche, Mes Modèles, Stock, 1928, repub. 1984, p. 100.

2. Uncle Adolphe’s petite pièce, the family quarrel, p. 65-66 Fr., p.55 En.

A Soldier sketched by James Tissot ca. 1871

on the Champs-Elysees near one of the pay toilets.

Although it is not perfectly clear, I believe Proust also intends us to understand that Marcel’s early sexual experiences plural involved Oncle Adolphe. Proust loves to repeat themes with variations. As sex goes for Marcel, there’s always some stress going on, there’s always a watercloset or “petit cabinet” nearby, and there’s always a mysterious, cool and forest-cabin like odor suggesting the Ancien Régime or bye-gone days, similar to the one in Uncle Adolphe’s room. Those odors come from plants like iris root and cassis that have smells like urine and semen. Most of the time, dungeon towers are looming in the background, on the horizon or out the window.

Personally, I think Proust wants us to know the real reason Oncle Adolphe’s room is off limits is because of sex between Uncle Adolphe and Marcel there. With Victorian reticence, however, that sex is only suggested. The reader has to fill in the blanks. Subsequently, Marcel’s claim that Adolphe was on the outs with his parents because of Odette de Crécy seems to be only half-true. Marcel does visit Adolphe once or twice monthly in Paris. Perhaps the family needed a more respectable reason to shun Adolphe than the little room at Combray.

The interesting thing about my interpretation of this passage is that it shows Marcel’s family put at least some limits on their acceptance of intergenerational and interfamily sex. My interpretation is that within that family, sex with the very young did not count as sex, but that after a certain age, it was no longer acceptable. I’ve heard this morality defended by quite a few male sex partners over the years. All of these men, however, said they were bisexuals. That story may just be a line of BS on their part. Here’s the scene about Uncle Adolphe’s little room:

Autrefois, je ne m’attardais pas dans le bois consacré qui l’entourait, car, avant de monter lire, j’entrais dans le petit cabinet de repos que mon oncle Adolphe, un frère de mon grand-père, ancien militaire qui avait pris sa retraite comme commandant, occupait au rez-de-chaussée, et qui, même quand les fenêtres ouvertes lassaient entrer la chaleur, sinon les rayons du soleil qui n’ atteignaient rarement jusque-là, dégageait inépuisablement cette odeur obscure et fraiche, à la fois forestière et Ancien Régime, qui fait rêver longuement les narines, quand on pénêtre dans certains pavillons de chasse abondonnés. Mais depuis nombre d’années je n’entrais plus dans le cabinet de mon oncle Adolphe, ce dernier ne venant plus à Combray à cause d’une brouille qui était survenue entre lui et ma famille, par ma faute, dans les circumstances suivante: Une ou deux fois par mois, à Paris, on m’envoyait lui faire une visite, comme il finissait de déjeuner….(Pages 65-66)

Now, Proust does not explicitly tell us that intergenerational sex happened in this petit cabinet with Uncle Adolphe. Like in some old movies, Proust sets the scene, for example, someone smoking a cigarette on the edge of the bed, then leaves the reader to supply what censors might cut anyhow. We will see similar discretion in the same sex scenes at Doncières. There, we see Marcel and Saint-Loup close the door to the bedroom. Black out. Next, we see Marcel happy as a lark the following morning.

My interpretation of this passage helps make sense of Marcel’s claim that he was already “assez dangereux” vis a vis a sex invitation on that bed in aunt Léonie’s sick room. Although Marcel calls it his first sex and says he did not know where to put his parts with the girl, he suggests there was some kind of different sex before. I’ve concluded Uncle Adolphe buggered him earlier.

Finally, notice in the quote above that Uncle Adolphe was a retired commandante. That suggests Uncle Adolphe may have once run things at Doncières. Is Proust suggesting with this detail that gay behavior was endemic to the French military? OMG! No wonder he never got a seat on the Académie.

3. The watercloset for masturbation or volupté, p. 19-20 Fr., p. 10 En. and p. 131 Fr., 121 En.

Blueprint for pay toilets on the Champs-Elysees during Proust's era

Proust introduces the theme of sexual pleasure as escaoe from cruelty as early as page 19 in this massive work. Marcel flees upstairs to a watercloset with a privacy lock to escape some cruel teasing of his grandmother and to relieve himself with some physical pleasure:

“Quand ces tours de jardin de ma grand-mère avaient lieu après diner, une chose avait le pouvoir de la fire rentrer: c’était…si my grand-tante lui criait: “Bathilde! Viens donc empêcher ton mari de boire du cognac!” Pour la taquiner, en effet (elle [la grand-mère] avait apporté dans la famille de mon père un esprit si différent que tout le monde la plaisantait et la tourmentait), comme les liqueurs étaient défendues à mon grand-père, ma grand-tante lui en faisait boire quelques gouttes. Ma grand-mère entrait, priait ardemment son mari de ne pas goûter au cognac; il se fâchait, buvait tout de même sa gorgée, et ma grand-mère repartait, triste, découragée, souriante pourtant, car elle était si humble de coeur et si douce que sa tendresse pour les autres et le peu de cas qu’elle faisait de sa propre personne et de ses souffrances, se conciliaient dans son regard en un sourire où, contrairement à ce qu’on voit dans le visage de beaucoup d’humains, il n’y avait d’ironie que pour elle-même, et pour nous tous comme un baiser de ses yeux qui ne pouvaient voir ceux qu’elle chérissait sans les caresser passionnément du regrd. Ce supplice que lui infligeait ma grand-tante, le spectacle des vaines prières de ma grand-mère et de sa faiblesse, vaincue d’avance, essayant inutilement d’ôter à mon grand-père le verre à liqueur, c’était de ces choses à la vue desquelles on s’habitue plus tard jusqu’à les considérer en riant et à prendre le parti du persécutor assez résolument et gaiement pour se persuader à soi-même qu’il ne s’agit pas de persécution; elles me causaient alors une telle horreur, que j’aurais aimé battre ma grand-tante. Mais dès que j’entendis “Bathilde! Viens donc empêcher ton mari de boire du cognac!” déjà homme par la lâcheté, je faisais ce que nous faisons tous, une fois que nous sommes grands, quand il y a devant nous des souffrances et des injustices: je ne voulais pas les voir; je montais sangloter tout en haut de la maison à côté de la salle d’études, sous les toits, dans une petite pièce sentant l’iris, et que parfumait aussi un cassis sauvage poussé au-dehors entre les pierres de la muraille et qui passait une branche de fleurs par la fenêtre ouverte. Destinée à un usage plus spécial et plus vulgaire, cette pièce, d’où l’on voyait pendant le jour jusqu’au donjon de Roussainville-le-Pin, servit longtemps de refuge pour moi, sans doute parce qu’elle était la seule qu’il me fût permis de fermer à clef, à toutes celles de mes occupations qui réclamaient un inviolable solitude: la lecture, la rêverie, les larmes et la volupté. (p. 20)

(The scene above is mentioned again on page 878. In that later passage, Marcel says it is the grand-uncle not the grand-aunt who is teasing Bathilde by offering cognac to Marcel’s grandfather. Is this an author’s mistake or is Proust trying to make the point that cruely runs in the family? Who knows. We do know that Marcel continues to combine sexual pleasure and pain. It seems self-evident that Proust here wants to prepare us for that.

Details of masturbation scene p. 131 Fr, p. 121 En.

Although the idea of a room for masturbation is introduced as early as page 19 in Temp perdu, the act of ejaculation itself is not described until page 131. Here’s that passage:”

“Hélas, c’était en vain que j’implorais le donjon de Roussainville, que je lui demandais de faire venir auprès de moi quelque enfant de son village, comme au seul confident que j’avais eu de mes premiers désirs, quand au haut de notre maison de Combray, dans le petit cabinet sentant l’iris, je ne voyais que sa tour au milieu du carreau de la fenêtre entrouverte, pendant qu’avec les hésitations héroïques du voyageur qui entreprend une exploration ou du désespéré qui se suicide, défaillant, je me frayais en moi-même une route inconnue et que je croyais mortelle, jusqu’au moment où une trace naturelle comme celle d’un colimaçon s’ajoutait aux feuilles du cassis sauvage qui se penchaient jusqu’à moi.” (p. 131 Fr., p 121 En.)

Ronald Hayman, one of Proust’s many biographers, claims “The account of masturbation in Swann is probably the first in any novel.” (Proust: A Biography, p. 23) That claim is absurd. To make it, Hayman has to exclude tons of pornographic novels that were easy for Proust to buy on the streets of Paris. Naturally, such “novels” were not published by respectable houses and weren’t considered for the Prix Goncourts.

To claim this, Hayman also has to ignore the fact that both Proust and Marcel locked themselves in little toilet rooms to read certain literature. Marcel our narrator did most of his constant reading out where others could see him in a little wicker gazebo in the garden area. I assume Marcel had his own stash of porn in that little toilet room or that his Uncle Adolpe had a stash of porn up there before Marcel came along. Illustrated versions of Sade were undoubtedly there.

4. Marcel locks onto Gilberte at Tansonville, p. 118-119 Fr., p. 108 En.

Portrait by Pierre August Renoir of his son Jean at age 6 (1900) with uncut hair

The next scene where Marcel is presented as seized with sexual tension, happens in Combray. Marcel is out strolling with his father and grandfather on the Swann side of their property. Swann’s estate is named Tansonville. Here’s the paroxysm Marcel suffers when he sees young Gilberte:

“Je la regardais, d’abord de ce regard qui n’est pas que le porte-parole des yeux, mais à la fenêtre duquel se penchent tous les sens, anxieux et pétrifiés, le regard qui voudrait toucher, capturer, emmener le corps qu’il regarde et l’âme avec lui.” Heavy stuff for a kid just starting school, a kid too small to walk along with his parents as he pleases.

Here’s the whole boy meets girl passage. It end’s with the little girl giving the boy the finger or something similar but French. Proust started lycée at eleven. I’d guess he imagines these kids as less than lycée age.

Tout à coup, je m’arrêtai, je ne pus plus bouger, comme il arrive quand une vision ne s’adresse pas seulement à nos regards, mais requiert des perceptions plus profondes et dispose de notre être tout entier. Une fillette d’un blond roux qui avait l’air de rentrer de promenade et tenait à la main une bêche de jardinage, nous regardait, levant son visage semé de tâches rose. Ses yeux noirs brillaient et comme je ne savais pas alors, ni ne l’ai appris depuis, réduire en ses éléments objectifs une impression forte, comme je n’avais pas, ainsi qu’on dit, assez “d’esprit d’observation” pour dégager la notion de leur couleur, pendant longtemps, chaque fois que je repensai à elle, le souvenir de leur éclat se présentait aussitôt à moi comme celui d’un vif azur, puisqu’elle était blonde: de sorte que, peut-être si elle n’avait pas eu des yeux aussi noirs—ce qui frappait tant la première fois qu’on la voyait—je n’aurais pas été, comme je le fus, plus particulièrement amoureux, en elle, de ses yeux bleus.

Je la regardais, d’abord de ce regard qui n’est pas que le porte-parole des yeux, mais à la fenêtre duquel se penchent tous les sens, anxieux et pétrifiés, le regard qui voudrait toucher, capturer, emmener le corps qu’il regarde et l’âme avec lui; puis tant j’avais peur que d’une second à l’autre mon grand-père , apercevant cette jeune fille, me fissent éloigner en me disant de courir un peu devant eux, d’un second regard, inconsciemment supplicateur, qui tâchait de la forcer à faire attention à moi, à me connaitre! Elle jeta en avant et de côté ses pupilles pour prendre connaissance de mon grand-père, et sans doute l’idée qu’elle en rapporta fut celle que nous étions ridicules, car elle se détourna et d’un air indifférent et dédaigneux, se plaça de côté pour épargner à son visage d’être dans leur champ visuel; et tandis que continuant à marcher et ne l’ayant pas aperçue, ils m’avaient dépassé, elle laissa ses regards filer de toute leur longeur dans ma direction, sans expression particulière, sans avoir l’air de me voir, mais avec une fixité et un sourire dissimulé, que je ne pouvais interpreter d’après les notions que l’on m’avait données sur la bonne éducation, que comme une preuve d’outrageant mépris; et sa main esquissait en même temps un geste indécent, auquel quant il était adressé en public à une personne qu’on ne connaissait pas, le petit dictionnaire de civilité que je portait en moi ne donnait qu’un seul sens, celui d’une intention insolente.”

