Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

What is Art?

Arriving at the Guermantes for dinner, the Narrator mentions to M. de Guermantes that he would cherish a chance to view their private collection of works by the painter Elstir. M. de Guermantes graciously lets him into the room, and then leaves him alone so as to rejoin the party.

Soon the Narrator loses himself in one painting in particular, which depicts a "waterside carnival." At first his eyes merely roam over the canvas, picking up details here and there:

"The river, the women's dresses, the sails of the boats, the innumerable reflexions of one thing and another jostled together enchantingly... What delighted one in the dress of a woman who had stopped dancing for a moment because she was hot and out of breath shimmered too, and in the same way, in the cloth of a motionless sail, in the water of the little harbour, in the wooden landing stage, in the leaves of the trees and in the sky" (GW, 576).

Suddenly, something happens. The Narrator enters into a work of art. The images seem to speak directly to him:

"...Everything is is equally precious; the commonplace dress and the sail that is beautiful in itself are two mirrors reflecting the same image; their virtue is all in the painter's eye" (GW, 576).

"This eye," the Narrator reflects later, "had succeeded in arresting for all time the motion of the hours at this luminous instant when the lady had felt hot and had stopped dancing, when the tree was encircled with a perimeter of shadow, when the sails seemed to be gliding over a golden glaze" (GW, 576). But this timeless luminosity is paired with another awareness too. He continues:

"But precisely because that instant pressed itself on one with such force, this unchanging canvas gave the most fleeting impression: one felt that the lady would presently go home, the boats drift away, the shadow change place, night begin to fall; that pleasure comes to an end, that life passes and that instants, illuminated by the convergence at one and the same time of so many lights, cannot be recaptured" (GW, 577).

So there is luminosity, and fragility too, and they are felt at the same time.

I was stunned by this section. The description of the Narrator responding to Elstir's painting fit so well with my personal experiences of entering into works of art, on those rare occasions when they break through my usual filters and habits.

I have always felt that art,  good art, that is, expands my heart -- for a brief time, under its spell, I have the impression (true or not, I do not know) that I am making fewer petty distinctions, that on the contrary I am making more profound ones, and I seem to experience other human beings more generously, with heightened sensitivity.

At the same time, though, at these moments I always feel more aware than ever of the passing of time and the unavoidable loss and despair underlying our every action.

This is the twofold nature of art to me, and Proust put it into words in a simpler, more straightforward way that I had never encountered before.

So this is how the discussion began. I shared these passages with the group, and my response to them.

My friend Oliver was, I believe, the first who spoke up. He wondered whether not only the more familiar modes of art -- painting, music, theater, etc. -- fit under this definition, but perhaps other sensory experiences do too. Prompted by this question, he shared with us a recent experience he had at a museum in New York dedicated to the history of scents. Walking in, he encountered, arrayed at various positions around the gallery, a series of small basins. When he bent his head down to the first of them, it blew a scent into his nostrils. It turns out that the exhibition started with the first perfume, "Jicky" (1889), and led all the way through some of the most iconic scents of the last 125 years, ending on what the program described as a "neo-brutalist" scent, "Untitled" (2010).

Could we also consider these scents art? Oliver asked.

Jumping back in, I questioned whether a scent or a taste, however directly they might invoke involuntary memories and trigger powerful emotional associations (as Proust's madeleine, dipped in tea, did for him), could be considered art, as a film or a painting or a musical composition is. I added all "design" to this same category of experience-producing objects, crafted by human hands, but nevertheless falling short of being art.

These creations can be exquisite, I agreed. They can be complex (certainly perfumes are complex). It may take extraordinary care to produce them. Still, I argued, if they do not conjure this twofold effect that Proust describes -- to make the world at once luminous and fragile -- then they do not fit under my definition of art. They are products.

This set the group off.

Florence, who works in the wine industry and appreciates in a very sophisticated way the sourcing and the scents and the tastes of wine, insisted that fine wines can, no doubt, be considered works of art. It astonished her that anyone could deny this.

But I persisted. "Florence, how can wine -- let's say a sack of wine so that we don't get taken in by the prestige of a bottle -- give you a sense of shared humanity, or the passing of time, and loss, and fragility?"

"But it does!" she said. "I drink it knowing the varieties of the grapes, the role of the earth, the sun, the aging, the care taken by the winemaker..."

