The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (12 page)

BOOK: The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust
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Girolamo, by telling his friend “a few home truths,” is thankful to him for serving
as his stooge, enabling Girolamo “to rake him over the coals for his own good” and
thereby play an honorable, almost glamorous, and now quasi-sincere role. He seasons
the vehemence of his diatribes with a quite indulgent pity that is natural toward
an inferior who accentuates Girolamo’s glory; Girolamo feels genuine gratitude toward
him and, in the end, the cordiality which high society has attributed to him for such
a long time that he finally holds on to it.

While expanding the sphere of her own personality, Fortunata’s embonpoint, growing
without blighting her mind or altering her beauty, slightly diminishes her interest
in others, and she feels a softening of her acrimony, which was all that prevented
her from worthily carrying out the venerable and charming functions that the world
had delegated to her. The spirit of the words “benevolence,” “goodness,” and “rotundity,”
endlessly uttered in front of her and behind her back, has gradually saturated her
speech, which is now habitually laudatory and on which her vast shape confers something
like a more pleasing authority. She has the vague and deep sensation of exercising
an immense and peaceable magistrature. At times, she seems to overflow her own individuality,
as if she were the stormy yet docile plenary council of benevolent judges, an assembly
over which she presides and whose approval stirs her in the distance. . . .

During conversations at soirées, each person, untroubled by the contradictory behavior
of these figures and heedless of their gradual adaptation to the imposed types, neatly
files every figure away with his actions in the quite suitable and carefully defined
pigeonhole of his ideal character; and at these moments each person feels with deeply
emotional satisfaction that the level of conversation is incontestably rising. Granted,
we soon interrupt this labor and avoid dwelling on it, so that people unaccustomed
to abstract thinking will not doze off (we are men of the world, after all). Then,
after stigmatizing one person’s snobbery, another’s malevolence, and a third man’s
libertinism or abusiveness, the guests disperse, convinced that they have
paid their generous tribute to modesty, charity, and benevolence; and so, with no
remorse, with a clear conscience that has just shown its mettle, each person goes
off to indulge in his elegant and multiple vices.

If these reflections, inspired by Bergamo’s high society, were applied to any other,
they would lose their validity. When Arlecchino left the Bergamo stage for the French
stage, the bumpkin became a wit. That is why a few societies regard Liduvina as outstanding
and Girolamo as clever. We must also add that at times a man may appear for whom society
has no ready-made character, or at least no available character, because it is being
used by someone else. At first society gives him characters that do not suit him.
If he is truly original, and no character is the right size, then society, unable
to try to understand him and lacking a character with a proper fit, will simply ostracize
him; unless he can gracefully play juvenile leads, who are always in short supply.

S
OCIAL
A
MBITIONS AND
M
USICAL
T
ASTES OF
B
OUVARD AND
P
ÉCUCHET
*
Social Ambitions

“Now that we have positions,” said Bouvard, “why shouldn’t we live a life of high
society?”

Pécuchet could not have agreed with him more; but they would have to shine, and to
do so they would have to study the subjects dealt with in society.

Contemporary literature is of prime importance.

They subscribed to the various journals that disseminate it; they read them aloud
and attempted to write reviews, whereby, mindful of their goal, they aimed chiefly
at an ease and lightness of style.

Bouvard objected that the style of reviews, even if playful, is not suitable in high
society. And they began conversing about their readings in the manner of men of the
world.

Bouvard would lean against the mantelpiece and, handling them cautiously to avoid
soiling them, he would toy with a pair of light-colored gloves that were brought out
specifically for the occasion, and he would address Pécuchet as “Madame” or “General”
to complete the illusion.

Often, however, they would get no further; or else, if one of them would gush on about
an author, the other would try in vain to stop him. Beyond that, they pooh-poohed
everything. Leconte de Lisle was too impassive, Verlaine too sensitive. They dreamed
about a happy medium but never found one.

“Why does Loti keep striking the same note?”

“His novels are all written in the same key.”

“His lyre has only one string,” Bouvard concluded.

“But André Laurie is no more satisfying; he takes us somewhere else every year, confusing
literature with geography. Only his style is worth something. As for Henri de Regné,
he’s either a fraud or a lunatic; there’s no other alternative.”

“Get around that, my good man,” said Bouvard, “and you’ll help contemporary literature
out of an awful bottleneck.”

“Why rein them in?” said Pécuchet, an indulgent king. “Those colts may be blooded.
Loosen their reins, let them have their way; our sole worry is that once they spurt
off, they may gallop beyond the finish line. But immoderateness per se is proof of
a rich nature.

“Meanwhile the barriers will be smashed,” Pécuchet cried out; hot and bothered, he
filled the empty room with his negative retorts: “Anyway, you can claim all you like
that these uneven lines are poetry—I refuse to see them as anything but prose, and
meaningless prose at that!”

Mallarmé is equally untalented, but he is a brilliant talker. What a pity that such
a gifted man should lose his mind the instant he picks up his pen. A bizarre illness
that struck them as inexplicable. Maeterlinck frightens us, but only with material
devices that are unworthy of the theater; art inflames us like a crime—it’s horrible!
Besides, his syntax is dreadful.