“Allons, Gilberte, viens; qu’est-ce que tu fais,” cria d’une voix perçante et autoritaire une dame en blanc que je n’avais pas vue. (p. 118-9)

5. Marcel locks onto Gilberte’s black eyes at Tansonville, Is this Bloch’s black eyes? p.118-119 Fr., p. 108 En.

In giving Gilberte both blue and black eyes, I believe Proust intends to tell the smart reader that his first love was really Bloch. Did you ever see a black-eyed redheaded child? Most literary scholars write Proust’s first love was Marie Bernardaky, a neighbor girl. I have always scoffed at that idea. It is just silly. Of course, it is also an idea Proust himself worked hard to sell to people. So, I guess writers who repeated what Proust have some defense. But watch out, Proust often makes fun of those who parrot others. See the passage where Bergotte talks to Marcel about Norpois' flip-flop opinions designed for parrots. (p. __)

6. Marcel mounts Gilberte during hide and seek, p. 394–5 Fr, p. 377 En.

Marcel’s second or next attempt at love making happens during a game of hide and seek on the Champs-Elysées. In the novel, this comes after Un Amour de Swann, at the beginning of À l’Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, in a section called Autour de Mme Swann in the new Pléiade edition.

The scene takes place near a watercloset that smells of iris and cassis and of Uncle Adolph’s room at Combray. Proust tells the story in shocking slapstick that is hard for the American reader to comprehend. This is pure esprit gaulois. See a related note below.

This scene makes it clear that Proust had kids starting off quite young, right under the eyes of chaperones like Françoise. To me, this definitely suggests pre-adolescent sex attempts. With Proust, there is also the possibility that these characters were older and only pretending to be playing hide and seek. I can easily imagine Marcel explaining disappearances to Françoise as playing “Hide and Seek” when he was really hiding from her. Perhaps Proust meant readers to understand “Hide and Seek” as mere tongue in cheek. So don’t run out to Proust, not yet.

By the way, Françoise’s naiveté on this score may even be a source of humor later on in a passage where Mme Swann gushes over Françoise’s devotion to Marcel with one breath then wonders that he’s allowed to play so often on the Champs-Elysées while there are worries about cholera around. Cholera is not all smart parents would worry about for kids around the restrooms on the Champs-Elysées. Françoise may not have been all that blind either. When Marcel starts going out mornings to look for la Duchesse de Guermantes, Françoise gives him a hard time about the outings. It must be awful to be into street cruising and still needing a servant to bring your galoshes.

Un instant après je prenais congé de la ‘marquise’, accompagné de Françoise, et je quittais cette dernière pour retourner auprès de Gilberte. Je l’apperçus tout de suite, sur une chaise, derrière le massif de lauriers. C’était pour ne pas être vue de ses amies: on jouait à cache-cache. J’allai m’asseoir à côté d’elle. Elle avait une toque plate qui descendait assez bas sur ses yeux, leur donnant ce même regard rêveur et fourbe que je lui avais vu la première fois à Combray. Je lui demandai s’il n’y avait pas moyen que j’eusse une explication verbale avec son père. Gilberte me dit qu’elle la lui avait proposée, mais qu’il la jugeait inutile. “Tenez, ajouta-t-elle, ne me laissez pas votre lettre, il faut rejoindre les autres puisqu’ils ne m’ont pas trouvée.

Si Swann était arrivé alors avant même que je l’eusse reprise, cette lettre de la sincérité de laquelle je trouvais qu’il avait été si insensé de ne pas s’être laissé persuader, peut-être aurait-il vu que c’était lui qui avait raison. Car m’approchant de Gilberte qui, renversée sur sa chaise, me disait de prendre la lettre et ne me la tendait pas, je me sentis si attiré par son corps que je lui dis:

--Voyons, empêchez-moi de l’attraper, nous allons voir qui sera le plus fort.”

Elle la mit dans son dos, je passai mes mains derrière son cou, en soulevant les nattes de ses cheveux qu’elle portait sur les épaules, soit que ce fût encore de son âge, soit que sa mère voulût la faire paraitre plus longtemps enfant, afin de se rajeunir elle-même; nous lûttions , arc-boutés. Je tâchais de l’attirer, elle résistait; ses pommettes enflammées par l’effort étaient rouges et rondes come des cerises; elle’riait comme si je l’eusse chatouillée; je la tenais serrée entre mes jambes comme un arbuste après lequel j’aurais voulu grimper; et, au milieu de la gymnastique que je faisais, sans qu’en fût à peine augmenté l’essoufflement que me donnaient l’exercise musculaire et l’ardeur du jeu, je répandis, comme quelques gouttes de sueur arraches par l’effort, mon plaisir auquel je ne pus pas même m’attarder le temps d’en connaitre le goût; aussitôt je pris la lettre. Alors, Gilberte me dit avec bonté:

--Vous savez, si vous voulez, nous pouvons lutter encore un peu.”(394-395)`

Other scholars say Proust did not draw on his brother Robert for any of the characters in Temps perdu. I think that idea is also silly. Proust drew on what he knew best and that was his own family and household. An uncomfortable thought comes out, however, if we take Robert Proust for the key to Bloch: This sex at the Champs-Elysees could be keyed to Proust and his little brother.

Having once proposed this theory in my mind, I’m thinking the people on Aunt Léonie’s bed might have been modeled by Marcel and Robert. Where did Marcel learn? From Uncle Adolphe. And finally, I’m thinking smart readers are supposed to figure out that Marcel’s sex on the Champs-Elysées was with some boy who became Bloch.

I develop the idea that Bloch might be keyed to Robert Proust more in a special note farther on in the blog.

7. Marcel dreams about Gilberte au collège p. 325 Fr., p. 309 En.

No actual sex happens in this scene. I put it here because it drops a clue to the age of Marcel at this point in the novel. Marcel is dreaming about Gilberte, whoever that is, in class. Here’s the clue line:

“Au collège, à la classe d’une heure.” (Page 325)

In France these days, collège means the first four years of secondary school, that is, when kids are eleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen. I think the agesystem in use today was established during Proust’s lifetime, but have not been able to document that perfectly.

Something known about Proust’s own youth helps us see that this hour, the philosophy class, was for dreaming about sex. Biographers say Proust wrote notes or letter to other boys during this class proposing both sex, even coitus, and relationships. Daniel Halévy told Painter Proust even did coitus.) (Painter, George D., Marcel Proust: A Biography I., Chapter 5, pp. 62-63. )

Old School people like myself, who took philosophy classes in Latin back in the 1950s, remember that philosophy classes often were an excuse for abstract discussions of topics like love and attraction. Those class discussions were based on Latin maxims like “De gustibus non disputandum est.” and “Omnium appetitum ad bonum movet.” (On taste one can’t reason.” and “Every appetite moves toward good.”) These maxims come from Medieval Catholic philosophy or theology. Lots of Thomas Aquinas. Charlus justifies his tastes telling Marcel in Old School style “Youth is a seduction.” Marcel himself tries to justify that poorly dressed clique who propositioned Saint-Loup near the theater saying to us to us, the readers, as if in aside, “…la seule beauté apparaissse déjà comme un consentement.” (Beauty all by itself seems like some kind of consent.) (p. 865-866)

8. Charlus and Marcel hook up at Balbec, p. 564-599 Fr., p. 544?-568 En.

The Balbec stories are dated inside Temps perdu as happening two years following Marcel’s fantasy amour with Gilberte in Paris. That fantasy love happened near the time of his Marcel’s first asthma attack at age nine. So Marcel would have been about eleven when he and Charlus hook up on the street. (p. 511)

Ironically, Marcel claims a few pages later, he was too sickly to go out alone at that time. Well, he definitely was alone the evening he hooked up with Charlus. In addition, Marcel is often out in the streets alone at this period. For example, he is out alone when he longly admires the youngest of the hotel valets, the one with an orange glow around his head of hair, the fertile looking skin, the sissy mannerisms, and the svelte waist, the youngest of the valet brothers who seemed near tears of desolation because his older brothers had left him behind. (pp. 564, 559)

Young Marcel was clearly drawn to the smallest, youngest and most vulnerable seeming boys. Here are some of the details of how Charlus and Marcel hook up:

Le lendemain matin du jour où Robert m’avait ainsi parlé de son oncle tout en l’attendant, vainement du reste, comme je passais seule devant le casino en rentrant à l’hôtel, j’eus la sensation d’être regardé par quelqu’un qui n’était pas loin de moi. Je tournai la tête et j’aperçus un homme d’une quarantaine d’années, très grand et assez gros, avec des moustâches très noires, et qui, tout en frappant nerveusement son pantalon avece une badine, fixait sur moi des yeux dilatés par l’attention…Mais ma grand-mère venait à ma rencontre, nous fîmes un tour ensemble, et je l’attendais, une heure après , devant l’hôtel où elle était rentrée un instant, quand je vis sortir Mme de Villeparisis avec Robert de Saint-Loup et l’inconnu qui m’avait regardé si fixement devant le casino.

“Comment allez-vous? Je vous présente mon neveu, le baron de Guermantes”, me dit Mme de Villeparisis, pendant que l’inconnu, sans me regarder, grommelant un vague: “Charmé” qu’il fit suivre de: “heue, heue, heue” pour donner à son amabilité quelque chose de forcé, et repliant le petit doigt, l’index et le pouce, me tendait le troisième droigt et l’annulaire, dépourvu de toute bague, que je serrai sous son gant de Suède; puis sans avoir levé les yeux sur moi il se détourna vers Mme de Villeparisis.

“Mon Dieu, est-ce que je perds la tête? dit celle-ci, voilà que je t’appelle le baron de Guermantes. Je vous présente le baron de Charlus. Après tout, l’erreur n’est pas si grande, ajouta-t-elle, tu es bien un Guermantes tout de même.”

Cependant ma grand-mère sortait, nous fîmes route ensemble. L’oncle de Saint-Loup ne m’honora non seulement pas d’une parole mais même d’un regard….

Devant le Grand-Hôtel, les trois Guermantes nous quittèrent…M. de Charlus, qui jusque-là ne m’avait pas adressé la parole, fit quelques pas en arrière et arrivé à côté de moi: “Je prendrai le thé ce soir après diner dans l’appartement de ma tante Villeparisis, me dit-il. J’espère que vous me ferez le plaisir de venir avec madame votre grand-mère.” Et il rejoignit la marquise. (p. 594-599)

Marcel brings his grandmother to the tea where Charlus pretends they invited themselves. He never says a word to Marcel but is super cordial to the grandmother. Marcel sets the record straight about the invitation, directly contradicting Charlus. The conversation at the tea turns to love, particularly to the perhaps excessive love between Mme de Sévigné and her daughter. Charlus comments abstractly:

--Mais l’important dans la vie n’est pas ce qu’on aime”, reprit-il d’un ton compétant, péremptoire et presque tranchant, “c’est d’aimer. Ce que ressentait Mme de Sévigné pour sa fille peut prétendre beaucoup plus justement ressembler à la passion que Racine a dépeinte dans Andromaque ou dans Phèdre, que les banales relations que le jeune Sévigné avait avec ses maîtresses.” (pp. 602-3)

The conversation continues straying as far off as to compare the prestige of the memoires of the Queen to the fantasies of Mme Israël. Finally it is time for Marcel to go to bed:

Cependant ma grand-mère m’avait fait signe de monter me coucher…Je tardai encore quelques instants, puis m’en allai, et fus bien étonné quand un peu après, ayant entendu frapper à la porte de ma chambre et ayant demandé qui était là, j’entendis la voix de M. de Charlus qui disait d’un ton sec:

“C’est Charlus. Puis-je entrer, monsieur?” (Page 604)

Marcel lets Charlus in. Charlus has brought a book by Bergotte for Marcel. He knows somehow that's his favorite author. He consoles Marcel for his night time anxiety and that leads to some comments on tendernesses permitted and tendernesses recompensed. Charlus pretends to be talking about Marcel’s love for his grandmother and vice-versa. Marcel gets it. There’s some abstract discussion about age and about love. Charlus presents a defense for those who love differently. He tells Marcel:

Vous n’avez peut-être pas de mérite personnel, si peu d’êtres en ont! Mais pour un temps du moins, vous avez la jeunesse et c’est tourjours une séduction. D’ailleurs, monsieur, la plus grande des sottises, c’est de trouver ridicules ou blâmables les sentiments qu’on n’éprouve pas. J’aime la nuit et vous me dites que vous la redoutez; j’aime sentir les roses et j’ai un ami à qui leur odeur donne la fièvre. Croyez-vous que je pense pour cela qu’il vaut moins que moi? Je m’éfforce de tout comprendre et je me garde de rien condamner. En somme, ne vous plaignez pas trop, je ne dirai pas que ces tristesses ne sont pas pénibles, je sais ce qu’on peut souffrir pour des chose que les autres ne comprendraient pas. Mais du moins vous avez bien placé votre affection dans votre grand-mère. Vous la voyez beaucoup. Et puis c’est une tendresse permise, je veux dire une tendresse payée de retour. Il y en a tant don’t on ne peut pas dire cela!”