"Well, then you could say any beverage is a work of art. Milk is a work of art then, too?"

Florence looked at me with deep concern for my sanity. "Milk is not produced by a process," said Miriam. She made the gesture of pulling an udder. "Tom, do you know where milk comes from?"

"It depends," I said. "There is a different taste produced by different grasses. The condition of the cows. Or goats! Or sheep! There are different temperatures at which it can be served. Is it low-fat, non-fat, pasteurized? Raw?" I turned back to Florence. If you don't grant that milk can be art as well as wine, then your argument for wine loses its credibility. Your preference is exposed as a cultural construct."

Florence just shook her head.

Miriam spoke up again, saying that art, to her, it is more than direct experience. So wine cannot qualify: art is the mediation of experience through an artist's sensibility. 

"Yes," I added. "And it is doing more than producing an experience. That's why furniture design or landscape design are not art. They are producing experiences of beauty or comfort, illusions of perfection, but they are... stopping there. They leave off the fragility part.

What about the gardens at Versailles? Or Villandry? asked Alex.

Well, I answered, perhaps those are exceptions, since they are serving a performative function, not unlike a Japanese zen garden. They are intended as art.

Miriam came to my aid. Any piece of landscape design, or piece of furniture, or even a bottle of wine, could be considered art, she argued, but first it would have to be de-contextualized by the artist. (Thus the gardens of Versailles are de-contextualized by their status as artistic works from their inception). Ken mentioned the dadaists use of "found art" to support this idea. In this way, Miriam continued, intention plays an important role in the distinguishing between art and product.

"Yet it is important to remember," I interjected, "that even though an artist's intention may be necessary for something to be art, it is not sufficient. There are many bad artists with the highest artistic intentions. But if there work has the effect, on me at least, of closing off my mind, creating the illusion of perfection or pleasure, then I would have to call it "kitsch art" not art. The singer Lionel Richie comes to mind: when he sings "Well I'm eaaaaasy, I'm easy like Sunday morning," I feel, I admit it, a surge of pleasure not unlike standing in a living room with an inviting interior design. But I don't feel the twofold effect that Proust describes: I don't feel the... luminescent fragility, to use a short-hand way of referencing those passages that started us off.

Florence insisted that when she drinks a bottle of good wine, or merely tastes it, she does feel transported, in much the way that Proust describes. She senses the humanity and intention that went into it; she appreciates the process of aging, the barrels used, the care that went into the whole production process. And she appreciates the elusive quality that is achieved by a great bottle: its uniqueness, never to be repeated. "How is this not the same?" she said, squinting at me fiercely.

"Well, based on the experience you have it certainly sounds like art," I said. "But really it is any ecstatic experience that you are describing. We can have it when walking in the rain. We can have it during the ritual of a summer evening's candlelit dinner-party with friends. We can have it, certainly, in all of our most intimate encounters. We appreciate all of the planning, the work, the choices, the combination of aesthetics -- from the muddy path taken... to the hand-me-down tablecloth under our plates... to the color of the lingerie worn. We sense our shared humanity. We experience intense pleasure. And it all combines to make us feel elevated, perfect, soaring -- all, I'm afraid, an illusion. In fact, as art tells us, we are all of that -- and ALSO dying, broken, losing coherence, failing at all times. Art, as I define it, combines both modes of awareness at once, both true but in opposition to each other.

Jaimey spoke up to say that he too could not see that wine or food or furniture design could meet his definition of art. He said that, to him, art, to be art, requires a mental process, a community to appreciate it, and a lineage or history. Wine, when drunk, does not require a mental process, or a shared community, and it lineage is limited to a few variables (the grape, the soil, etc.). There are relatively few ways to speak of it or interpret it. "Don't get me wrong," he said, "I love a good glass of wine as much as anyone, but I have to say that I don't like the colonization of art by food and drink in our culture. I think we lose something in that."

Renée spoke up to say that although she didn't really care to take a position on this (I know that such questions of definition hold very little interest for her -- she wants to live it, and not worry to much about the idea of it), she wanted to share a story. At a family reunion one time she had the opportunity to chop, flavor, boil, stir, and all the rest, while preparing a chicken soup. As she did so, her extended family, cousins, nephews, uncles, her great grandmother, all stood around her, talking and laughing. By the time she ladled the soup into each family member's bowl the experience had become tremendously moving to her. It had, she said, something close to the enchantment she feels when she experiences art. 

