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Per Bjørnar Grande

Proustian Desire

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ABSTRACT

Undoing the Novel Genre in order to Understand Desire

According to Germaine Brée, the deepest characteristic of Proust’s psyche was to create.[1] The desire to be creative was no doubt essential to the young Proust. Yet, if being creative as such had been his highest aim, Proust would no doubt have tried to publish Jean Santeuil. There would seem to be a deeper, more profound drive behind the creation of In Search of Lost Time, a drive to depict the desires of man. The later Proust seems very far from a writer who typically savours images and characters. He appears to be uncomfortable with the genre of the novel as he constantly expands his narration into reflection, even into philosophy and psychology. His uneasiness about genre is,[2]  as I see it, the result of his trying to fulfil his obligation to describe the way desire works within the time-span of a lifetime. Space cannot fathom the way desire works; only time can reveal how desire changes, modifies and destroys people. Also, time is essential in order to show how desire may be extinguished, how it can lose its grip on human beings and liberate them towards time regained.  

Regulated Desires

Combray is a haven from the desirous world outside. In Combray a feudal mentality still survives where desire is regulated by impenetrable hierarchies. The reason for this feudal and hierarchical society (against a nineteenth century backdrop) is the externality of Combrayan desire. But Combray too is on the brink of modernity, approaching a state of domination by internal desires. Girard claims that a closer examination of Combray would reveal, in a nascent state, all the features of the worldly salons.[3] In this respect Combray represents a compressed version of European cultural development, the transition from external to internal desires. Thus, Combray is moving rapidly from a life dominated by external desire to one dominated more by internal desires, without people being conscious of the transition. Instead there is a frantic attempt to hold on to traditional values, despite the fact that they are, in many ways no longer of any use, even deceptive tools, with which to function in society. The smallest lapse in habits actually represents a threat to the feudal stability in Léonie's house. The asymmetrical Saturday when lunch is served an hour earlier than on other days, allowing Françoise to go to the market, can actually be seen as the first symptom of a crumbling order,[4] of an introduction to a more chaotic and individual life-style, based on internal desires.

At the beginning of the novel, Aunt Léonie’s house represents a bastion against the changing world. But gradually, with the aid of Marcel’s naïve perception, we see the decomposition of  yesterday’s world taking place. The hierarchy, exemplified by the relationship of unequality between Léonie and the maid Françoise, is a relationship built upon external desires such as money, care and so on. There is no threatening rivalry, no desire in Françoise to reach the same social level as Léonie. She is content with the prestige she gains by working for Léonie. This medieval mentality of extreme loyalty to society, to the superiority of one’s master or mistress, is gradually disturbed by the introduction of a more intense and individual desire. One example of a desire which, still weak in its manifestation, seems to question the externality of the desires regulating Combray society, is Françoise sudden objection to Léonie giving money to a poor guest called Eulalie who comes every Sunday.[5] She objects to Léonie giving money to poor people, while she would have accepted her giving gifts to people of great wealth, the narrator tells us.[6] Proust reveals this objection as Françoise 's rivalry with Eulalie. The internalization of this rivalry with the hated Eulalie is not, however, intensely metaphysical as it involves mainly an element of rivalry over Léonie’s money. Although Françoise’s desires are basically external, there are, in incidents like this, certain indications of a more intense internal desire creeping into the mind of the Combray inhabitants.

Léonie’s attempt to live anti-mimetically, shunning the interaction of everyday life, may be seen as her strategy of trying to avoid the daily doses of desire, even if the consequence is a most morbid interest in all kinds of external events. Léonie’s craving for support in her illness[7] becomes, despite its rather cerebral nature, a scapegoating of anyone who does not support her or her views. The bed-ridden Léonie becomes a symbol of the death of the old world, the slow decomposition of a hierarchical world in which external desires are being gradually transformed by the intensity of new models. There is an evolution in In Search of Lost Time, from the world of Léonie’s house and the people living in it, who live a life of traditional values, controlled by external desire, to the intensely degraded life of Baron de Charlus during World War I, where every kind of hierarchy is threatened by desire. Thus the further a character is distanced from the norms and customs associated with Léonie’s house, the more acute internal desire becomes.

The new kind of desire creeping into Combray society is described against the backdrop of old fashioned snobbery. But snobbery in the late nineteenth century is no longer an uncomplicated matter where one can, from the perspective of a certain class-background, behave in a superior manner. The middle-class Legrandin, for example represents a person who tries to live according to modern, liberal norms, while, at the same time, erecting ancient mental barriers between himself and others, based on individual hierarchy. Legrandin’s veneration for the aristocracy is not medieval, it is modern. Legrandin’s desire towards people of the aristocracy can only be evoked in a modern, post-revolutionary world, where the hierarchical boundaries have become fluid and uncertain. This modern attitude allows Legrandin’s sister, Mme Cambremer, to marry into the aristocracy. But the conflicting desires of envy and admiration make Legrandin outwardly despise the aristocracy, calling snobbery the sin which cannot be forgiven,[8] while in actual fact he is totally spellbound by the aristocracy, thus making him avoid people from the middle class whenever someone from the aristocracy is present.[9] Legrandin’s love-hate relationship towards the aristocracy is only possible because the model of desire (aristocracy) has come closer to him, and his desire to be their equal is, in a rapidly changing world, both illusory and yet not illusory. Legrandin’s snobbery is modern snobbery in the sense that he vocally is democratic and politically correct, but behind this correctness he gives way to the most fervent desire towards the privileged, the upper classes. Legrandin also uses literature and art to both hide and flaunt his desires, using lofty, romantic vocabulary as a means of distancing himself from his fellowmen. His act of not allowing Marcel and his grandmother to be invited to his sister’s home is a subtle way of reverting to ancient, hierarchical codes, in order to fulfil his more internal desires of snobbery and exclusion.[10]