Il marchait de long en large dans la chambre, regardant un objet, en soulevant un autre. J’avais l’impression qu’il avait quelque chose à m’annoncer et ne trouvait pas en quels termes le faire.” (Page 605)

Notice that Charlus calls Marcel’s nervous nature simple fear of the dark. That’s something lots of kids experience when they are quite young. The other lines underscored above will be echoed by Saint-Loup later at Doncières. Charlus decides to up the book ante and tries to send out for a second book for Marcel without success. Aimé, the hotel manger to whom Charlus is close, has gone home. Marcel insists one book is plenty. Charlus agrees, finally. There’s no direct talk of quid-pro quo beyond the previous remark about exchanges of tenderness. Some time passes about which we are told nothing. Next, Charlus gives Marcel a long piece of advice summarizing how gays are supposed to go along with obscure or hidden language meant to throw straight people off the track about our same-sex relationships. Charlus was upset that Marcel had contradicted him when he pretened Marcel and his grandmother came to the tea out of their on inspiration, not because he had invited them. Charlus expected Marcel to go along with his pretense, covering up the street pickup:

“Monsieur, me dit’il en s’éloignant d’un pas, et avec un air glacial, vous êtes encore jeune, vous devrierz en profiter pour apprendre deux chose: la première c’est de vous abstenir d’exprimer des sentiments trop naturels pour n’être pas sous-entendus; la seconde c’est de ne pas partir en guerre pour répondre aux choses qu’on vous dit avant d’avoir pénétré leur signification. Si vous aviez pris cette précaution, il y a un instant, vous vous seriez évité d’avoir l’air de parler à tort et à travers comme un sourd et d’ajouter par là un second ridicule à celui d’avoir des ancres brodées sur votre costume de bain. Je vous ai prêté un livre de Bergotte don’t j’ai besoin. Faites-le moi rapporter dans une heure par ce maître d’hôtel au prénom risible et mal porté, qui je suppose, n’est pas couché à cette heure-ci. Vous me faites apercevoir que je vous ai parlé trop tôt hier soir des séductions de la jeunesse, je vous aurais rendu meiller service en vous signalant so nétourerie, ses inconséquences et son incompréhension. J’espère, monsieur, que cette petite douche ne vous sera pas moins salutaire que voter bain. Mais ne restez pas ainsi immobile, car vous pourriez prendre froid. Bonsoir, monsieur.” (page 606)

Finally, Charlus leaves Marcel’s rooms. We are not told sex happens but smart readers will know it dit for four reasons:

First, Charlus’ advice to Marcel are the words of an older gay man to a neophyte, not the words of a gay man embarrassed by a rejection. During Proust’s epoque, Gays socialized mostly among non-gay family and friends. gays were finding each other, searching for a language, and often talking to each other in ways meant to go over the heads of those not initiated. Charlus would only have given Marcel this advice if Marcel had had sex with him.

Second, the next morning, Charlus talks to him on the beach as he is about to take a little swim, then takes the liberty of pinching him on the neck or cheek as he says:

--Mais on s’en fiche bien de sa vieille grand-mère, hein? petite fripouille!”

I think this sudden familiarity is supposed to let us know Charlus scored with Marcel. My reading is that they had sex before Charlus gave him the advice on how to talk gay-speak. This technique of letting the public imagine the love making is familiar as a movie technique.

One thing interesting about Proust is that he told us about the sex between nine year old Gilberte and Marcel, he told us that Swann made catleya or love in their fiacre, but he doesn’t tell us so directly that same-sex sex happens. Perhaps because he knew that would not get past editors or public censure.

Third, Charlus called Marcel, “petit fripouille.” Fripouille is an arcane synonyme voyou which is French for street trash or street hustler. The term discretely says Charlus made it with Marcel and got a nice book for it.

Fourth, I think an insecure old aristocrat who has just stooped to sex with street trash would have psychological reasons to re-establish the social pecking order by politely insulting the lowling with whom he has copulated. “Petit fripouille!” fits the bill perfectly. Arcane enough not to alarm anyone anymore.

9. Marcel makes out with Albertine at Balbec, p. 727-9 Fr., p. 698 En.

Towards the end of the summer at Balbec, Marcel, about eleven or twelve by then, has a trist with Albertine, younger and smaller than himself, in the Grand Hotel the night before she is to take off to visit her relatives les Bontemps. Marcel tells us that the joy which he had just felt seeing Albertine’s cheeks

“(This joy)…conduisait à un autre désir qui n’était pas celui de la promenade, mais du baiser.” (Page 727)

With this on his mind, Marcel nearly knocks Françoise over on the way to Albertine’s hotel room. Then he tells us:

“Je trouvai Albertine dans son lit. Dégageant son cou, sa chemise blanche changeait les proportions de son visage qui congestionné par le lit, ou le rhume, ou le diner, semblait plus rose; je pensai aux couleurs que j’avais eues quelques heures auparavant à côté de moi, sur la digue, et desquelles j’allais enfin savoir le goût; sa joue était traversée de haut en bas par une de ses longues tresses noires et bouclées que pour me plaire elle avait défaites entièrement. Elle me regardait en souriant.” (p. 728)

Proust’s camera like pen then shifts to images of breast like cliff tops at Entretat and the sex scene takes place off camera. Nothing happens for a while and finally Marcel tells us Albertine orders :

“Finissez ou je sonne!” (Page 729)

Marcel did not stop right away so Albertine rings with all her might. Then Marcel starts talking about just wanting to kiss her (l’embrasser). Before that, Marcel kept using the verb baiser. I laughed at how fast Marcel changed his tune. I think Proust intended that. Sure, sometimes embrasser and baiser are interchangeable. Comedy of manners is based on misunderstandings. Here, the comedy is perhaps more wicked than some would like. If you are ready to believe our little Marcel the Menace only wanted a kiss that night, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you should buy. French youths don’t get hotel rooms to kiss . They do that right in the middle of the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, and I am sure they did so in 1880.

Consequently, I count this as a sex scene. And I interpret “Finissez!” as more like “Hurry up!” than like “Stop trying to kiss me.” Proust loves to create passages in which he can slip sex past the censors. Honi soit qui mal y pense pas!

As far as age goes, Albertine was the smallest of the school girls of the seawall, and most probably even smaller than Marcel. So if he was twelve, she would have been about ten.

This little story suggests to me that when reading Proust, if a passage can be interpreted in both a virtuous and not so virtuous way, Proust intended both, but for different audiences. If one interpretation is comic and the other not comic, Proust intended to entertain us.

10. Marcel goes to Doncières, sleeps with Saint-Loup, p. 799-ff Fr., p. 763 En.

Marcel, then about eleven or twelve, decides on his own—which was out of character—to take the train from Balbec to Doncières to visit Saint-Loup and then to go on home to Paris from there that night

It’s not hard to understand that Marcel would like to visit Saint-Loup. But he tells us his reason for the trip is to ask for an introduction to Mme de Guermantes with whom he is supposedly madly in love. It’s hard for me not to laugh at that plot. Nonetheless, our poor little Marcel, at a period of illness when he also claims, at an earlier moment, he never leaves the house alone, heads off all alone to Balbec. No Maman, no Françoise, and no Grand-Mère. Little wonder some of the other characters wink at his pretended feebleness. Here’s what happens when Marcel gets to Doncières:

“(Doncières:) C’était moins loin de Balbec que le paysage terrien ne l’aurait fait croire, une de ces petites cités aristocratiques et militaires, entourées d’une campagne étendu où , par les beaux jours, flotte si souvent dans le lointain une sorte de buée sonore intermittente qui—comme un rideau de peupliers par ses sinuosités dessine le cours d’une rivière qu’on ne voit pas—révèle les changement de place d’un régiment à la manoeuvre…

(Four or five lines describing the manoeuvres)

Elle (Doncières) n’était pas pas située tellement loin de Paris que je ne pusse, en descendant du rapide, rentrer, retrouver ma mère et ma grand-mère et coucher dans mon lit. (page 799).

Aussitôt que je l’eus compris, troublé d’un douloureux désir, j’eus trop peu de volonté pour décider de ne pas revinir(sic) à Paris et de rester dans la ville (Doncières); mais trop peu aussi pour empêcher un employé de porter ma valise jusqu’à un fiacre pour ne pas prendre, en marchant derrière lui, l’âme dépourvue d’un voyageur qui surveille ses affaires et qu’une grand-mère n’attend, pour ne pas monter dans la voiture avec la désinvolture de quelqu’un qui, ayant cessé de penser à ce qu’il veut, a l’air de de savoir ce qu’il veut, et ne pas donner au cocher l’adresse du quartier de cavalerie. Je pensais que Saint-Loup viendrait coucher cette nuit à l’hôtel où je descendrais afin e me rendre moins angoissant le premier contact avec cette ville inconnue. Un homme de garde alla le chercher (Saint-Loup), et je l’attendis à la porte du quartier, devant ce grand vaisseau tout retentissant du vent de novembre* et d’où, à chaque instant, car c’était six heures du soir, des hommes sortaient deux par deux dans la rue, titubant comme s’ils descendaient à terre dans quelque port exotiqueoù ils eussent momentanément stationé. (*ca November, 1883)

Saint-Loup (Saint-Wolf?) arriva, remuant dans tous les sens, laissant voler son monocle devant lui: je n’avais pas fait dire mon nom, j’étais impatient de jouir de sa surprise et de sa joie.

“Ah! quel ennui” s’écria-t-il en m’apercevant tout à coup et en devenant rouge jusqu’aux oreilles, “je viens de prendre la semaine et je ne pourrai pas sortir avant huit jours!” (Page 800)

Think about why these guys were coming out in pairs stumbling? Same-sex couples leaving a tavern? Makes me think gay couples, but I do have a point of view. (Someday, I’ll write a few paragraphs about Proust on individual points of view and hearing. That’s near p. 800, I think.

The dirt motif pervades the episode once Marcel tells about the expanse of paysage terrien (dirt country) between Balbec and the little military cité.

Next Saint-Loup proposes several places where Marcel might spend the night. He’s a good salesman but Marcel stubbornly turns down all his suggestions. This little boy is definitely strong-willed when he wants something. Not at all short of volonté as he wants people to believe, as his grandmothere believes desparately. Some people wink when they hear Marcel whistle this tune. Finally Saint-Loup catches on and changes his tune:

Saint-Loup le comprit (my resistance to being alone) à mon regard fixe.

--Mais vous vous en fichez bien, mon pauvre petit, de ce joli palais, vous êtes tout pâle; moi, comme une grande brute, je vous parle de tapisseries que vous n’auriez pas même le coeur de regarder. Je connais la chambre où on vous mettrait, personnellement je la trouve très gaie, mais je me rends bien compte que pour vous avec votre sensibilité ce n’est pas pareil.. Ne croyez pas que je ne vous comprenne pas, moi je ne ressens pas la même chose, mais je me mets bien à votre place.” (p. 801)

There’s a brief interruption while Saint-Loup takes charge of a stallion rearing to its full height. (Neo-Homeric romanticism?) One audience will swoon, the other will laugh at the suggestiveness of this distraction. Meanwhile, back to the seduction:

“Oui, me dit-il, je vous assure que je me rends compte, que je souffre de ce que vous éprouvez; je suis malheureux”, ajouta-t-il en posant affectueusement sa main sur mon épaule, “de penser que si j’avais pu rester près de vous, peut-être j’aurais pu, en causant avec vous jusqu’au matin, vous ôter un peu de votre tristesse. Je vous prêterais des livres, mais vous ne pourrez pas lire si vous êtes comme cela. Et jamais je n’obtiendrai de me faire remplacer ici; voilà deux fois de suite que je l’ai fait parce que ma gosse était venue.” (Page 801)

I notice two relevant things in this passage:

First, Saint-Loup uses almost all the same sweet-talk as Charlus to pull in young Marcel who is nibbling eagerly on the line. Charlus called Marcel “petit fripouille” (little hustler) and pinched his neck or cheek with familiarity after their sex in Balbec. A little further on in this commentary, we’ll hear Saint-Loup call sick little Marcel “jeune cochon.” (young pig, slang for dirty young man). That’s a familiar Proustian theme and variation.

