Embroiled in issues regarding the Dreyfus Affair now for at least 250 pages, with 150 of those being spent in the same room, detailing the discussions going on between the narrator and those present in the gathering he has decided to attend, I found myself quite inclined to write on the topic of parallelism regarding the political division of Proust's France and the divisions found in modern U.S. social and political life. There are several key similarities- two sides, one bound by facts, evidence, and reason, the other bound by emotion, "feeling," bias, and prejudice. Much like the situation in France, on a very distilled, very basic level (as I'm not going to try to attempt to compare the Dreyfus Affair to any ongoing specific U.S. political issues, due to my lack of background, frankly, in both regards) the situation in my own, "modern" country (depending on where in it one happens to be, I suppose...) is a matter of fact versus fiction.
The matter tearing both nations apart, while growing into a full-blown "this party vs. that party" debate in both cases, does not even really boil down to any political issue, but rather, to some vague, semi-ideological issue that has no excuse to be part of any kind of political or social discussion based on its absolute simplicity. We're basically arguing about "is the world the same as it was in 1776, or isn't it" in about a thousand different shades, from economic, to religious, to social, to legal and governmental. France was arguing over a matter of, perhaps, fewer facets at its root, but one which ultimately developed into a very similar argument, albeit with the target year likely being different. Anti-semitism had taken a firm hold in the legal proceedings in the case, ultimately leading to a very stark parallel to our own situation, where entire "sides" of the arguments in both cases are based, in truth, on prejudice and hate.
ANYWAY, what I really want to remark upon, having gotten out of the way this rather obvious bit of word-vomit, is the subtle passage that I nearly missed. On page 235 of my second volume (in Guermantes Way, for reference, in the scene ongoing in the salon early on in the book), during dialog, M. d'Argencourt asks: "I say, though, what about Swann?"
Yes...what about Swann? It's been some time since he's been at the forefront of the events in any of these novels. Swann was so pivotal in his namesake novel, yet I had barely noticed him slip away from the limelight. Of course, this is due to the very real shifting current of life that existed for Proust's narrator just as much for any of us, in which characters (real in life or present in books) pass from prominence as the path and details of lives change. As in Proust's work, though, there is a way in which these once-vital players in our lives resurface. I won't spoil this for you, as I do hope that enough of these little tidbits and glimpses of the beautiful thread Proust has been weaving through time so carefully will motivate at least some of you to read these books, but I will say that one of the very earliest moments of Proust's young life is brought to a clear focus, with connections all at once becoming made in such a way that the magnificent interconnectedness of our lives is finally illuminated.
There have been many times in my life where a person has been of the utmost importance for many years, gradually or suddenly passing from that position to one of less, or no personal significance for a vast variety of reasons to which I'm sure anyone could relate via the vicissitudes of their own lives, only to reappear, whether themselves or in a symbolic way by another person or event representative of that former person's place in my life, shocking me with the nature of life and the nature of spending it with others.
No comments:
Post a Comment