How Proust Can Change Your Life

The images with which we are surrounded are often not just out-of-date, they can also be unhelpfully ostentatious. When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes. Chardin opens our eyes to the beauty of saltcellars and jugs; the madeleine delights the narrator by evoking memories of an ordinary bourgeois childhood; Elstir paints nothing grander than cotton dresses and harbors. In Proust’s view, such modesty is characteristic of beauty.

True beauty is indeed the one thing incapable of answering the expectations of an over-romantic imagination.… What disappointments has it not caused since it first appeared to the mass of mankind! A woman goes to see a masterpiece of art as excitedly as if she was finishing a serial-story, or consulting a fortune teller or waiting for her lover. But she sees a man sitting meditating by the window, in a room where there is not much light. She waits for a moment in case something more may appear, as in a boulevard transparency. And though hypocrisy may seal her

lips, she says in her heart of hearts: “What, is that all there is to Rembrandt’s Philosopher?”

A philosopher whose interest is of course understated, subtle, calm … It all amounts to an intimate, democratic, unsnobbish vision of the good life, one safely within reach of someone earning a bourgeois salary and devoid of anything luxurious, imposing, or aristocratic.

However touching, this does sit somewhat uneasily with evidence that Proust himself had rather a taste for ostentation, and frequently behaved in ways diametrically opposed to the spirit of Chardin or Rembrandt’s Philosopher. The accusations run something like this:

THAT HE HAD ELABORATE NAMES IN HIS ADDRESS BOOK: Though he grew up in a bourgeois family, Proust acquired as friends a more than coincidental range of aristocratic figures with names like the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, Comte Gabriel de La Rochefoucauld, Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, Prince Edmond de Polignac, Comte Bertrand de Salignac-Fénelon, Prince Constantin de Brancovan, and Princesse Caraman-Chimay.

THAT HE WENT TO THE RITZ ALL THE TIME: Though he was well catered to at home, and had a maid adept at preparing wholesome meals, and a dining room in which to give dinner parties, Proust repeatedly ate out and entertained at the Ritz in the Place Vendôme, where he would order sumptuous meals for friends, add a 200 percent service charge to the bill, and drink champagne from fluted glasses.

THAT HE WENT TO MANY PARTIES: In fact, so many that André Gide first turned down his novel at Gallimard, for the well-founded literary reason that he believed this to be the work of a manic socialite. As he later explained, “For me, you had remained the man who frequented the house of Mme X, Y, Z, the man who wrote for the Figaro. I thought of you as—shall I confess it?—… a snob, a dilettante, a socialite.”

Proust was ready with an honest answer. It was true, he had been attracted to the ostentatious life, he had sought to frequent the house of Madame X, Y, and Z and had tried to befriend any aristocrats who happened to be there (aristocrats whose extraordinary glamour in Proust’s day should be compared to the subsequent glamour of film stars, lest it be too easy to acquire a self-righteous sense of virtue on the basis of never having taken an interest in dukes).

However, the end of the story is important—namely, that Proust was disappointed by glamour when he found it. He went to Madame Y’s parties, sent flowers to Madame Z, ingratiated himself with the Prince Constantin de Brancovan, and then realized he had been sold a lie. The images of glamour that had instilled the desire to pursue aristocrats simply did not match the realities of aristocratic life. He recognized that he was better off staying at home, that he could be as happy talking to his maid as to the Princesse Caraman-Chimay.