That's beautiful. I said. I am certainly not privileging the experience of art, as I define it, above the experiences of life, of love, of dining, of friendship, of ritual, of making chicken soup. I wanted to be clear to Florence at this point that I have the utmost respect for her and even for her love of wine. But, I continued, these rich emotional experiences, these moments of catharsis and change, these unforgettable times when the floodgates of perception open wide for us in our lives, come in many forms. Serving chicken soup or tasting wine can certainly qualify as these. But that does not make them the same as art. Why should we want to make them the same as art?

Why does it matter to me to argue the definition of art? Is this just an intellectual exercise? Or an elitism? No. I care about this because the stakes, to me, are actually very high. Bad art, kitsch art, the rejection of art in favor of pure sensuality or limbic brain excitement, the preference for video games or horror movies or roller-coasters over the experience of art -- this actually matters to me. Why? Because I believe that art, true art, has the potential of opening our hearts, increasing our capacity to love  one another. And if we lose our interest in it, in favor of wine or food or roller-coasters, we lose something precious.

"But James Joyce did not accept photographs as art!" Walden exclaimed. "He didn't accept them simply because he wasn't used to thinking of them that way. You see? It's all subjective, Tom. The definition is different for every person."

"I agree with you that it is subjective," I said, "I agree that we cannot say definitively if one painting, one genre, one work, is "art" or "good art" or not. You may respond to Elton John in exactly the twofold way that Proust lays out; I, on the other hand, may consider it catchy, hook-heavy, but kitsch. Neither of us is right or wrong. But we can still agree that there is something different between art that opens you to complexity and art that closes off complexity, can't we? There is a difference between art that engages you in way that equalizes between people and reduces our reliance on petty distinctions, and art that propagandizes or lulls or embitters, isn't there?"

Jaimey too insisted that we don't have to be entirely relativistic about art just because the distinctions are "subjective." There may be a standard that we can agree on but our assessment of where works fall against that standard is unavoidable going to be different. He mentioned Adorno's definition of art (Jaimey? Can you send this to me? I'll add it in.)

Miriam groaned: "Do you have to bring in Adorno?"

"What is the point of art if wine is art?" I asked, trying to locate the deeper question that we were asking. "Is it just to experience pleasure?" Alex and Florence said, yes. I said, "Pleasure is the least of my concerns when experiencing art!"

By this time we were standing in the kitchen and Oliver was saying under his breath, "heard that tape before" at each turn in the conversation. So we all laughed and hugged and agreed to keep talking. 

A great discussion. Can't wait to revisit it many times and never find the answer but all get clearer nevertheless.

Notes on the January 9, 2013 Meeting

These notes cover to p. 607 of Volume III, The Guermantes Way, Part Two, in the Modern Library edition (Moncrieff / Kilmartin / Enright).

We had another wide-ranging and spirited discussion last night. Jaimey and Miriam provided cheese and bread and crackers and paté and dates and sugar cookies and much more. Florence and others brought wine. At 8:30 pm we moved into the living room…

1. Jeff’s Presentation: the Narrator Needs to Take a Long, Hard Look at Himself

We started the evening with a useful provocation from Jeff: an indictment of the Narrator's character.

It proceeded in stages.

First, Jeff noted that our dear Narrator, "Marcel," has grown from a boy to a man. Yet he does not seem to be quite as big-hearted and noble-minded as we expected him to be.

When, for example, his old obsession from Balbec, the "smiling, silent, plump" Albertine (GW, 479), appears in the doorway of his bedroom in Paris, he is almost entirely dismissive of her.

Indeed, the Narrator lets it be known to the reader that, despite the poetic associations he still attaches to Albertine ("a rose flowering by the sea" (GW, 480) etc.), his interest in the flesh-and-blood girl is now purely utilitarian:

"Certainly I was not in the least in love with Albertine; child of the mists outside, she could simply satisfy the fanciful desire which the change in the weather had awakened in me..." (GW, 483-484).

What is this "fanciful desire" which the change in the weather had awakened in him? At the opening of this chapter, still recovering from his grandmother's death, he describes himself as "a man turned in on himself, longing for the chimney corner and the shared bed, a shivering Adam in quest of a sedentary Eve" (GW, 472). 

So basically he's saying: it's cold outside. A guy like him, sprawled nearly naked in bed, wants a girl -- any girl -- to raise his body temperature. Albertine will do.