Conclusions

Proust seems to vacillate between seeing art as a secular religion in itself and, in more limited terms, as a medium that leads towards truth. Although Proust clearly does not divinize art in toto, he never refers to art as subordinated to religious truth. Religion in ‘Time Regained’ is the ability to depict one’s life exactly as it is, in all its depths. And in order to do this one must let one’s self die. The latter notion is clearly religious in nature. The conclusion of Jean Santeuil reveals no conclusion with regard to the main character. Instead, the conclusion is directed towards Jean's parents. Jean's father, who has been typically overambitious, becomes in old age, as he approaches death, a milder, less ambitious person, exceedingly loving and gentle towards his wife.[11] Madame Santeuil, who in her younger years, judged people very severely, especially women who broke the moral etiquette, turns into a more tolerant and forgiving person.[12] Jean's parents represent the downfall of desire, a stage which Jean himself has not reached. Proust, in Jean Santeuil, clearly sees the wisdom of allowing desires to die, but is neither ready for that process himself, nor capable of allowing this knowledge to become an ‘organic’ structure in the novel. The young Proust seems to be too honest a writer to attempt to introduce any fake conclusion to Jean's life. But the novel's conclusion, represented through Jean's parents, is more symbolic than organic. Although the novel ends inconclusively as regards Jean himself, his parents embody the spiritual fruit of compassion and humility.

The conclusion of In Search of Lost Time reveals the truth both about the persons whom young Marcel has desired so desperately and about Marcel himself. The truth means unravelling the aura of godlikeness and discovering the true mediocrity of each divinity. This is only possible if the other is no longer seen through the deceptive glances of desire. Odette, due, both to Marcel's fall from desire and to the modifying effects of her lifelong desire to succeed in society, has begun to look like a doll, a drunkard, a small child, a sterilized rose,[13] indicating an almost total loss of humanity.  The Princess de Guermantes has absolutely nothing in common with the lady who had initially cast her spell on Marcel. This of course, is partly due to the fact that Madame Verdurin has become the new Duchess de Guermantes. But the spell has been broken by the transformation of desire. The transcendence of the duchesses and dukes have not come about because middle-class people like Gilberte Swann and Madame Verdurin have infiltrated the aristocracy by their marriages; it has changed as a result of the shifting of desire.

Democratization through Desire

The life of the Duchess de Guermantes, which at one stage in Marcel's life was considered to be a paradise which he could never enter, has become, at the end of the novel, the very ordinary life of a very ordinary woman.[14] Madame de Guermantes' position in society, from being the unquestionable top during the fin de siècle, is now, following World War I, considerably reduced. High society has changed dramatically. The effects of desire, assuming all kinds of new forms, have turned aristocrats into bores, and social climbers from the middle classes into socialites. The democratization of the salons, Proust shows, has very little or nothing to do with any zest for righteousness or political equality. It is the work of desire.

The democratization of desire brings about a rather pathetic veneration for artists (to which Proust also clings) and turns Madame de Guermantes into a good friend of the actress Rachel who, at the beginning of the novel, was considered to be just as much a prostitute as an actress. And the Duke de Guermantes, who has been chasing young women throughout his entire life, ends up becoming a frantic and jealous lover of a senile and loveless Odette.

Time and Desire

The end of  the novel focuses on the merciless workings of desire. Desire has transformed everyone and everything. It recalls a tempered version of Michelangelo's The Last Judgement. Everyone is, if not outwardly, then inwardly, suffering from the delusions caused by desire. Desire has emptied everyone, made them suffer and die inwardly, and then left them devoid of any attraction. The only thing left capable of making them desirous and attractive, is snobbery, the last resort of desire. But desire has changed: the desire for titles is not, in post-war Paris, the main desire, while a new set of people are taking on the role of models to be desired.[15] Desire has swept mercilessly over the fashionable pre-war set of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, gradually ruining their lives, leaving them full of desires but rather crippled as to their ability to arouse desire. This is the conclusion, taking the form of an inverted Nirvana. Time has not provoked any liberation or personal peace, only loss. Only for Marcel is the fall of desire a gain. It clarifies his true, desirous past and gives him a new outlook, paving the way, and bringing him the final inspiration to depict the true story of his life.