How Proust Can Change Your Life

Which, in fact, he did. In 1922, both writers were at a black-tie dinner given at the Ritz for Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and members of the Russian Ballet, in order to celebrate the first night of Stravinsky’s Le Renard. Joyce arrived late and without a dinner jacket, Proust kept his fur coat on throughout the evening, and what happened once they were introduced was later reported by Joyce to a friend:

Our talk consisted solely of the word “Non.” Proust asked me if

I

knew the duc de so-and-so

.

I

said “Non.” Our hostess asked Proust if he had read such and such a piece of Ulysses. Proust said “Non.” And so on

.

After dinner, Proust got into his taxi with his hosts, Violet and Sydney Schiff, and without asking, Joyce followed them in. His first gesture was to open the window and his second to light a cigarette, both of which were life-threatening acts as far as Proust was concerned. During the journey, Joyce watched Proust without saying a word, while Proust talked continuously and failed to address a word to Joyce. When they arrived at Proust’s flat at the rue Hamelin, Proust took Sydney Schiff aside and said: “Please ask Monsieur Joyce to let my taxi drive him home.” The taxi did so. The two men were never to meet again.

If the story has its absurd side, it is because of our awareness of what these two writers could have told one another. A conversation of cul-de-sacs ending in “Non” is not a surprising eventuality for many, but it is more surprising and far more regrettable when it is all that the authors of Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time can find to say to each other when they are seated together under the same Ritz chandelier.

However, imagine that the evening had unfolded more successfully, as successfully as could have been hoped:

PROUST [while taking furtive stabs at an homard à l’américaine, huddled in his fur coat]: Monsieur Joyce, do you know the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre?

JOYCE: Please, appelez-moi James. Le Duc! What a close and excellent friend, the kindest man I have met from here to Limerick.

PROUST: Really? I am so glad we agree [beaming at the discovery of this common acquaintance], though I have not yet been to Limerick.

VIOLET SCHIFF [leaning across, with a hostess’s delicacy, to Proust]: Marcel, do you know James’s big book?

PROUST: Ulysses? Naturellement. Who has not read the masterpiece of our new century? [Joyce blushes modestly, but nothing can disguise his delight.]

VIOLET SCHIFF: Do you remember any passages in it?

PROUST: Madame, I remember the entire book. For instance, when the hero goes to the library, excuse my accent anglais, but I cannot resist [starting to quote]: “Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred …”

And yet, even if it had gone as well as this, even if they had later enjoyed an animated cab ride home and sat up until sunrise exchanging thoughts on music and the novel, art and nationality, love and Shakespeare, there would still have been a critical discrepancy between the conversation and the work, between the chat and the writing, for Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time would never have resulted from their dialogue, even though these novels were among the most profound and sustained utterances both men were capable of—a point that highlights the limitations of conversation, when viewed as a forum in which to express our deepest selves.

What explains such limitations? Why would one be unable to chat, as opposed to write, In Search of Lost Time? In part, because of the mind’s functioning, its condition as an intermittent organ, forever liable to lose the thread or be distracted, generating vital thoughts only between stretches of inactivity or mediocrity, stretches in which we are not really “ourselves,” during which it may be no exaggeration to say that we are not quite all there as we gaze at passing clouds with a vacant, childlike expression. Because the rhythm of a conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we have said, and the missed opportunity of what we have not.