He only says one thing that's positive, during the several hours they spend together. He likes Albertine's increasingly sophisticated and trendy use of language, indicating to him that she has grown up since they last met... ("To my mind..." he notes her saying, "I regard it as the best solution...")

"...at 'I regard'," the Narrator tells us, "I sat her down on the bed" (GW, 486).

And that's about it.  (As Jaimey pointed out later in the meeting, we are seeing here the emergence of the Narrator's self-identification as a writer: spoken words and wet ink on a page excite him far more than hot breath and sweaty bodies.)

But back to Jeff's indictment.

When the Narrator does get closer to Albertine's actual body he isn't any more generous. He comments on how her neck showed its "coarser grain" (GW, 498). But it's worse, even, than physical repulsion. In a selection of quotations from the month's reading, Jeff emphasized for us the downright coldness of the Narrator's appraisal of Albertine. One line in particular stands out:

"[F]or me she was no more a woman than jade grapes, an inedible decoration at one time in fashion on dinner tables, are really fruit" (GW, 494).

We might even say stone-coldness?

And when, finally, Albertine and the Narrator nevertheless do make physical contact, he describes it in terms that resemble nothing less than a nightmare:

"...during this brief journey of my lips towards her cheek, it was ten Albertines that I saw; this one girl being like a many-headed goddess, the head I had seen last, when I tried to approach it, gave way to another. At least so long as I had not touched that head, I could still see it, and a faint perfume came to me from it. But alas -- for in this matter of kissing our nostrils and eyes are as ill-placed as our lips are ill-made -- suddenly my eyes ceased to see, then my nose, crushed by the collision, no longer perceived any odour, and, without thereby gaining any clearer idea of the taste to the rose of my desire, I learned, from these obnoxious signs, that at last I was in the act of kissing Albertine's cheek" (GW, 499).

So that's how he confirms that he is kissing a girl: the sensation of the cartilage nib in the tip of his nose, getting bent to the side, combined with the cessation of all his other senses. Nice.

(Incidentally, this is the very passage that, years ago in my twenties, I happened to read when I flipped open a three-volume edition of Proust, wondering what lay between its dusty gray covers. So suggestive and provocative, to me, was this paradox of losing the customary acuity of our senses just at the moment when we hope to achieve the most intimate connection -- that I had to re-shelve the book and wait twenty years before I felt ready to pick it up again. It was just too intense. Back then I read it more as a description of a kind of swoon, or a suffocation induced by ecstasy... Strangely, I didn't catch the Narrator's ambivalence and disgust at all, not having read the pages that preceded it.)

Reading these passages, some of us may have felt sorry for the Narrator. I certainly did. A "shivering Adam," so unable to enjoy his "sedentary Eve"!  His ambitions, it must be said, were impressive: he tells us that he dreamed of

"attaching at some point to my recumbent body a divergent one, as the body of Eve barely holds by the feet to the side of Adam, to whose body hers is almost perpendicular..." (GW, 484). 

By the way, is this a description of woman on top? And yet all he got was a bent nose and some heavy petting. Poor guy.

Yet Jeff was not feeling sympathetic at all; he was too put off by the Narrator's egotism and callousness.

"You know," Jeff remarked, "I think it wouldn't be such a bad idea for this Marcel to take a long, hard look in the mirror. If he did, he would see that he's no great catch himself!”

We all chuckled.

Case closed. Marcel is pretty harsh to Albertine.

But Jeff continued:"What is really happening, I think, is that the Narrator is learning that... his preferences do not run this way. The way I look at this," Jeff added, "is that, once again, the Narrator's anticipation does not match its realization. We might say that he suffers from a deficit of realization -- which leads to his state of constant restlessness."

These comments didn't quite sit right with me. It seemed like a good time to start the group discussion. So I spoke up to ask if there aren't, broadly, two ways to interpret the Narrator's cold fish behavior with Albertine...

One way, which Jeff seemed to be implying, would be to chalk up this cold and callous behavior to the author's homosexuality, and therefore to his lacking the imaginative resources to describe the pleasures of touching a woman.

This interpretation, I suggested, though perhaps accurate, strikes me as reductive -- and depressing. It's also a kind of a dead-end, since it takes us out of the mode of literary analysis and into a discussion of mere biography. Anyway, I added, I am not convinced that Proust's character of the Narrator is revealing his  "preferences" here at all...