They then applied a witty critique to his syntax, parodying his dialogue style in
the form of a conjugation:

I said that the woman had come in.

You said that the woman had come in.

He said that the woman had come in.

Why did someone say that the woman had come in?

Pécuchet wanted to submit this piece to the
Revue des Deux Mondes;
but it would be wiser, in Bouvard’s opinion, to save it until it could be recited
in a fashionable salon. They would instantly be classified according to their talent.
They could easily send the piece to a journal later on. And when the earliest private
admirers of this flash of wit read it in print, they would be retrospectively flattered
to have been the first to enjoy it.

Lemaitre, for all his cleverness, struck them as scatterbrained, irreverent, sometimes
pedantic and sometimes bourgeois; he retracted too often. Above all, his style was
slipshod; but he should be forgiven since he had to write extempore under the pressure
of regular and so frequent deadlines. As for Anatole France, he wrote well but thought
poorly, unlike Bourget, who was profound but whose style was hopeless. Bouvard and
Pécuchet greatly deplored the dearth of a complete talent.

“Yet it can’t be very difficult,” Bouvard thought, “to express one’s ideas clearly.
Clarity is not enough, though; you need grace (allied with strength), vivacity, nobility,
and logic.” Bouvard then added irony. According to Pécuchet irony was not indispensable;
it was often tiring and it baffled the reader without benefiting him. In short, all
writers were bad. The fault, according to Bouvard, lay with the excessive pursuit
of originality; according to Pécuchet, with the decline of mores.

“Let us have the courage to hide our conclusions from the fashionable world: otherwise
we would be viewed as nitpickers, we would frighten everyone, and they would all dislike
us. Let us be reassuring rather than unnerving. Our originality would do us enough
harm as it is. We should even conceal it. In society we can also not talk about literature.”

But other things are important there.

“How do we greet people? With a deep bow or simply a nod, slowly or quickly, just
as we are or bringing our heels together, walking over or standing still, pulling
in the small of the back or transforming it into a pivot? Should the hands drop alongside
the body, should they hold your hat, should they be gloved? Should the face remain
earnest or should you smile for
the length of the greeting? And how do you immediately recover your gravity once the
greeting is done?”

Introductions were also difficult.

With whose name should you start? Should you gesture toward the person you are naming
or should you merely nod at him or should you remain motionless with an air of indifference?
Should you greet an old man and a young man in the same way, a locksmith and a prince,
an actor and an academician? The affirmative answer satisfied Pécuchet’s egalitarian
ideas, but shocked Bouvard’s common sense.

And what about correct titles?

You said “monsieur” to a baron, a viscount, or a count; however, “Good day, monsieur
le marquis” sounded groveling and “Good day, marquis” too free and easy—given their
age. They would resign themselves to saying “prince” and “monsieur le duc,” even though
they found the latter usage revolting. When it came to the highnesses, they floundered.
Bouvard, gratified by the thought of his future connections, imagined a thousand sentences
in which this appellation would appear in all its forms; he accompanied it with a
faint and blushing smile, inclining his head slightly and hopping about. But Pécuchet
declared that he would lose the thread, get more and more confused, or else laugh
in the prince’s face. In short, to avoid embarrassment, they would steer clear of
the Faubourg Saint-Germain, that bastion of aristocracy. However, the Faubourg seeps
in everywhere and looks like a compact and isolated whole purely from a distance! . . .

Besides, titles are respected even more in the world of high finance, and as for the
foreign adventurers, their titles are legion. But according to Pécuchet, one should
be intransigent with pseudo-noblemen and make sure not to address them with a “de”
even on envelopes or when speaking to their domestics. Bouvard, more skeptical, saw
this as a more recent mania that was nevertheless as respectable as that of the ancient
lords. Furthermore, according to Bouvard and Pécuchet, the nobility had stopped existing
when it had lost its privileges. Its members were clerical, backward, read nothing,
did nothing, and were as
pleasure-seeking as the bourgeoisie; Bouvard and Pécuchet found it absurd to respect
them. Frequenting them was possible only because it did not exclude contempt.

Bouvard declared that in order to know where they would socialize, toward which suburbs
they would venture once a year, where their habits and their vices could be found,
they would first have to draw up an exact plan of Parisian society. The plan, said
Bouvard, would include Faubourg Saint-Germain, financiers, foreign adventurers, Protestant
society, the world of art and theater, the official world, and the learned world.
The Faubourg Saint-Germain, in Pécuchet’s opinion, concealed the libertinage of the
Old Regime under the guise of rigidity. Every nobleman had mistresses, plus a sister
who was a nun, and he conspired with the clergy. They were brave, debt-ridden; they
ruined and scourged usurers and they were inevitably the champions of honor. They
reigned by dint of elegance, invented preposterous fashions, were exemplary sons,
gracious to commoners and harsh toward bankers. Always clutching a sword or with a
woman in pillion, they dreamed of restoring the monarchy, were terribly idle, but
not haughty with decent people, sent traitors packing, insulted cowards, and with
a certain air of chivalry they merited our unshakable affection.

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