The Hyena

Proust never misses an opportunity to use Bloch to portray the Jew as Other. The Dreyfus affair has not yet reached its frenzied peak, so Bloch is still welcome at certain, albeit less prestigious, salons.

But, for one thing, however fiercely the anti-Dreyfus cyclone might be raging, it is not in the first hour of storm that the waves are at their worst. In the second place, Mme de Villeparisis, leaving a whole section of her family to fulminate against the Jews, had remained entirely aloof from the Affair and never gave it a thought. Lastly, a young man like Bloch whom no one knew might pass unnoticed, whereas leading Jews who were representative of their side were already threatened. His chin was now decorated with a goatee beard, he wore a pince-nez and a long frock-coat, and carried a glove like a roll of papyrus  in his hand. The Romanians, the Egyptians, the Turks may hate the Jews. But in a French drawing room the difference between those peoples are not so apparent, and a Jew, making his entry as though he were emerging from the desert, his body crouching like a hyena’s, his neck thrust forward, offering profound “salaams,” completely satisfies a certain taste for the oriental.  Only it is essential that the Jew in question should not be actually “in” society, otherwise he will readily assume the aspect of a lord and his manners become so Gallicised that on his face a refractory nose, growing like a nasturtium in unexpected directions, will be more reminiscent of Molière’s Mascarille than of Solomon. (III,253)

It struck me that if in the light of Mme de Villeparisis’s drawing-room I had taken some photographs of Bloch, they would have given an image of Israel identical  with those we find in spirit photographs–so disturbing because it does not appear to emanate from humanity, so deceptive because it none the less resembles humanity all too closely. (III,255)

Without Rancor

The narrator does try to be understanding of Bloch.

 I did not believe what he was saying, but I bore him no ill-will on that account, for I had inherited from my mother and grandmother their incapacity for rancour even against the worst offenders, and their habit of never condemning anyone. Besides, Bloch was not altogether a bad fellow: he was capable of being extremely nice. (II, 445)

But he tires of the effort. Bloch is at Balbec with his tribe.

Personally, I was not particularly anxious that Bloch should come to the hotel. He was at Balbec, not by himself, unfortunately, but with his sisters, and they in turn had innumerable relatives and friends staying there. Now this Jewish colony was more picturesque than pleasing….they formed a solid troop, homogenous within itself, and utterly dissimilar to the people who watched them go by and found them there again every year without ever exchanging a word or a greeting…(II,434)

Marcel and Robert are invited to dinner with Bloch and his family and witness scene after scene of vulgar behavior. Here is Bloch’s father scrimping on the wine and theater seats.

However, if the failing of his son, that is to say the failing which his son believed to be invisible to other people, was coarseness, the father’s was avarice. And so it was in a decanter that we were served, under the name of champagne, with a light sparkling wine, while under that of orchestra stalls he had taken three in the pit, which cost half as much, miraculously persuaded by the divine intervention of his failing that neither at table nor in the theatre (where the boxes were all empty) would the difference be noticed. (II,487)

And in the unkindest cut of all, Bloch is revealed to have had sex with Odette in a railway car.

“I picked her up a few days before that on the Zone railway, where, speaking of zones, she was so kind as to undo hers for the benefit of your humble servant….I was hoping ,” he said, “thanks to you,  to learn her address, so as to go there several times a week to taste  in her arms the delights of Eros, dear to the gods; but I do not insist since you seem pledged to discretion with respect to a professional who gave herself to me three times running, and in the most rarefied manner, between Paris and Point-du-Jour. I’m bound to see her again some night.” (II,489)

 

 

 

 

 

Who is Proust in ISOLT?

The problem with a roman a clef reading of any novel is that when you identify the real life model of a character, what you know of the real life person can supplant what the text says about the character. For example:

Charlus? Robert de Montesquiou!

Odette? Laure Heyman!

Marcel? Marcel!

The last identification, though, I don’t find completely obvious or least complete. Marcel and Proust certainly share a life mission to find themselves as writers. But a comment by Malcolm Bowie in his Proust Among the Stars has led me to ask in which other characters Proust represents himself.

Bowie sees something of Proust in the character Bloch. The Block character is problematic for just about everyone. He is the apotheosis of the socially crude Jew, cluelessly clawing for recognition in high society. And his family is worse. This character has opened Proust up to charges of anti-Semitism, a charge that is completely out of keeping with what we know of his personal life, his devotion to his Jewish mother and her family, his activism in the fight to release Dreyfus. Bowie sees in Bloch as a parody of the young Proust trying to gain acceptance in the Parisian tout-monde. Block is forever knocking over vases, wearing muddy clothes and lacking graces. Might Proust himself have been expressing his exaggerated fears of being judged badly by society when portraying Bloch? This sounds much more reasonable than interpreting Bloch as an anti-Semitic outburst.

And isn’t Proust very much in Swann? Swann’s knowledge and love of art is bottomless, but without issue. He cannot finish his book on Vermeer. He wastes his time advising society, who respect his taste, about art that will just be adornments on a mansion wall. Proust had a similarly encyclopedic knowledge of painting, as evidenced in the always perfect  choice of a painting to help visualize a scene in the novel. And until his breakthrough at mid-life, he was a commentator, as in his Ruskin translations, rather than an artist. Proust succeeds where Swann failed, thankfully.

The arrogant Charlus could not be more unlike the charming, gentle Proust. Except in one respect. They share similar sexual inclinations. Both are drawn to rough trade and violence as a sexual stimulant. Charlus’ choice of arousal in a male brothel is chains and whipping. Proust’s is the sight of rats fighting to the death. Proust knew firsthand how to lead Charlus to understand the power of cruelty to release sexual frenzy.

Proust famously advised his readers to understand that his characters came from real life, but that each of them was formed from numerous examples. This perception can be turned around. At least some of the characters can be understood as one aspect of Proust’s complex character.

Jim Everett