The more compelling way to look at this scene, I argued, is to remember that the Narrator's powers of anticipation -- to use Jeff's formulation -- are so potent that while, yes, their "realization" pales in comparison, this deficit does not necessarily lead to restlessness. Ok, the dull face of reality cannot compete with the rainbow-hued rapture inside the young Narrator's mind, but, seen another way, isn't this more comical than tragic? After all, he is always ready to move on to a new form of anticipation -- to replace the one that has been realized! It didn't seem so bleak to me as it did to Jeff.

And we were off.

Heather countered to say that, regardless of whether he is disappointed or pleased as punch -- in other words, regardless of the Narrator's subjective mental state -- he is, let's face it, acting like a “jerk.” The Narrator "objectifies" Albertine, Heather insisted, in the sense that he treats her like a plaything... to be dismissed when done.

Likewise, Heather continued, when he boasts of his earlier conquest of a serving-girl in Doncières (with whom, if we are to believe him, he engaged in a repeated, pay-for-services relationship in a local restaurant), he uses the privileges of his wealth and class to get what he wants from her. In this case, a chance to satisfy his urge to... well, to do what he wants with his anatomy... and not much else. This is a jerk, any way you slice it (disturbing metaphor in this context, sorry).

I felt compelled to come to the defense of the Narrator here. Maybe because I attended college in the “P.C.” early 1990s, I had the urge to reprise the role of the reluctant white male apologist, so familiar to all of us of that generation, learning to navigate the (admittedly, very rare) overcorrections of the new, more egalitarian culture. “Wait a second," I said, "There are lots of jerks. I agree with that. I know jerks. But Marcel is hardly acting like a jerk here. He’s a 22-year-old boy! I mean, let's look at the facts. He admits it: he's no longer in the throes of a romantic crush the way he was that summer in Balbec. He's got no illusions anymore. But remember, Albertine doesn't either. (The Narrator observes: "There could be no doubt that she had long since become quite indifferent to me" (GW, 488).) They are fooling around, that's all! She visited his bedroom. He chats with her, pulls her onto the bed. Why shouldn't he? They make out until he.. well, until he gets off. Is that so wrong? It's called testosterone!"

Heather said, dead-pan: "Yeah. Testosterone. Call it what ever you want. He's still a jerk."

"How is he a jerk?" I asked. "Because he doesn't want to linger in the bed, whispering sweet nothings? He's -- what's the current way of putting it? -- just not that into her. Sure, with oxytocin in her brain, she feels like bonding (“What nice hair you have; what nice eyes -- you're sweet” (GW, 502)), but like most 22-year-old boys, I'm sorry to say it, he has moved on. He urges her to go. He walks her to the door and gives her a peck on the cheek. But it's not like he never calls. He even invites her to check out the menu of a restaurant a few days later..."

At this point my argument hit a road-bump, as it crossed everybody's mind at the same time that he had brought Albertine with him to check out the menu of that restaurant on the island to which he was planning to bring a different girl, Mme de Stermaria.

That is, no question, a jerk move.

Renée took a different angle into this question of the Narrator's treatment of Albertine. She pointed out that some of the negativity that the Narrator directs at her may be the result of the older Narrator's subsequent experiences. We know that a more long-term relationship between Marcel and Albertine is to come -- he drops hints of jealousy and torments of all kinds. So perhaps that tinges his descriptions of this, their first kiss. Miriam followed up on Renée's point, describing it as a kind of "telescoping" effect.

I said, yes, you can attribute the negativity to all sorts of things. You can attribute it to Proust's homosexuality and lack of imagination, as Jeff did. Or you can attribute it to the Narrator being a jerk, as Heather did. Or you can attribute it to this supposed shading being done by by the regretful, older Narrator. Or you can attribute it, I'm sure, to many other sources... But I think we should keep in mind that we are not witnessing here an outrageously out-of-the-ordinary negativity. Setenay backed me up here, saying that she would think that we all have had experiences of this sort in our lives, where we have acted selfishly and have thoughts we would not choose to reveal. It is truthful.

In fact, I continued, can't we say, upon reflection, that it is, in many respects, a better-than-average encounter between a twentysomething boy and a girl his age? They talk for hours. They flirt lamely ("You could go on tickling me for a whole hour and I wouldn't feel it," he says (GW, 489). It is fully consensual. He walks her to the door (and he must be cold -- our poor shivering Adam!). Setenay reminded us of the additional factor that, at this age, neither of them has a whole lot of experience telling them to do much else than what they did.

