This section sets off one of the major analyses of the novel, that of the homosexual and his (her?) relationship to polite society. It reminds me of Noel Coward apparently writing many of his straight couples with the intention of them being homosexual couples - if only he had born a generation or two later. A fascinating reminder of how utterly different the act of reading and writing was 100 years ago. The sequence is cheeky, and heavily coded (to the point where I could imagine an older French reader of the 1920s barely even grasping what has happened) yet virtually obscene. In a brief section, Marcel (let's just agree to call him that, shall we?) decides to spy on a bee fertilising a flower, and instead gets to watch an altogether different kind of pollination, that of his old nemesis, Baron de Charlus, and Francoise's beloved tailor, Jupien. "People never cease to change place in relation to ourselves." There are essentially four sections to the novel: As the narrator matures in his 20s, he is at a tipping-point between his youth and naivete, and his growing understanding of the world. (My reviews of the first three volumes can be found: here, here, and - what do you know? - here.) I'd have to say that volume four, Sodome et Gomorrhe ( Sodom and Gomorrah, more poetically, but less accurately translated in the past as Cities of the Plain), is the most challenging volume of Proust, and yet as I reached its end, I realised just how vital and thematically intertwined this is. " form in every land an oriental colony, cultured, musical, malicious, which has charming qualities and intolerable defects."įor his next trick, Marcel Proust contrives to up-end much of what has come before, as his narrator goes ever further in search of lost time.
Women shall have Gomorrah and men shall have Sodom - Alfred de Vigny, epigram
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