Special note about the words gay and gai meaning homosexual

Second, Proust has Saint-Loup use both the term gai and the term être comme cela in his dialogue. Could Proust have meant them to mean gay in the new sense? I think that is likely. Very likely. The whole scene at Doncières convinces me of that. I expect Proust drew on his vacation in Bruges in Flanders (1902) to write these passages. Back then, the Low Countries were Europe’s playground. Those countries were also already places where the majority of people could handle both French and English. Everyone knew the North Coast was a gay scene in the sense of pleasure ports. By this time, the homosexuals had to be noticing that gay scenes meant scenes where there were lots of them/us. I think this must have been where and how gay came to equal homosexual.

Saint-Loup continues to reel in Marcel with sweet-talk about his great affection for the boy plus concern about his poor, poor health. The scene is clearly a pastiche of La Fontaine’s wolves sweet-talking prey before pouncing. By the way, Loup means wolf in French:

“Non! vous ici, dans ce quartier où j’ai tant pensé à vous, je ne peux pas en croire mes yeux, je crois que je rêve. En somme, la santé, cela va-t-l plutôt mieux? Vous allez me raconter tout cela tout à l’heure. Nous allons monter chez moi, ne restons pas trop dans la cour, il fait un bon dieux de vent, moi je ne le sens même plus, mais pour vous qui n’êtes pas habitué, j’ai peur que vous n’ayez froid.” ( Page 802)

Marcel also waxed eloquent on his amitié with Saint Loup on page 799. Proust want to be sure we know this is a very particular amitié. There are a few more lines of chitchat, then Saint-Loup wispers to Marcel:

“Il faut que je dise un mot au capitaine, soyez assez gentille pour aller m’attendre dans ma chambre, c’est la seconde à droite, au troisième étage, je vous rejoins dans un moment.” (Page 802)

(The passage about people seeing and hearing differently may be during this wait time.)

Marcel had good manners and took Saint-Loup’s suggestion to heart. He loved the feeling of Saint-Loup’s little room and made this proposition to him when he returned:

“Ah! Robert, qu’on est bien chez vous, lui dis-je; comme il serait bon qu’il fût permit d’y diner et d’y coucher.” (Page 805)

Marcel then launches into a strange commentary on the presumption that dining and spending the night in Saint-Loup’s barracks room being against the rules followed by fine words about the gaiety of this little community so well ordered by authority. This paragraph projects gaiety over all of Doncières, even over its military orderliness. That makes me think Proust was really thinking about a vacation in Bruges where the laws were much more liberal, mostly to encourage tourism. Here’s Marcel daydreaming out loud or in aside to us readers:

Et en effet, si cela n’avait pas été défendu, quel repos sans tristesse j’aurais goûté là, protégé par cette atmosphère de tranquilité, de vigilance et de gaieté qu’entretenaient mille volontés réglées et sans inquiétude, mille esprits insouciants, dans cette grande communauté qu’est une caserne où le temps ayant pris la forme de l’action, la triste cloche des heures était remplacée par la même joyeuse fanfare de ces appels don’t était perpetuellement tenu en suspens sur les pavés de la ville, émietté et pulvérulent, le souvenir sonore,--voix sûre d’être écoutée, et musicale, parce qu’elle n’était pas seulement le commandement de l’authorité à l’obéissance mais aussi de la sagesse au boneur.” (Page 805)

What an Eden-like country this is indeed. Saint-Loup strings young Marcel on a bit more. In fact, he sounds a bit like a lawyer grilling a youngster testifying at a trial about indecency with a minor. He wants proof this is Marcel’s proposition not his own perverse idea:

“Ah! vous aimeriez mieux coucher ici près de moi, que de partir seul à l’hôtel, me dit Saint-Loup en riant. (Page 805)

Naturally, Saint-Loup had already obtained permission from the captain to let Marcel spend the night. When he announced that, Marcel exclaimed like a very young girl:

“Oh! je l’adore!” (Page 806)

This line echoes Marcel’s comment to Charlus about his grandmother back in Balbec. “Monsieur, je l’adore!”

Once again, we don’t get to witness the love-making, just the after-glow, p. 807

Saint-Loup and Marcel settle in for the night together and Marcel tells us nothing about their love making, directly. Proust and Marcel leave us to infer that from Marcel’s elation the next morning. That ecstasy fills up several pages and envelopes all of Doncières in its light:

“Et le lendemain matin en m’éveillant, j’allai jeter par la fenêtre de Saint-Loup qui, située fort haut, donnait sur tout le pays, un regard de curiosité pour faire la connaissance de ma voisine, la campagne, que je n’avais pas pu apercevoir la veille, parce que j’étais arrivé trop tard, à l’heure où elle dormait déjà dans la nuit.” (Page 807)

A page or two of romantic pastoral description follows, concluding with a passage that describes the rising sun chasing the fog over the hill. This culminates with Marcel telling us heroically:

“La colline put offrir sa croupe grise aux rayons qui, une heure plus tard, quand je descendis dans la ville, donnaient aux rouges des feuilles d’arbres, aux rouges et aux bleus des affiches électorales posées sur les murs une exaltation qui me soulevait moi-même et me faisait battre, en chantant, les pavés sur lesquels je me retenais pour ne pas bondir de joie.” (Page 808)

Shortly after spending the night with Saint-Loup, Marcel asks him to tutoyer him. The use of the tu form was back then a sign of family ties. This would make Saint-Loup’s friends imagine Marcel and Saint-Loup were related. More important perhaps, the tu form would brush Marcel with a bit of aristocracy. That’s Marcel’s deepest quest, the goal of the roman familial.

Saint-Loup agrees to use the tu form \ but he also quickly finds an excuse to address Marcel as “petit cochon,” (slang for “dirty little man” and also a reference to a common sex object for farm lads, at least in jest). Not really a nice thing to call an enamored, plump little twelve year old in front of a bunch of soldiers living in barracks. One more point for l’esprit gaulois!

Saint-Loup seems to be bragging about his hard work as a soldier, rehearsing movements all day long on the traning grounds, while Marcel just stolls (cruises) around town. Here’s the whole quote:

As you can see, Saint-Loup is winking a little at Marcel’s posturing as sickly as he offers this half-hearted apology for an incredible insult. Like Charlus, Saint-Loup instinctively protected the pecking order that was his royal birthright.

Later, the soldiers who were present when Saint-Loup called Marcel a young pig express great eagerness for Marcel to come back to visit them, even when Saint-Loup is absent. Some readers will imagine what those soldiers want to do with this young pig. Farm boys will probably laugh faster than city-slickers.

Marcel’s ecstasy continues all day

Towards diner time, returning to his gay hotel room at the Hôtel de Flandre, anticipating diner with Saint-Loup and friends, Marcel tells us more about his ecstasy which has lasted all day:

“Un tel courant de vie affluait à mes nerfs qu’aucun de mes mouvement ne pouvait l’épuiser; chacun de me pas, après avoir touché un pavé de la place, rebondissait, il me semblait avoir aux talons les ailes de Mercure.” (Page 818)

The reader is now at page 818 and has never before seen Marcel this happy. I am convinced Proust is trying to secretly tell some readers that Marcel has found his true home, his true country. I believe this is the climax of Proust’s roman familial.

PART III. BACKGROUND AND COMMENTARY

When Proust died in 1922, Paris mourned him big
According to Henri Peyre, a world renown professor of modern literature, "Almost as soon as he died in Paris in 1922 at the age of fifty-one, Marcel Proust was hailed in tributes such as no French novelist had ever received so early while his work was still only half published. The most discerning and the warmest tributes came from outside France...But Proust had founded no school,had belonged to no literary coterie, left no disciples, and has had no imitators. His freshness has persisted unwilted and the mass of speculations on his achievement by philosophers and literary dissectors has not decreased the delight of reading him." (pp. 3-4, Marcel Proust by Henri Peyre. None the less, A la recherch du temps perdu never made the top of anybody's Best Seller list. It has also never been banned or burned. Both of those facts say a lot.

I started the novel 45 years ago and never really wanted to get back to it until this year. I've read the first half and am exhausted already. Knowning how bad Proust drank and used drugs, I figure he did his best work young, so I may never finish the novel. In my opinion, Proust is a novelists novel, an academics novel. Very few people can really read it for enjoyment. Try Fiddler on the Roof if you want easy entertainment. --Tim Campbell, October 15, 2014.

1900 era sex studies

Some of the theories about sexuality in Temps Perdu come from Medieval philosophy. I find those in the mouth of Charlus. Those page references are found in the section about Charlus and Marcel hooking up. Others reflect knowledge of more recent writing about human sexuality. They come out of the mouths of the next generations. La Duchesse de Guermantes summarizes the theory then being put forward by researchers that humans are “polymorphous perverse” sexually. She puts it this way during Mme de Villeparisis’ tea: “Je sais que n’importe qui peut aimer n’importe quoi.” (I know anybody can love anything.” p. 919 Proust’s major characters were indeed very well read.

“…la seule beauté apparaissse déjà comme un consentement.” This is how Marcel defends poorly dressed clique who may have tried to pick up Saint-Loup after the theater. However, that is not so sure. Marcel (and Proust?) seems to equate poor clothing with socio-political activism. The last time we saw him at the theatre, it was the angry, demonstrating actress who was poorly dressed. (p 885-886) Marcels’ argument is a lot like Charlus’ claim that youth is of itself is a seduction. See the section on Charlus.

Three types of love stories: incest, heterosex and same-sex

It seems to me there are three different types of love stories in Temps perdu. Stories about family love, stories about opposite sex love, and stories about same sex love. Proust also seems to call our attention to the fact that all three of these types of love can cause problems. Let’s take a look at some of the issues here.

The mother love stories (p. 28)

No Proustian reader has probably ever missed the extreme version of mother-love found in Temps perdu. Sometimes it involves Marcel and his mom, sometimes Marcel and his grand-mother. Every reader knows the scene between Marcel and his mother and the goodnight kiss. Most critics agree the fictional Marcel must have been between five and seven during this scene. I intend to make Swann’s presence in the house that night more important than do other critics. I’m thinking Marcel disliked being separated from the Swann visit as much as he need that kiss, that he demanded the kiss primarily to keep his mom away from Swann. Here, Swann, not Marcel’s father, seems to be Marcel’s rival for his mom’s affection. I will also pay more attention to the scene where Marcel describes in great detail the pleasure of kissing his grand-mother on the cheek. I wonder whether initiated readers aren’t invited to interpret this as a description of the pleasure of oral sex.

The obvious heterosexual love stories

Most readers, even most academic literary critics, see in La Recherche a series of heterosexual love stories. First there’s Un Amour de Swann. Then there’s Jeunes Filles en fleurs. Then there’s Mme Swann, then the Duchesse de Guermantes, finally, Albertine. These love stories are clearly romanesque idylls.

The hidden same-sex love stories

The way I read Temps perdu, there’s also the same-sex love stories between Marcel and Swann, Marcel and Bloch, Marcel and Saint-Loup, just in the first half of the novel. In addition, Temps perdu is replete with elements of the roman familial. The use of photographs is essential to illustrating this point. In particular, Marcel repeatedly gives the aristocrats big Oriental eyes and noses like his own

Even the literary critics who expound at length on the fact that Proust was himself homosexual and subsituted girls and women for love objects in his story that were in fact inspired by boys and men…even those commentators often seem to fail to talk about Marcel’s own love of men and boys. These notes will focus on Marcel’s very young and not so young sexual encounters with boys and men. I maintain that Bloch was Marcel’s first love and first sex partner but that that relationship got a sex change and became the Gilberte/Marcel sex scene on the Champs Elysées. I also believe Marcel’s amour with Bloch is in fact suggested by Proust very subtly when Françoise first learns who Bloch is by name and is stunned and angered that Marcel had talked about him in such glowing terms where as he looks like such an inferior person to him. (page 615) Chez Proust, only love makes people idolize common mortals. Smart readers are expected to know Gilberte was really a boy. In fact, she slides on the ice just like a boy. This is a hint that she is really a boy. I think Proust intended for us to notice that.