Jaimey cut in here to observe that Proust seems to be intentionally making the Narrator's actions comical and worthy of criticism. For example, nurturing his fantasies about a restaurant date with Mlle de Stermaria (a divorcée that his friend Saint-Loup has set him up with, a woman whom he has never met in his life), and favoring her over Albertine, is ridiculous. But at the same time, Jaimey added that he does not suppose that Proust intended this scene as an indictment of the Narrator's character. If anything, Jaimey felt, it is an indictment of youth. And desire.

2. On Friendship 

Next we turned to the moment when the Narrator's fantasy life about Mlle de Stermaria crumbles -- and his friend Saint-Loup fortuitously pops his head in.

Proust writes it this way:

"My dreams of a young feudal maiden on a misty island had opened up a path to a still non-existent love. Now my disappointment, my rage, my desperate desire to recapture her who had just refused me, were able, by bringing my sensibility into play, to make definite the possible love which until then my imagination alone had - though more feebly -- offered me" (GW, 538).

He is distraught, and all alone.

"I caught sight of a huge bundle of carpets, still rolled up, and propped my head against one end of the sideboard; and burying my head in it, swallowing its dust together with my own tears... I began to sob" (GW, 539).

But, as in a stage play, Saint-Loup arrives at just that moment. And Saint-Loup's arrival triggers a meditation on the manifold failings, and the limited consolations, of friendship.

"I have already said... what I think about friendship: to wit, that it is so trivial a thing that I find it hard to understand how men with some claim to genius -- Nietzsche, for instance -- can have been so ingenuous as to ascribe to it a certain intellectual merit... I had reached a point, at Balbec, of regarding the pleasure of playing with a troop of girls as less destructive of the spiritual life, to which at least it remains alien, than friendship, the whole effort of which is directed towards making us sacrifice the only part of ourselves that is real and incommunicable (otherwise than by means of art) to a superficial self which, unlike the other, finds no joy in its own being, but rather a vague, sentimental glow at feeling itself supported by external props, hospitalized in an extraneous individuality, where, happy in the protection that is afforded there, it expresses its well-being in warm approval and marvels at qualitities which it would denounce as failings and seek to correct in itself" (GW, 541).

So we see that friendship, in the Narrator's judgment, draws him away from his "real and incommunicable" self, and towards a "superficial self." It is, therefore, something to be experienced sparingly, if at all, in one's life. Yet the Narrator also acknowledges, in this moment of need, that it's a relief to hear those words, "May I come in?" For he acknowledges that

"... there is no brew so deadly that it cannot at certain moments become precious and invigorating by giving us just the stimulus that was necessary, the warmth that we cannot generate ourselves... Saint-Loup's arrival was like a sudden apparition of kindness, gaity, life, which were external to me, no doubt, but offered themselves to me, asked only to be made mine" (GW, 541).

I mentioned, after reading this passage aloud, that even though this meditation on friendship is extreme, calling it a "trivial thing" (whereas I, quite to contrary, consider it one of the most valuable things I have known in my life), I do relate to what he is saying.

Coincidentally, my friend Oliver was attending our Proust reading group that night (he was out here on a business trip from his home in NYC). I directed a smile to him across the room: "Oliver knows this about me. As does Renée. Whenever I am at a party, almost any time I am in a social situation, there is a part of me that feels compromised, as if I am removed from my true self. I have an urge to leave early. I find myself wondering why I wouldn't be better off at home, reading a book, staring at wall, musing on something quietly. I get that look on my face. Right?" Oliver and Renée nodded.

"But then, I am more introverted, naturally, than Oliver. In some ways Proust's book is like a manifesto for introverts like me." I asked the rest of the group if anyone else felt these passages, as harsh as they are, resonate a little. Walden mentioned that he relates to the ways in which Proust is watching everything at the salons and dinner parties he attends, but unsure of what the rules are. He remembers attending beer parties in college and seeing everyone talking but saying nothing, and wondering where the secret "decoder ring" is, which would enable him to understand what the hell is going on.

