Sunday Morning! “Sodom and Gomorrah” by Marcel Proust (pt. 2)

There will be blood.

{I’ve been blogging Proust’s epic . Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4. 5, 6 , 7 and 8}

I remember once joking that the synopsis for a typical volume of Proust is: our narrator attends a dinner party, goes to the opera, watches a sunset, and then, in a surprising twist, attends a second dinner party, which concludes these 700 pages. 

When I read these books in my late 20s, I loved nothing more than whiling away the hours in discussions of art and music and philosophy- I pretty much lived in a dream world anyway- and so, I think I enjoyed the books so much because that was all these people did; it seemed like a fantasy! In my married 30s, I was somewhat more ambitious about studying art and music and philosophy, so I wanted our hero to get on with his work. And that is a subtheme of the book; as a minor character relates to him in this volume:

When you reach my age you will see that society is a paltry thing, and you will wonder why you attached so much importance to these trifles.

And yet, he does. Everyone around him seems to know he will be a talented writer, but he has to get on with it. 

There will be blood.

Now that I’m in my 40s, I’ve started really asking myself: What is Proust getting at here? By the time we’ve covered four volumes, there’s a risk it will become a slog getting through these lengthy accounts of dinner parties, which can stretch for hundreds of languorous pages. It helps that Proust is so funny; he’s as shrewd a satirist of high society as Oscar Wilde, and his characters are just as absurd, while never knowing they’re absurd. On the surface level, it’s still enjoyable reading, and with a few exceptions, none of these characters are really terrible; it’s just one begins to wonder what’s the point?

So, I think it helps, in this volume, to start thinking of these high society functions as battle scenes in a war epic.

None of these people would be so vulgar as to declare war, mind you; and, in fact, they simply adore each other, nominally. But, they are jockeying for position and every social ritual is a stratagem; they haven’t guns, so they fire quips. The ways they show respect undercut any real implication of respect. They throw more shade than a circus tent. They while away their idle hours in ways that are of deeply understood, but unspoken, importance to how their lives will unfold. And, by the way, to the sort of world in which we live today.

The château de Réveillon- to be clear, this was the rental property Proust had in mind!

As this war’s major chronicler, Proust records in this volume the skirmish between the Verdurin and de Cambremer: Madame Verdurin is having a soiree at her rented chateau, La Raspelière, and she has invited M and Mme de Cambremer, and even more surprising, they have accepted!– because she hopes to have her rent reduced and they intend to raise her rent. This is what many old nobles do now, serve as landlords for their old chateaus. And so, these respected members of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, that vestigial remainder of the French Ancien Régime, have stooped to visit the circle that has supplanted them. This was, after all, Mme de Cambremer’s chateau; she doesn’t care for the new decorations. For her part, Mme Verdurin is not impressed by her erstwhile social betters. Both sides are insulting each other all evening, usually so subtly it goes unnoticed.

And much of it is very funny; there’s a wonderful bit in which M de Cambremer and the Baron de Charlus- a haughty, melodramatic fop who I simply cannot read without imagining Steven Morrissey– are arguing over the seating arrangements at dinner- except they’re doing so by each one magnanimously offering the other his seat, as a show of noblesse oblige, while each pointing out that he, technically, does rank higher… Oh, but after you, my inferior! Proust’s narrative lens moves to other things happening in the room, but pages later, it seems Charlus is still detailing his family line for anyone who will listen! These are people for whom lineage and breeding and history matter; for whom the functioning of life depends critically on knowing how to bow properly. They are people, in other words, for whom culture is power.

And yet, very quietly in the background, the values have changed. There’s a throwaway line in the novel that captures everything; Cottard, the boorish doctor whose fortunes have risen, is explaining in crude terms why he’d rather spend his evenings with the Verdurin than the old aristocracy:

They’ve got the goods alright. It is generally estimated that Mme Verdurin is worth thirty-five million. Well, thirty-five million, that’s quite a figure. Mme Verdurin is a great lady, the Duchesse de Guermantes is probably a pauper.

It’s a funny line; Cottard is a dotard. But… he’s not wrong exactly. It is more fun to be in the entourage of someone with money. The new money strivers don’t have the breeding or culture of the old aristocracy, but they have the goods. And wealth, not culture, is power. See, what Proust is detailing here is a historical shift that we could argue was no less important, and in many ways, just as destructive as the development of the atom bomb; we live, today, in the Verdurin’s world, and not that of the aristocracy of breeding or manners, or the spirit. The new money has the goods. And that means everything.

Now, coming as we do from the world of 21st century democratic, consumer capitalism, we’re almost obligated to find the titled elite ridiculous, and Proust definitely plays up their absurdities. But, he’s also detailing a vanished tribe and their mental world; epics are nearly always in the elegiac mode. He’s telling those of us who came later what these people were like that he grew up with, and what values they held. Their world won’t really survive the Great War. And those of us who also grew up in now-vanished social worlds can also hear the implied question Proust is asking us: What was lost here?

Even the sense that cultural values can be “lost” and “mourned” sounds reactionary to us. We have this term “cultural conservative” which describes a dog’s breakfast of different things, from promoting the study of Latin to opposing same sex marriage, that have little to do with one another. Believe me, Proust would have had a field day lampooning an oleaginous mountebank like Newt Gingrich! He’s not a conservative, and yet he wants us to remember that:

this disappearance of social distinctions in a reconstructed society is by no means a foregone conclusion, and we are at times too ready to believe that present circumstances are the only ones in which a state of things can survive. (emphasis mine)

François-René de Chateaubriand, the father of French conservatism and Romanticism. Heaven knows he’s miserable now.

So, I think his main character, our narrator, is better described as a “Romantic,” like his predecessor Chateaubriand. Fashions are not foregone conclusions and culture doesn’t “progress” in the same way as science, becoming ever more refined; it’s much sloppier and more uneven; some things improve, and other fashions grow more absurd. Instead of a straight line tilting upwards, think of a zig-zag. Is the world growing more just? We have to hope so. But is it objectively a sign of “progress” that Romantics like our narrator valorized things like refinement, gentility, and sensitivity towards higher culture; while we patiently accept rule by vulgar louts who “got the goods”?   

Well, now that I nearly reached the same age as Proust when he wrote these books, I feel unsure. If the prejudices of the old world have vanished, I only hope ours are wiser ones. Once you’ve seen it happen a few times, it seems easier to accept as natural that social worlds rise and fall and replace each other. Or, maybe Jung was right and nothing is lost in the collective unconscious. So, if the past is more like a feast from which we can pilfer a few items on our way out, it might not hurt us to borrow their bowing, love letters, and social calls.

So, what are YOU reading, pondering, playing, chronicling, or watching this weekend?