Marcel’s early self –image: the photo at age 8

I am convinced Marcel sees himself as a short, obvious and feminine Jew boy with a proclivity to become fat. Study the photo of him at He is in love and lust after tall, thin, aristocratic blonds of Nordic or Germanic origins. The Narrator defines love as the willingness to do anything, absolutely anything for the person loved. Marcel asks for the photo for “literary reasons.” When Saint-Loup says no, Marcel grumbles to us readers:

“Je compris qu’il avait une arrière pensée, qu’il m’en prêtait une, qu’il ne servirait mon amour qu’à moitié, sous la reserve de certains principes de moralité, et je le détestai.” (page 825)

Boys who knew Marcel as a kid say he was very much a control freak and even engaged in coitus. The biographer who wrote that did not go into details of gender. Naturally, Robert would have done much of what Marcel suggested when they were very small children.

About seeing himself as fat, the passages about Marcel at Gilberte’s tea goûters make him sound like an anorexic bourgeois girl. Saint-Loup calls Marcel “jeune cochon.” That suggests fatness.

Marcel drools over the young Guermantes, tall, thin and blond, that is, the opposite of himself.

Although the extant photos of Marcel fat Proust at 16 don’t make him look fat, the photo of him around 7 with his brother does make him look fat. In addition, most of the photos of Proust in his 30s make him look more plump than all the males he admires and makes pursues as friends. The young male subjects he describes as plantureux are all very well-toned and slim wasted.

Expert insists Marcel/Proust did not consider himself Jewish

I am aware that Jean-Yves Tadié insists that “Marcel (Proust) himself, let it be stressed, did not consider himself a Jew.” Tadié is certainly one of the world’s leading authority on Proust, the author of one of many biographies of Proust, and the text editor of the Pléiade Edition of Temps perdu I use in writing this paper. He is also an Egyptian and our cultural points of departure for viewing Proust are worlds apart. Nonetheless, his claim that Proust did not consider himself a Jew reinforces my perception that Temps perdu is not just any genre of novel, but a roman familial. Here’s what that’s about. (Jean-Yves Tadié, Marcel Proust: A biography, p. 18)

Marcel Proust at 16

How photos, paintings influenced my reading of Temps perdu

Proust wrote a lot about the physical features his characters inherited from their parents. The pictures used here are snapshots I took myself from books in print. Bibliographical info is in the appendices.

Marcel at 16 Mme Proust at ca 40 Grandmother Weil ca 60

Four photos here Proust at 16, Maman, Grand-Mere, Jethro’s daughers

My reading of Temps perdu is very conscious that Marcel Proust , his mother and grandmother looked a lot like a blond young girl in Botticelli’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel known as The Daughters of Jethro. I also believe Proust was very aware of this. It also seems important that Un Amour de Swann ends with Swann wondering why he wasted years of his life chasing someone who wasn't even his "genre."

The resemblance between Proust at sixteen and this jeune fille makes me think maybe Marcel was in fact Swann’s type. Was there sex between Marcel and Swann once upon a time? Is the smart reader really supposed to understand that Marcel was in love with Charles Swann? Is that the real reason he hated so bad to be sent to his bedroom while Swann was still in the house?

Temps perdu is universally accepted as autobiographical fiction. Autobiographical fiction, like fictional confession present all kinds of problems for the reader who hopes to determine what is really going on in the novel. One general rule of interpretation would suggest that what happens in the novel is what happens there and that what happens in the author’s real life is what happens there. That suggestion breaks down as a rule when the author decides to flip the genders of people and to deliberately obfuscate certain truths in the process of writing. I am convinced Proust wanted initiated readers to see the real truth while naïve readers saw only the superficial story.

Mme Proust left, Madeleine Lemaire right.

As you can see from the photos, Mme Proust was Mme Lemaire's neighbor and social equal. Was she also the prime model for Mme Verdurin aka the Princesse de Guermantes at the end of the novel?

Madeleine Lemaire was the Prousts’neighbor. Many commentator say Proust told them she was the for Mme Verdurin in Temps Perdu. I propose that, in doing this, Proust deliberately led interviewers away thinking the salons were modeled on his own home and the salon his mother kept.

In fact Mme Proust herself hosted Parisian high society just like their rich neighbors. She too had a salon although it is never mentioned as such in Temps perdu. We do hear conversations from that salon with a top diplomat, M.de Norpois. So, in deepest analysis, I propose that Mme Verdurin is based on Mme Proust. That means that at the end of the novel, when Mme Verdurin becomes the Princesse de Guermantes, Marcel’s mother magically becomes the Princesse de Guermantes. That transformation is not unlike the ending of many romans familials or family romances.

What Proust really thought about his own mother might be found in Mme Verdurin. The mother in Temps perdu seems to me the idealized mother from the romanesque idyll. I’m guessing Mme Proust kept Robert’s hair long past the age when most moms cut it. The photo on this blog shows that long hair piled up. This makes me guess Mme Proust herself really might have done that out of vanity. A charming detail, I think. Marcel suggests however that Odette was the vane one about her age and that Gilberte was the one with long hair past the age of the first haircut. Well, that was a boys issue, not a girls issue. Back then, girls virtually did not cut their ever. This examination of the sex scene with Gilberte on the Champs-Elysées raises the unpleasant question, is Proust confessing in this scene that he ravished his own little brother? Now that’s really shocking. It is easy to understand that previous critics, hell bound on publication, have avoided this touchy subject. I think Proust himself went right there. I’ve long been a bit Proust-like in my willingness to dig out the dirt.

Mme Proust and Mme de Guermantes ca 1891 when Marcel was 20.

Marcel Proust 20, Robert Proust 18

At 20 Robert Proust looks just like the young Bloch described finally wearing a frac at the tea chez Mme Villeparisis (they pronounced it /viparici/.

Two French novel genres: roman familial and roman d’amour

The roman familial is a genre American readers rarely think about these days. The French define it as fantasme dans lequel le sujet imagine être né de parents de rang social élevé, tandis qu'il dédaigne les siens, pensant être un enfant adopté par eux. (Fantasy in which the protagonist imagine he was born of unknown parents of a noble social rank while he holds his apparent parents in disdain thinking they adopted him.) The very fact that Marcel pretends not to be Jewish makes Temps perdu a roman familial. No one but Proust denies his mother and grand-mother, from whom came his fortune and upbringing, were Jewish. I’ll not go into the difference between being part Jewish and being “a Jew.” That may be important to Tadié, it is not to me.

The roman d’amour according to the French is an idylle romanesque, an idyllic romance novel. Love stories are essential to this genre. Even the French Larousse Dictionary takes time to describe the roman d’amour as the most popular and least critically prized of novel genres.

Both of these novels feature major subjects who trudge the earth dying of heartache but bestow on all they meet great virtues and undying love. They are ready to make any sacrifice to win the love of their paramour or of their child. Marcel is like this. His grandmother is like this toward her sick husband and toward her nervous and feminine grandson; and as a foil, Vinteuil, the mother’s family piano teacher in bye gone days is like this towards his tomboy daughter. Fond of tables turned, Proust creates a grandmother who thinks fresh air and exercise will fix Marcel and a musician who thinks tender coddling will fix his tomboy daughter. But that’s an aside.

As a young licencié es lettres, Proust would have been very familiar with these genres. Marcel, who acquires the same license even says precisely that he has chosen Albertine for his roman. Obviously, a whole complicated romance is much more than just sexual contact.

Proust published Un Amour de Swann in 1913 at his own expense. Biographers say he wanted it to sell cheap so it would sell big. Nothing sells better than romances. I think Proust also wanted inordinately to be read by young kids. Likewise, I am sure Proust himself bought lots of hot cheap books on the streets of Paris—illustrated versions of the Marquis de Sade, for example. Much of Proust’s sex fantasies are right out of Sade.

Proust re English, his bro Robert, Bloch and spoken accents

Robert Proust at 18 fits the description of Bloch

as described at the tea chez Mme de Villeparisis. Hmmm.

Was Bloch modeled after Robert Proust.

Spoken English is Another theme in Proust that shows its head during the adolescent period when Marcel says he day dreamed about Gilberte with black eyes, or blue eyes, while in the one o’clock (philosophy?)class.

It bothered Marcel when Mme Swann and Gilberte spoke English to each other, in front of him. Marcel pretends he did not speak English. Marcel did not speak English? What’s that all about? Didn’t Proust translate John Ruskin’s Bible of Amiens from English into French…and get it published?

Perhaps this little incident is rooted in the relationship between Marcel, his mother and his grandmother who spoke German in front of him at times undoubtedly. Or it could also be that Proust himself and his mom at times spoke English in front of little brother Robert. That’s a small issue of perfect manners.

More important than that is the issue of foreign accents and assimilation. I grew up in Texas back in the 1940s and went to grade school and middle school with lots of Mexican-American kids. That experience taught me that the kids of immigrant families work diligently to acquire the new language without spoken accent. That’s part of successful assimilation.

Well, Proust was famous for his assimilationist spirit, for his desire to hide the fact that he had German Jewish ancestors. He never once mentions his grandmother’s accent. He paints her traveling around with a book by Mme de Sévigné which is about the incestuous relationship of a mother and daughter. I wonder whether Proust’s real grandmother could even read that book! Proust creates a Jewish salon, or salon look-alike, but doesn’t make it the Weil salon, he makes it the Bloch salon. He makes their manners crass where as Proust adored refinement. Proust gives Marcel a Jewish brother-like friend, but makes him two years older not two years younger. Said differently, Proust seems to have transformed his brother Robert into Bloch. I assume all Proust himself knew about Jews came from the Weil side of the family.

Elsewhere in Temps perdu, Proust drops dozens of references to people’s provincial accents in French. I think he does this to prove how perfectly Parisian, how purely French is his own French. That’s a typical obsession of the assimilationist children of immigrants. Little wonder he based his novel around a château near Orléans where the French claim the purest French is spoken. That’s not accidental. Linguists note, by the way, that linguistic purity is attributed generally to the most central region in areas where the language is spoken. Hence, in America, it is in the middle west where the purist American English is spoken. Big deal? To Proust it was.

My conclusion from all this is that the real Proust knew English well but refused to speak it because of his aversion to French spoken with an accent. That made him cringe. Just like Robert’s Jewish looking beard at age 18 likely made Proust cringe. Proust himself obsessed over this stuff. Temps perdu makes that perfectly clear.

How Marcel’s infatuation with Bloch is revealed through Françoise, p. 614 Fr, p. 588 En.

Although Marcel never tells us up front that he was enamored with Block, Proust reveals it by having Françoise go nuts over the contrast between the Block she saw and the idolized Block Marcel had described to her. This is her reaction when Marcel tells her a certain guy who had been looking for him is in fact Block”

“For no sooner had I mentioned to her that the young man whom she had seen was M. Bloch that she recoiled several paces, so great were her stupor and disappointment. ‘What! Is that M. Bloch?’ she cried, thunderstruck, as if so portentous a personage ought to have been endowed with an appearance which ‘made you know’ as soon as you saw him that you were in the presence of one of the great ones of the earth; and, like some one who had discovered that an historical character is not ‘up to’ the level of his reputation, she repeated in an impressed tone, in which I could detect latent, for future growth, the seeds of a universal skepticism: “What! Is that M. Bloch? Well, really, you would never think it, to look at him.” She seemed also to bear me a grudge, as if I had always ‘overdone’ the praise of Bloch to her. At the same time she was kind enough to add: “Well, he may be M. Bloch, and all that. I’m sure Master can say he’s every bit as good.” (p. 614 Fr., p. 588 En.)

I think this passage is meant by Proust to tell Marcel had previously been in love with Bloch. Naturally, it takes a detective to read Proust well. He did not always call a spade a spade or a love a love.

(Elsewhere in Guermantes II, a young lady tells Marcel that Bloch is good looking. He claims never to have thought about it. Chuckle. When I refind the page, I'll note it here.)