Heather had a different, interesting take on these passages on friendship. She sees Proust -- and his fictional creation, the Narrator -- as actively avoiding intimacy. In Heather's view, it is telling that he says playing with that "troop of girls at Balbec" was less destructive of his spiritual life than his friendship with Saint-Loup. In a crowd of girls, he did not have to make himself vulnerable. With Saint-Loup, he mistakes the feeling of being intimate, taking responsibility for yourself and your behavior, for sacrificing himself to a "superficial self." In fact, argued Heather, friendship is exactly when we do express our "real" self. If someone doesn't make the effort to commune with others, if he or she keeps himself sealed up and declares his or her self "incommunicable" (except through art), then how real is it?

Yet for artists, at least, there is a need to preserve a considerable amount of time to be spent alone each day, if only to enforce the needed discipline to get your work done. Here Renée mentioned a comment by the Narrator as he gets ready to climb up onto a waiting carriage with Saint-Loup:

"... suddenly, when we reached the street, the almost total darkness, in which the fog seemed to have extinguished the lamps... took me back to a dimly remembered arrival by night at Combray... Between that year -- to which in any case I could ascribe no precise date -- of my Combray life and the evenings at Rivebelle [at Doncieres]... what a world of differences! I felt upon perceiving them an enthusiasm which might have borne fruit had I remained alone and would thus have saved me the detour of many wasted years.." (GW, 544).

In other words, the Narrator believes that, in his raw state on that particular night, he might have actually started his novel, if he hadn't fallen back on the "vague, sentimental glow" afforded by his friendship with Saint-Loup. To think, if he had, we wouldn't get the wonderful next scene in the restaurant!

3. The Restaurant on the Island

At this point, from what I recall, we moved on to a discussion of this very scene in the restaurant (where the Narrator had a reservation, hoping for his misty interlude with Mlle de Stermaria, but ended up going with Saint-Loup instead).

After fumbling his way through the revolving door, the Narrator is treated rudely by the proprietor, and he is seated in the area of the room reserved for the bourgeoisie. When Saint-Loup arrives he corrects this situation. Separated at one point from his friend, Saint-Loup climbs on the back of a crimson bench, and breaking all sense of decorum, runs along it "like a tight-rope walker," to arrive safely at the Narrator's side. Applause breaks out across the room. This leads to an extended description by the Narrator of the graceful way that Saint-Loup conducts himself.

"A certainty of taste in the domain not of aesthetics but of behavior, which when he was faced by a novel combination of circumstances enabled a man of breeding to grasp at once -- like a musician who has been asked to play a piece he has never seen -- the attitude and the action required and to apply the appropriate mechanism and technique... could only flatter and enchant those to whom it was addressed; together with a noble liberality.... such were the quintessentially aristocratic qualities that shone through the husk of this body... as through a work of art, the industrious, energetic force which had created, and rendered the movements of that light-footed course which Robert had pursued along the wall as intelligible and charming as those of horsemen on a marble frieze" (GW, 466-467).

We discussed where this grace of Saint-Loup comes from. Setenay pointed us to the obvious: that the privilege and wealth that Saint-Loup has had available to him has insulated him from fear. He is therefore more free, in a sense, than others: to break the rules, to run along a wall, to do something spontaneous and audacious. He also has been afforded time to cultivate his appearance (that golden hair, those "curves of his nostrils... as delicate... as the wings of... little butterflies" the Narrator talks about) and to enrich his mind. "Most of us," said Setenay, "have to work."

I mentioned that the Narrator at one point speaks in a disturbingly nationalistic, even racist way about Saint-Loup's breeding. Jaimey found the quote:

"But in Saint-Loup... whenever (it must be allowed to the undying glory of France) these qualities are found in a man who is purely French... they flower... with a grace which the foreigner, however estimable he may be, does not present to us" (GW, 560).

He said he had struggled with what Proust was up to here. After all, as a Dreyfussard Proust would be keenly aware of the ugliness of these sentiments. So why does he put them into the mouth of his Narrator? One possibility would be that Proust is intentionally opening up distance between himself and his Narrator, which we have seen him do before: this is the imaginative space that fiction affords, and even demands. Another possibility, though, and the one that Jaimey said he settled on, is that this language is provoked by the fictional demands of this set-piece of the restaurant scene. It is an atmosphere, after all, thick with the aspirations of social class and tradition and standing. It is almost like a dreamscape, to which we gain access through those revolving doors.