Finally, about curls. Elsewhere, Marcel complains that people tugged on his long curls. Well, in the photos used here, Robert has the curls, not Marcel. Proust knew these photos well. Did Marcel steal his brother’s complaint. Probably. This kind of swapping abounds in Proust. He did not want people to ever guess his sources of inspiration with full certainty. He was an impressionist writer, deliberately so. (p. ____)

Other facts about Charlus suggest he is Marcel grown-up

Charlus is called le Baron de Charlus when first introduced to Marcel by Mme de Villeparisis (pronounced /viparisi/ in the family, Marcel tells us). The title baron goes to the first born boy in family. Basin, the duc de Guermantes, is his younger brother. He keeps the Chateau and has a family. Charlus does not. Marcel Proust was the first born in his family. Robert was the second born. Some say Robert never makes it into Temps perdu, I say Robert became Bloch but that Proust reversed the age roles. Proust loves elaborate crisscrosses or transpositions: exchange genders, exchange ages, exchange characteristics.. Like Charlus, Proust does not. Charlus has a very black mustache. Proust himself dies with one. In Temps perdu, art certainly loves to imitate life. Or does Proust manipulate his own life to match his fiction? I lean toward believing the later. By the way, the Guermantes would undoubtedly have pronounced Charlus with a very tight /y/ sound, riming with our English Charlie. More fun and games.

I mention this because Marcel himself tells us the Guermantes pronounced Villeparisis /viparisi/. Those sounds suggest “Vi par ici!” (Look this way!). What might Proust be hinting at?

Chronology problems with the Doncières stories

The Doncières stories present some real problems with chronology. Marcel says his happy stay there lasted three weeks. Well, it seems to start about 1883 and to end after 1889.

Marcel tells us he went there from Balbec instead of going home to Paris. Well he was eleven or twelve at Balbec and sickly. Marcel says he finally went home to Paris the day after he got a phone call from his grandmother giving him permission to stay. (Page 847)Grand-MèreWeil was the purse string holder for Proust.)

Well, smart people know kids lie a lot, Marcel the Menace no exception Smart people would also tell themselves here that Marcel was lying about the phone message. Marcel probably went home because his grandmother and bursar told him to get his butt home. That grandmother would not have waited three weeks before contacting him. Besides, they probably did not have long-distance phone calls yet in 1883 or so.

Even more bizarre, Marcel did not return to Paris until after implementation of the rules for Service en Campagne de 1895. In addition, Marcel also seems to have earned his license es lettres by then. Proust did that in 1895. (p. 854)

Another anachronism some might like to think about is this. The fictional artist Biche, identifies the much discussed petite musical phrase that Swann loved so much as Claire de lune which is by Claude Debussy (page 231) Biche should have known, he was there and he heard it, right? Wrong . Swann was frequenting the Verdurin clan and courting Odette about 1870, just before Marcel was born in 1871 Debussy didn’t compose Claire de lune until 1890.

Well, don’t get bent out of shape. Proust give us the following warning about chronologies and anachronisms right at the beginning of NOMS DE PAYS:LE PAYS –

Souvent (notre vie étant si peu chronologique, interférant tant d’anachronismes dans las suite des jours) je vivais dans ceux, plus anciens que la veille ou l’avant-veille, où j’aimais Gilberte.” (p. 511).

The fact is, this novel is so long and Proust took so long to complete it, anachronisms had to happen. But be careful, sometimes Proust messes with the chronology for reasons of his own. It is particularly difficult to be sure of the chronology in the stories at Doncières. Sometimes Marcel seems to be at Doncières as a fragile pubescent boy. At others, he seems to already have his license es lettres which Proust himself did not earn until he was 25. More on that in the Doncières section following. Sometimes Proust must have been eager to protect some of his friends and to avoid problems with the French military. It would have had to defend itself against my interpretation of this novel.

Proust supper-imposes gai Flanders on gai Doncières

Throughout Proust’s story about life at Doncières, he melds images and names that come from Flanders where he spent some vacation months at Bruges. Marcel stays in the Hotel de Flanders. He compares things he sees in shop windows and at big hotel restaurants in Doncières to paintings by Breugel. The reader may not know that by the gay 1890s, the north coast of Europe was already famous for gaies vacations. One could have said “What happens in Pays Bas stays in Pays Bas.” Without being an historian, I believe that those countries were more thorough in their anti-clerical decisions about laws after the French Revolution. By contrast, conservative types in Paris, and among the Guermantes, were still presuming allegiance to the Catholic church and its mores. Not so in Low Countries.

Let me reiterate two things Proust has just told us about the gaiety of Doncières which I quoted just earlier:

First, while waiting for Saint-Loup, Marcel fantasizes this about this little military cité:

… là, (à Doncières) protégé par cette atmosphère de tranquilité, de vigilance et de gaieté qu’entretenaient mille volontés réglées et sans inquiétude, mille esprits insouciants, dans cette grande communauté qu’est une caserne (Page 805)

I think Proust knew what he was doing when he described a new place where people like him could love and relax. He means to tell us the whole atmosphere there was gay. And that was something new and special.

Second, when Marcel awakens the morning after his night with Saint-Loup, he looks from Saint-Loup’s third floor window, high for those days, sur tout le pays. Chez Proust, such a global image is probably not mean to be taken lightly. One might call his novel In search of another country! Or simply Another Country. Of course that title is now taken and has a gay theme.

One final note on this little topic, Proust was talking a few pages earlier about some “Terre presque édenique.” Now that’s what we find at Doncières-Flanders. Proust’s tangents usually turn out to have some relevance to the plot. (p. 805)

So what’s so gay about Doncières?

First, Proust puts Marcel in the Hôtel de Flander. As though that was not enough, Proust put screens in Marcel's room there to make cabinet de toilette area. Those screens are papered in blood red ( rouge violente) with dramatic black and white flowers. As a stage setting, Marcel's room at the Hôtel Flandre rivals the theater box setting of the Princesse de Guermantes. Proust seems to be determined to set all this action off behind very gay screens.

A second very gay story is about Saint-Loup leaving the caserne in a new pair of pants with his uniform made out of fine pink (rose) officers cloth. One old soldier called those pants his new falzar. ) That’s a loose fitting and bouffant garment we might think of as harem pants. Now why would Saint-Loup have a falzar made out of rose to wear with his military uniform? As a show of support for Dreyfus who was Jewish because anything Oriental (Jewish, Turkish, Arabe) looked the same to Parisians back then. But why pink or rose? Do you need to ask? (p. 854)

As I read Temps perdu, Proust created at Doncières a Belle Époque variation of a gay scene. Plenty of stories abound among older gays to tell you that certain military cités were veritable gay scenes, like prisons, military schools, boarding schools and the like. It depended on who was in charge. Well Doncières was run by Capitaine Borodino and was all about good military looks. Some scholars same Borodino was modeled after Hubert Lyautey who was married but well known for his taste in men. In Temps perdu, he certainly enables Saint-Loup’s liaisons, both with Rachel and with Marcel. The Guermantes worry about Borodino supporting Saint Loup’s relationship with Rachel, an actress. Note also that Marcel great uncle Adolphe retired as the commander of a military place like Doncières.

The très gaies scenes at Doncières-Flanders, p. 818-9

My favorite scene in Temps perdu happen at Doncières when Marcel seems to be a little more mature. Proust did his military service in a near Orleans in 1889 at age 18. He got his French license in law in 1893 and license es lettres in 1895. This diner scene seems to happen after 1895. Proust did not travel to Belgium and Holland until 1902. Flanders was part of Belgium back then. Not very far from Balbec (Cabourg or Pourville)

Marcel takes a promenade on the way to diner with Saint-Loup. He pretends to be thinking about Mme de Guermantes but nearly forgets about her. Since Marcel’s love making with Saint-Loup was so pleasant and so recent, I think we’re supposed to laugh at that. This scene presents Marcel as quite the voyeur. Proust masterfully paints Flanders over everything at Doncières and creates an unknown new world:

La vie que menaient les habitant de ce monde inconnu me semblait devoir être merveilleuse, et souvent les vitres éclairées de quelque demeure me retenait longtemps immobile dans la nuit en mettant sous mes yeux les scènes véridiques et mystérieuses d’existences où je ne pénétrais pas. Ici le génie du feu me montrait en un tableau empourpré la taverne d’un marchand de marrons où deux sous-officiers, leurs ceinturons posés sur des chaises, jouaient aux cartes sans se douter qu’un magicien les faisait surgir de la nuit, comme dans une apparition de théâtre, et les évoquait tels qu’ils étaient effectivement à cette minute, aux yeux d’un passant arrêté qu’ils ne pouvaient voir. Dans une petite magazin à bric-à-brac, une bougie à demi consummée, en projetant sa lueur rouge sur une gravure, la transformait en sanguine, pendant que, luttant contre l’ombre, la clarté de la grosse lampe basanait un morceau de cuir, niellait un poignard de paillettes étincellantes, sur des tableaux qui n’étaient que des mauvaises copies déposait une dorure prècieuse comme la patine du passé ou le vernis d’un maître , et faisit enfin de ce taudis où il n’y avait que du toc et des croûtes, un inestimable Rembrandt…

Je reprenais mon cheminet souvent dans la ruelle noire qui passe devant la cathédrale , comme jadis dans le chemin de Méseglise, la force de mon désir m’arrêtait; il me semblait qu’une femme allait surgir pour le satisfaire; si dans l’obscurité je sentais tout d’un coup passer une robe, la violence même du plaisir que j’éprouvais m’empèchait de croire que ce frôlement fût fortuit et j’essayais d’enfermer dans mes bras une passante éffrayée. Cette ruelle gothique avait pour moi quelque chose de réel, que si j’avais pu y lever et y posséder une femme, il m’eut été impossible de ne pas croire que c’était l’antique volupté qui allait nous unir, cette femme eût-elle été une simple mystère d’hiver, le dépaysement, l’obscurité du Moyen Age….

Le vent grandissait. Il était tout hérissé et grenu d’une approche de neige; …et elle faisait penser, dans cette cité que le brusque saut de l’automne dans ce commencement d’hiver semblait avoir entrainée plus avant dans le nord, à la face rubiconde que Breughel donne à ses paysans joyex, ripailleurs et gelés.

Et précisément à l’hôtel où j’avais rendez-vous avec Saint-Loup et ses amis et où les fêtes qui commençaient attiraient beaucoup de gens du voisinage et d’étrangers, c’était, pendant que je traversais directement la cour qui s’ouvrait sur de rougeoyantes cuisines où tournaiet des poulet embrochés, où grillaient des porcs, où des homards encore vivants étaient jetés dans ce que l’hôtelier appelait le “feu éternel”, une affluence (digne de quelque “Dénombrement devant Bethléem” comme en peignaient les vieux maîtres flamands…. (pp. 819-821)

First, let me call your attention to the fact that this country where Marcel finds himself was known for drawing crowds of people. That’s more like Flanders than Orleans.

Second, the reader doesn’t have to do a lot of sex reassignment to remove women from this scene. Remember, this was a military enclave. There were not any or not many women roaming the dark narrow streets at night. And if there had been, they would have charged Marcel. This is a pretty wild gay street cruising scene disguised. Whether you call it gay or not.

During this next scene, I remind the reader that even though Proust does not mention it, the restaurant where this would have been serving all male soldiers all the time. The description of this scene reminds me of first finding a really classy gay bar restaurant. There is a detailed description of all the hubbub in the main room of the restaurant and we are told dining room has hired extras for the Christmas holidays to make things even more festive. By the way, that’s one of common old and still used euphemisms for gay and gai:

Ajoutons qu’en raison sans doute des fetes prochaines, à cette figuration (of Bethlehem depicted on previous pages) fut ajouté un supplément céleste recruté tout entier dans un personnel de chérubins et de séraphins. Un jeune ange muscien, aux cheveux blonds encadrant une figure de quatorze ans, ne jouait à vraie dire d’aucun instrument, mais rêvassait devant un gong ou une pile d’assièttes, cependant que des anges moins enfantins s’empressaient à travers les espaces démesurés de la salle, en y agitant l’air du frémissement incessant des serviettes qui descendaient le long de leur corps en formes d’ailes de primitif, aux pointes aigues. Fuyant ces régions mal définies, voilées d’un rideau de palmes, d’où les célestes serviteurs avaient l’air, de loin, de venir de l’empyrée, je me frayai un chemin jusqu’à la petite salle où était la table de Saint’Loup. (p. 822)

Chez Proust, sans doute is always a flag for double entendres. Notice how cleverly Proust gives young Marcel a great excuse to sing the praises of his truest love objects, very young men. Notice also how Marcel homes in on the youngest, dreamiest blond cherub. Proust may have made that cherub fourteen years old for censorship reasons or some editor might have done that. Marcel hardly cared about fourteen.

AND the moral of Temps perdu IS?

Naturally, coveting both a Prix Goncourt and a seat on the French Academy, Proust he wants to do this without raising the eyebrows of either grand monde or the Parisian aristocrats nor of the whole world. It is no accident the word gai starts coming up over and over in this section. Not precisely with the connotation same-sex, more with the sense of a new country or pays, a new space with laws more friendly to people like Marcel, Saint-Loup and Charlus. This change of plot, this advancement of the plot, is so strong that it has made me choose deliberately to refer to this novel as Temps perdu whenever I need a short form of that long title. To me, the moral of the story is: It is a waste of time to pretend not to be gay and to invent fantasy love affairs. Change the rules.

CLUES TO AGES AND DATES INSIDE Temps perdu

Proust accidentally or accidentally on purpose dropped a few clues in his text to the dates of events.

· Marcel talks of ripolin on the walls at the Grand Hotel in Balbec. Ripolin was then a new varnish with a high gloss finish invented 1888. The Grand Hotel Balbec was distinguished by the use of this new paint which contrasted greatly for Marcel to the flat, mellow paint finishes of Combray.

· Marcel tells us he went to Balbec while still suffering from asthma two years after his thing with Gilberte. He was nine when they were doing things on the Champs-Elysées. That makes him eleven when he gets to Balbec.

· Marcel tells us he was daydreaming about Gilberte coming to the Champs-Elysées while in his one o’clock class au collège. Collège was for kids eleven, twelve and thirteen. Lycée is for kids fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. Technically, all seven years could be called lycées. But in speech, people often differentiated the first cycle from the later cycle. Not all French kids went to school after they were ten, just the ones who scored well on tests. Middle schools for girls was a new thing. All thirteen or younger.

· Albertine was the youngest of the Balbec girls so she was probably eleven or younger. She referred to the d’Ambrésac girls as just kids (gosses) so one thinks they were grammar school girls. Saint-Loup however was rumored engaged to one of them. Today’s Americans and gay’ 90s French thought differently on age and marriage.

· The pensionnaires Marcel followed in the streets in Paris could have been in grammar school or middle school girls. All thirteen or younger.

· Marcel tells us his discussions with the soldiers was the Service en Campagne de 1895 went into effect (Page 854). Proust would have been 24 in 1895. That’s also the year he got his license es lettres. Proust did his own military service in 1889 at age 18.

PART IV: MORE BACKGROUND

· Bourgeois flight away from Paris during Proust’s lifetime and the growing awareness of the existence of gays as some kind of a social group

To understand gay facts in Proust’s times, the reader also needs to know what bourgeois flight was doing to Paris and the salons during his times. Many of the salons were becoming mostly males of artistic bend. Some attracted a high concentration of writers and artists and people of dubious morals. Those salons were simply gayer or more fun than others. People were noticing the moral diversity put not necessarily thinking of it all as being part of homosexuality. The mores were just lax.

In 1870 just before Proust was born, there were 1,000,000 people in the City of Paris, overwhelming living with families. By 1931, shortly after Proust’s death, there were 5,000,000 people living in Paris. Half of them lived inside Paris, the other half in the banlieues.

One other eye-popping statistic about Paris back then is that by 1931, half of the households actually inside Paris described themselves as single person households. Said differently, 4 out of 5 Parisians lived in the suburbs. Central Paris was very single by 1931. Proust himself even pokes fun at the duc de Guermantes at one point for living the life style of a young man. Most of the young people in Paris at the time were very aware that mores were changing.

Within the novel, Proust himself gives us some interesting population statistics from the census. The Balbec population in about 1882 was 102,000 and the population of Paris was 2,500,000. It does not surprise anyone that Proust would use demographics in this humorous novel about changes in mores.

By the way, the inner Paris population began declining after W.W.I and in 1999 it was only 2,100,000, down almost half a million. In more recent years, Paris has grown a little.

It seems that Marcel only went to salons known for attracting mostly men. He said that about the Verdurin salon, the Villeparisis salon, and Mme Swann’s salon. Odette once told Swann that “only artists understand women.” It seems to me self-evident that the single people who knew they were attracted to the same sex would have been quite aware that they were no longer as alone in company as they used to be. It may have taken some time before they had a word for it, but I have seen the expression “être comme cela” already in the first half of Proust’s Temps perdu which was published before his death. This expression was popular to identify gays among ourselves when I lived in France in 1966-1968. I suggest seriously that people in Proust’s circles must have been noticing that their numbers seemed to be growing. Some of them probably even thought their numbers might be growing alarmingly, with rich gays disliking poor ones. ( See another section for comment on Saint-Loup bashing the poorly dressed gay man.)

Invertis Marcel uses the word invertis, then newly circulating, for gays himself. “L’inverti dépiste les invertis. (The invert tracks other inverts. Page 588.) That’s simply a variation on the idea it takes one to know one. Naturally, gays have been doing that forever. The only difference is when places start attracting lots of single people, there are more gays to notice. Big cities like London, Paris, New York and beach places were suddenly attracting singles, hence gays like never before. Marcel describes a group of young actors coming out of the theater stage door people as “la troupe gaie” and goes on to describe an effeminate young dancer with amazing hand work imitating himself. Rachel proposes a three-way with the dancer, another woman and herself. I find it difficult for anyone to deny that Proust is deliberately associating the word “gai” with homosexuality here. Rachel is feuding with Saint-Loup and wants to make him jealous so she flirts with the nelly dancer asking about his talented little hands:
"Est ce qu’elles font aussi comme ça avec les femmes, ces petites mains-là?” jeta-elle au danseur du fond du théatre, avec une voix facticement mélodieuse et innocente d’ingénue. “Tu as l’air d’une femme toi-même, je crois qu’on pourrait très bien s’entendre avec toi et une de mes amies.” (p. 879)
Rachel here seems to be very open about both lesbianism and polymorphous perversion, perhaps not drawing a clear line between styles. Naturally, Rachel could always claim she was just trying to annoy Saint-Loup. Bully for her. Notice comme ça above. (p. 879, 882, 883)

The Oscar Wilde sodomy scandal and “posing”

Proust was of course very aware of the Oscar Wilde trials (1895). Proust in fact once invited Wilde to dinner at his home. Wilde arrived. Proust got there a little late. Wilde saw Prousts parents waiting in the parlor, went to the restroom, talked to Proust briefly on coming out of the toilet and they left without staying for dinner. Conseuently, I believe he deliberately put stuff in his novel to argue against the condemnation of Wilde. The love affair between Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas began in 1891. Douglas was already 21 and married. Wilde was 37. That’s 16 years difference. The legal crime Wilde was convicted of was sodomy not child sexual abuse. His conviction was probably more because he “posed” as a sodomite publicly than because he and Lord Douglas had sex together. “Posing” was a Gay `90s phenomenon that many dandies and lesbians and Dreyfusards used to make their political beliefs publicly obvious. It had an air of social rebellion to it

Oscar Wilde and Lord Douglas were writing things they published as Uranian literature. Julie Delarue-Mardrus published dozens of lesbian novels during years when she and Proust were invited to some of the same salons. Mardrus called herself Saturnian.There were salons for women only which she frequented.

In short, those concerned with homosexuality were searching for a word for it and trying out various concepts and terms. The idea that gays were from some different planet or space was widespread. Proust and Marcel’s belief they were not of the same caste as their parents, the theme of the familial novel, should not surprise anyone. And while we are on that topic, note that Marcel chooses for his romantic love a demeure young girl whose parents did in fact, no I mean in fiction, adopt her. That’s clearly roman familial stuff. At one time she’s Albertine Bontemps, at others she’s Albertine Simonet.

In addition, I think the novel headings with “Noms de Pays”might be a mannerist treatment of the roman familial ideas: These inverts are not from this country. Without that symbolism, I have a hard time understanding the meaning of those titles. The Roi Théodose from an unnamed country who enters the battlefield armed with nothing better than the special word affinité also seems to fit into the roman familial theme. Norpois raves about the cleverness of its term. Now I ask you, what is a gay community more than an affinity group?

Public sex, the hetero variety, was taken for granted

Perhaps not every Frenchman knew before 1913 when Proust first published Temps Perdu knew that the restrooms on the Champs-Elysees were used for homosexual encounters, they did know that the Champs-Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne were widely used for by French people for sexual encounters. That seemed natural to them. Paris guide books today (2014) mention that the Bois de Boulogne is notorious for sex …and for drugs, just in case that might interest some travelers.

French terms for gays current and past

I propose that by the time Proust had Le Cote de Guermantes ready for publication in 1920, lots of French and English people who frequented gay gatherings had already begun discretely putting the meaning meaning homosexual on the words gay or gai and gaieté , the word tante and on the expression "être comme ça." Even though I knew most readers would not have even suspected that association for the term here, I felt like I had found a little bonbon just for gay readers when I came on this phrase. I came out in the early 1960s in the U.S. and we definitely had our code euphemisms for gay back then.

être comme ça When I was in France in 1967, 1968 and 1969, the gay crowd in Paris and Tours often asked whether someone was "comme ça" or comme cela. I sensed most of the guys were not comfortable giving the condition a name.

PDs and pederasts Some of the guys would call us PDs and less frequently pédérasts. We often talked about those terms pedophilia to Americans. It was clear many of the guys saw something that happened when you were young then went away. That was clearly not our idea in the States.

homosexuals Some said homosexuals for us. I don’t remember hearing gai for us in France at all when I was there in the 1960s. However when I was last there about 1992, I often heard French gays calling themselves gay occasionally.

tante Once in about 1967 I was trying on a big sweater in a department store in Tours accompanied by a middle-aged gay friend and I remarked to the sales lady, also middle-aged, “Ça fait une tente!” I could tell by how these two Tourangeaux looked at each other and smiled that tante was slang for old queens. The number of Proust’s characters who are Aunts is astonishing.

amitié particulière The term for gay relationships used by Catholic authorities during since at least 1850 was amitié particulière. There was a movie by that title in French between the two wars and Catholics used it around the world. We saw it in the 1940s. Marcel repeatedly refers to his amitié with Saint-Loup as being of a very special nature. He never uses the whole phrase, but readers in the know were probably expected to supply that word by Proust and laugh.

affinité There is a weird conversation the evening Norpois has supper at with Marcel’s family about the Roi Théodose and his magic word affinité . Norpois thought maybe this fictional king was going to avoid W.W.I with it. The conversation seemed to me irrelevant until I realized it was a word that covers Jews as well as gays.

mener une vie de… This phrase is often heard in talking about people’s lifestyle. French guys would often say “X leads the or this life.”

genre The word genre in Proust is used to talk about male and female genders of people as well as for the gender of nouns, male and female. Hence, wasting years pining for someone who is not even your genre can mean both not the type you prefer and not the gender you prefer. Proust adores, a----dores such ambiguities. It lets him say the damnedest things right out loud with some people missing one of the points completely.

clique Saint-Loup refers to a guy who propositioned him near the Theater as a clique. Perhaps that was a going word for gays that never caught on. See discussion of this word elsewere on the blog.

Proust’s own use of terms for gay things:

Throughout this blog, I will be calling attention to the frequent appearance of the words above and of the words gai gaie and gaieté in the text. They abound in the Doncières stories. Here are a few places where these words and phrases lend themselves to double meaning:

Marcel describes a group of young actors coming out of the theater stage door people as “la troupe gaie” and goes on to describe an effeminate young dancer with amazing hand work imitating himself. Rachel proposes a three-way with the dancer, another woman and herself. I find it difficult for anyone to deny that Proust is deliberately associating the word “gai” with homosexuality here. Rachel is feuding with Saint-Loup and wants to make him jealous so she flirts with the nelly dancer asking about his talented little hands:

“Est’ce qu’elles font aussi comme ça avec les femmes, ces petites mains-là?” jeta-elle au danseur du fond du théatre, avec une voix facticement mélodieuse et innocente d’ingénue. “Tu as l’air d’une femme toi-même, je crois qu’on pourrait très bien s’entendre avec toi et une de mes amies.” (p. 879, 882, 883)

Notice comme ça above. Rachel here seems to be very open about both lesbianism and polymorphous perversion, perhaps not drawing a clear line between styles.