As Jaimey talked I began to picture this dream-like, comical romp in the restaurant on the island as akin to a visit to one of the circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno. I could imagine an Andre Bély or a Marquez infusing it with even more absurdity and caricature. I think Jaimey's right: Proust is not intending the Narrator's words to be knowingly ironic, but the context itself is ironic, making the nationalistic sentiments appropriate to the scene, as if he is being swept away in the atmosphere. Again, we need to remember here that he is a very young man, still trying to fashion his identity while being buffeted by hormonal urges within, and cultural cross-currents without.

The group spent some time comparing the aristocratic insider status of Saint-Loup with that of Swann. We agreed that Swann (although he moves in the highest circles, lunches with the Prince, etc.) is of more of an outsider status than Saint-Loup. He is one of these curiosities that aristocrats like the Princess de Parme and Mme de Villaparisis and the others like to invite to their gatherings, as living conversation pieces. Bloch auditioned for this part, but failed. Back in his day, Swann, his Jewish identity more remote (and the Dreyfus affair more remote too), was acceptable. But, as Jaimey pointed out, Swann's ambiguous status made it easier for hostesses to shun Odette even after Swann has married her (whereas perhaps these same high-born ladies would have been forced to invite Zézette/Rachel to their parties if Saint-Loup had married her?)

Before leaving the restaurant scene we talked about the description of the group of Saint-Loup's four aristocratic friends, all of them deeply in debt and looking for rich marriages. The rumors of homosexual activity among this group, we noted, are brought up unaccompanied by the threat of violence -- a first in this novel! Known as the "four gigolos,"

"... they were always to be seen riding together, and in the country houses their hostesses gave them communicating bedrooms, with the result that, especially as they were all four extremely good-looking, rumours wre current as to the extent of their intimacy... But the curious thing is that if, later on, it was discovered that these rumours were true of all four, each of the quartet had been entirely in the dark as to the other three... A fifth (for in groups of four there are always more than four) had joined this platonic party who was more so than any of the others. But religious scruples restrained him until long after the group had broken up and he himself was a married man, the father of a family.... and in the meantime flinging himself upon soldiers" (GW, 555).

To our relief, Proust writes all of this without adding anything threatening or vicious, as he did in previous allusions to same-sex love.

4. A Heated Talk About the Definition of Art

As we got closer to 10 pm, and some members of the group had to slip away, we stumbled upon the most lively discussion of the night.

We had begun to talk about the dinner party that the Narrator attends at the Guermantes'. I mentioned, in this context, that Proust's description of the effect of one of Elstir's paintings on the Narrator had struck me as one of the clearest definitions of art I have ever read.

This discussion, since it extended past the time of our meeting, and since it addresses a question that will recur many times as we continue reading, deserves, I think, its own post. So I will add that as a stand-alone blog post, after I publish this one. 

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Please add points and topics I forgot. So good to see you all! Can't wait for next month.

Proust on Our Current Political Impasse

Two quotations from Proust that speak to our current political impasse...

On why Republicans cannot stomach anything supported by President Obama and will not find the votes even to raise the debt ceiling -- precisely because he is asking them to:

"...thus it is that egoists have always the last word; having posited at the start that their resolution is unshakable, the more susceptible the feeling to which one appeals in them to make them abandon their resolution, the more reprehensible they find, not themselves who resist that appeal, but those who put them under the necessity of resisting it, so that their own harshness may be carried to the utmost degree of cruelty without having any effect in their eyes but to aggravate the culpability of the person who is so indelicate as to be hurt, to be in the right, and to cause them thus treacherously the pain of acting against their natural instinct of pity" (GW, 380).

And on why we are all so dunder-headed, Fox viewers and MSNBC viewers alike:

"[The proprietor of the restaurant on the island] was, indeed, in the habit of always comparing what he heard or read with an already familiar canon, and felt his admiration quicken if he could detect no difference. This state of mind is by no means to be ignored, for, applied to political conversations, to the reading of newspapers, it forms public opinion and thereby makes possible the greatest events in history... Historians, if they have not been wrong to abandon the practice of attributing the actions of peoples to the will of kings, ought to substitute for the latter the psychology of the individual, the inferior individual at that" (GW, 556).

Yet the democratic process somehow gets it right in the end, doesn't it? We can hope.

 

 

Reading for Our Thirteenth Meeting, on February 6, 2013

For the next meeting we will read to the end of Volume 3, The Guermantes Way. See you then!