Clique may be Saint-Loup’s term for gay activist. The guy who approached him near the theater may have wanted him to sign a petition supporting Oscar Wilde. I am still searching for documentation on that. Within Temps perdu, two people are described by Proust as poorly dressed: The aging actress who protested la Berma in Phedre, and this guy outside the theater. That makes me guess back then, closet gays called organizing gays a “clique”. That would suggest the poor guy was probably not working alone when he approached Saint-Loup.
Proust has Saint-Loup tell Marcel once while at Doncières "Puisque vous êtes comme cela." (Pages 800-820) In this particular context, Saint-Loup seems to be referring to Marcel's frequent posture as a sickly little child. However, Saint-Loup , also seems to believe Marcel manipulates his illness, I believe double meaning is probably intended here.
See the description of the gaieté of the whole Doncières scene elsewhere on the blog.
Saint-Loup finds Marcel’s room at the Hotel de Flanders quite gay. And the description matches.
Marcel and Proust linger lovingly over the final syllables in names like Guermantes, Marsantes and Brabantes. If it rimes with aunt, prounced in the Bristish way, Proust loves it. I now wonder whether even Tante Leonie, isn’t an old lion of a tante. Proust loves to switch genders on us.
Basin, the duc de Guermantes, is called a big old cock rooster who continues to live the life of a young man. That does not sound very much like saying he is gay to regular people. A bunch of gay guys who heard that might think something quite different. Marcel has warned us that people hear and see things differently. Here’s the quote: “…et cet énorme gaillard vieillissant, mais qui menait toujours une vie de jeune hommes…(p. 917) Seems likely to me Proust had “gay” in mind when he chose the noun “gaillard.
Here is a related passage where the word gai is not used by Proust but where same sex marriage is taken pretty seriously, perhaps: recogizedrelated to people having the gay concept even if they were not using that word. Proust had Biche brag about making a marriage between women at the Verdurin’s salon during the days Swann was going there, that is, before 1870. Now, this is a fictional marriage. My point is, the concept of same-sex marriage goes way back. The acceptance that there were lesbians goes way back. Here’s the quote about Biche

Personally, I believe gay men began to associate the term “gay nineties” as soon as it came into the vogue around 1895. At first, the term included almost all the people going out to cafes, theaters and bars and drinking a little too much, partying too long, and loosening up their sexual mores. It did not take long for single men and women in that scene started noticing that their numbers were proportionately high. Once they did that, they surely and naturally started thinking of this, raising an eyebrow and looking around to see who else was smiling, and saying to themselves “We are indeed quite gay, thank you!”

Even before the gay nineties, the word gai in French already meant both slightly drunk and involved in prostitution with all the trappings of that. About that time also, homosexuals had to start noticing that the gay world had more homosexuals in it than prostitutes. Scholars need to recognize that when they write word histories, the first use of the word in any given sense actually found by them in print probably post-dates the early uses of that term verbally by a decade or two."

That Proust puts a same-sex marriage so early in his novel has to mean something. Whispering is a great way to get people’s attention, don’t you think?

Pierre Loti and his Roman d’un enfant

Pierre Loti is the author of Roman d'un enfant and other novels. Literary critics say he had a strong influence on Proust. Duhh! Proust dropped the name of Pierre Loti into the list of guests at Mme de Villeparisis' salon gatherings but most critics think Bergotte in the novel is keyed to Anatole France. Did Proust want people to think he was completely and utterly original?

French “ESPRIT”

Esprit is a very important word in the French culture. The French are very proud of their “esprit gaulois.” That can mean they don’t give a shit about the four letter words. It means they love blood and guts. It means they are not squeamish about sex. Americans find that amusing in people so refined and cultured. Esprit can also mean wit or humor or playful spirit. The habit of teasing chez Marcel’s family would be called their spirit. I make this note because each salon and family has it’s esprit. Proust gives each character a particular esprit. For example, Odette and Rachel are get the gaulois spirit. Gilberte loves plays on words, like Per viam rectam on he rprinted stationer or Defense d’utilizer l’ascenseur pour descendre. Crassness is the esprit Bloch. Tightness is the esprit of the Jews, like Marcel’s grand-mother or Bloch’s rich uncle, Bernard Nissim. Marcel probably thinks he has the esprit Oscar Wilde.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

· Charlus, le Prince de Laumes, and other agrarian synonyms for sexy flesh

Proust’s favorite word for pleasurable looking flesh is plantureux. Starting with Swann, sex objects of most natural attraction, like young working girls, are said to have preferred women with “plantureux” skin. That word usually refers to rich, loamy soil that will offer high yield, soil so beautiful you just want to run your hands through it. It suggests freshness, healthiness, well-toned muscles. In gay speak we’d probably call bodies with that kind of attractiveness “hot” or voluptuous. We might also use a lot of meat rack images.

Marcel uses images related plantureux repeatedly for the young hotel valet with the radiant orange hair. He’s the youngest of some brothers and looks so sad and alone Marcel can hardly stand it. Young, lonely and plantureux, that’s Marcel’s type, in boys or girls.

These metaphors occur throughout Temps perdu. The ultimate extension of this metaphor is in the title Proust gives to Charlus as “le Prince de Laumes.” I didn’t find the word laumes in my Larousse 1952, but I did find Laumes-Alésia as a place on the Côte d’Or near Dijon in eastern France, near Switzerland. There are Roman ruins there. It’s Stendahl country. They raise cassis and they make burgundy over there. I’m guessing Proust used Prince de Laumes because Laumes is pronounced like “loam” in English. It suggests Prince of Soil. Nice rich dirt. Now that’s Charlus.

Using the same analogy, Mme Verdurin is Mme Verdure, Mrs.Greenery.

· Table turning. Proust loves stories about events turning the tables on people.

· Hair cuts. The issue of haircuts is a boy issue, not a girl issue. In Proust’s youth, boys got their first haircuts when they started school at about six. The fact that Gilberte had long hair the day of the sexual encounter is not relevant to her age and does not reflect on her mothers age. Back then, females seemed to have almost never cut there hair. All the period photographs and paintings show piles and piles of hair. Even that progressive lesbian identified writer Lucie Mardrus had piles of hair. In writing this passage, Proust seems to have forgotten that he had a little boy in mind who still had long hair. The bottom line is Gilberte’s long hair is intended to suggest youth, pre-adolescence.

· Tutoyer. Marcel does not ask Gilberte to tutoyer him. He never gets to that point while he is chasing her. He asks Saint-Loup to tutoyer him right after they sleep together for the first time. Part of the motivation there is that Marcel wants Saint-Loup’s friends to think he comes from Saint-Loup’s aristocratic family, I’d guess.

· Bodies. Proust does not ever have Marcel describe Gilberte’s dresses or body. During the years he was supposedly in love with her, obsessed with her, Marcel talks more about her mother’s gowns and dressing gowns than about Gilberte’s dresses or outfits. Marcel only tells us that she has reddish blond hair, long, that she has black or maybe azure eyes, and a rosy complexion. This certainly resembles an attempt to keep Gilberte from having just one unmistakable gender.

· Blame. I noticed that Marcel and Charlus both are quoted blaming the youngsters they approach for sex for the incident. Charlus' passage blaming Marcel for his own pass is particularly difficult to decode. Marcel's blaming of Albertine is very clear and seems convincing. Today's feminists would crucify both Marcel and Charlus.

Marcel Proust died in 1922. This sketch is by Paul Helleu and was found in Sansom's work Proust and his world.

PART V. APPENDICES

A. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Art Institute of Chicago, Painters of Light: French Impressionism from Monet to Renoir, the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1986 Engagement Calendar, Pomegranate, Corte Madera, CA, ( I took photos of Claude Renoir’s portrait of his son Jean Renoir at age 6 with long, reddish blond hair.), 1986.

Augé, Claude et Paul, Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustré,. Librairie Larousse, Paris VI, 1952.

Dictionnaire Larousse on line, October, 2014

Bernard, Anne-Marie, Editor, The World of Proust as seen by Paul Nadar. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London, England, (A translation from the French published as Le Monde de Proust par Paul Nadar. I used personal snapshots of about six photos from here.) 1999.

Bloom , Harold, Editor, Bloom's Major Novelists: Marcel Proust, Chelsea House Publishing, Broomall, PA, 2003.

Carter, William C., Marcel Proust: A Life, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. and London, 2000.

Hayman, Ronald, Proust: A Biography, First U.S. Edition, HarperCollins, New York 1990.

Marshall, Nancy Rose and Warner, Malcolm, James Tissot: Victorian Life, Modern Love, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn., 1995. (I took photos of three photos of art works: Hide and Seek portrait 1880-1882; L’Ambitieuse, ca 1890; sketch of a Soldier ca 1871 on the Champs-Elyées near one of pay toilets that appear in Temps perdu.) 1995.

Painter, George D., Marcel Proust: A Biography, Second Edition, Random House, New York, 1959.

Peyre, Henri, Marcel Proust, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1970.

Proust, Marcel, À la recherche du temps perdu, en un volume. Quattro Gallimard, Pléiade, Paris, 1999.

Samson, William, Proust and His World, Charles Scribner & Sons, New York, (I used snapshots of several photos from here.) 1973.

Scott-Moncrief, C. K., Translator, Remembrance of Things Past, Volume I, Random House, New York, (A translation of Proust’s A la Recherche du temps perdu.), 1924.

Shattuck, Roger, Proust’s Binoculars, Random House, NY, 1963.

Tadié, Jean-Yves, Marcel Proust: A Life, Translated by Euam Cameron, Viking, New York, 2000.

Thody, Philip, Modern Novelists: Marcel Proust, McMillan, London, (I discovered painter James Tissot through this book’s jacket cover.) 1987.

B. Sources for word studies

Petit Larousse Dictionnaire Illustré, 1952

· Être un peu gai, avoir un peu trop bu, être un peu gris, ivre.

· Gaie science ou gai savoir, se disait autrefois de la poésie des troubadours (par opposition à la théologie, à la philosophie, etc.).

Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition 1939 Volume VI says the first written record of gay being used in English to mean specifically homosexual was in 1935, in a novel about women in prison;also gives examples of the term gay when referring to women prostitutes was found in print in 1857, 1868, and 1895. p. 409. (Volume VI p.409)

Garner's Modern American Usage Third Edition 2009 says:

"The homosexual sense of gay first appeared in the mid-20th century; before that the word did, however, bear the derogatory senses of "leading an immoral life" and "(of a woman) engaging in prostitution." (p. 387-8)

Larousse Dictionnaire On-Line

college n. m .Établissement d'enseignement du premier cycle du second degré. (La loi du 11 juillet 1975 fait des collèges [collèges d'enseignement secondaire (C.E.S.)] la structure unique d'accueil de tous les élèves issus de l'école primaire élémentaire. Ceux-ci y accomplissent quatre années d'études, de la classe de sixième à la classe de troisième, avant de s'orienter vers le lycée général ou le lycée professionnel.)En Belgique, établissement scolaire du niveau secondaire, dans l'enseignement libre; Nom donné à certains établissements d'enseignement privé : Collège de jésuites.

(I think the system was about the same age wise during Marcel's middle-school years. TC)

Special vocabulary:

à tête de fleurs Marcel describes Mme Guermantes twice during the scene in the theater box as having eyes “à tête de fleusr. Both the Scott-Moncrief translation and a later translation I saw someplace failed to translate that to my satisfaction. I think the eyes on the fantasy fu dog show eyes quite precisely: great big round eyes like the tops certain flowers. Proust's classmates described his eyes as huge and oriental. He himself then gave such eyes to many characters.

Kay Nielsen’s illustration in the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, 1924. Viking, New York, 1924. Copied in 1981 from the original copy owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two text problems: When talking about the masturation room passage discussed in Sex Scene #3 in this blog above, the Tadie biography quotes more text in which Marcel actually describes ejaculation. Even though I used the Pleiade Edition of Temps perdu for this blog which claims to be text established by Tadie, that sentence in not in my edition. I'm wondering whether the person in charge of establishing that text cut out some lines. I note also that I would not translate the name of the flowers Marcel associates with sex in his comments the same as the person who translated Tadie's biography into English the same. They talk of oris root and lilac where I would say iris and cassis (without translation) or wild currant not lilac.

THE END FOR NOW

10/12/2014

About Jewish noses in art:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/nov/14/invention-jewish-nose/?insrc=hpbl

MARCEL THE MENACE: Marcel Proust's childhood sex fantasy novel

Sunday, October 12, 2014

REVISED 10-26-14 DETAILS OF EJACULATION ADDED. FRANCOISE ON BLOCH ADDED.

Details of masturbation scene p. 131 Fr, p. 121 En.

1900 era sex studies

The obvious heterosexual love stories

How Marcel’s infatuation with Bloch is revealed through Françoise, p. 614 Fr, p. 588 En.

About Jewish noses in art:

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