Bouvard and Pécuchet on Society and Music, Marcel Proust
Bouvard and Pécuchet on Society and Music
1
Society*
“Now that we have a position,” said Bouvard, “why shouldn’t we go out into society like everyone else?”
This was also Pécuchet’s view; but they would need to shine in society, and to do that, they should study the subjects which people talk about.
Contemporary literature is of the highest importance.
They took out a subscription to the various journals which publish contemporary literature; they read them aloud, and endeavoured to write reviews, seeking above all a light and fluent style, in view of the aim they had set themselves.
Bouvard objected that the style of literary criticism, even when it is written in a light-hearted tone, does not suit social gatherings. And they practised making conversation about what they had read in the manner of society people.
Bouvard would lean against the fireplace, and fiddle cautiously – so as not to get them dirty – with a pair of buff-coloured gloves brought out expressly for the occasion, addressing Pécuchet as “Madame” or “General”, so as to make the illusion complete.
But often, this was as far as they would get; or, when one of them started to wax enthusiastic about an author, the other would try in vain in stop him. In any case, they disparaged everything. Leconte de Lisle* was too devoid of passion, Verlaine was too sensitive. They dreamt of a golden mean, but never found it.
“Why does Loti* always sound the same?”
“His novels always follow the same old tune.”
“He has only one string to his bow,” concluded Bouvard.
“But André Laurie* isn’t any more satisfying – every year he takes us off to a different place and confuses literature with geography. It’s only his style that makes it any good. As for Henri de Régnier,* he’s a either charlatan or a madman, there are no two ways about it.”
“If you can get beyond that, old fellow,” said Bouvard, “you’ll help contemporary literature to escape from the dreadful dead end it’s reached.”
“Why force them?” said Pécuchet in lordly but avuncular tones. “Perhaps those young colts have some spunk in them. Let’s give them free rein; the only danger is that they might be so hot-blooded that they overshoot the mark; but such extravagance is in itself the proof of a rich nature.”
“And meanwhile, barriers will be broken down!” cried Pécuchet; and, filling the echoing room with his counter-arguments, he became heated: “And you can keep telling me till you’re blue in the face that these unequal lines are poetry: I refuse to see anything other than prose in them, and meaningless prose at that!”
Mallarmé is no more talented than the rest, but he’s a brilliant conversationalist. What a misfortune it is that such a gifted man should go quite mad each time he picks up his pen. This is a singular malady, and it seemed to them quite inexplicable. Maeterlinck* can shock, but he uses material means that are unworthy of the theatre; his art affects you as powerfully as a crime, it’s horrible! Anyway, his syntax is awful.
They conducted a spirited critique of his style, parodying his dialogue in the form of a conjugation:
“I said the woman had come in.”
“You said the woman had come in.”
“We said the woman had come in.”
“Why did they say that the woman had come in?”
Pécuchet wanted to send this little piece to the Revue des Deux Mondes,* but it would be a better idea, countered Bouvard, to keep it to themselves and then trot it out in some fashionable salon. They would be immediately judged on their merits. They could easily send it to a review later. And the first beneficiaries of this witty sally, on reading it subsequently, would be retrospectively flattered at having attended its premiere.
Lemaître,* for all his wit, struck them as inconsequential, irreverent, sometimes pedantic and sometimes bourgeois; he kept withdrawing his views. His style in particular was too lax, but the difficulty of improvising to strict and frequent deadlines could serve to excuse him. As for France, he is a good writer, but a poor thinker, as opposed to Bourget,* who is deep, but has a dismal sense of form. The scarcity of an all-round talent filled them with melancholy.
But it shouldn’t be all that difficult – Bouvard would reflect – to express your ideas clearly. But clarity is not enough: you need grace (combined with force), vivacity, elevation, and logic. And irony too, added Bouvard. But according to Pécuchet, irony is not indispensable; it is often wearisome, and it is an unnecessary complication for the reader. In short, everybody writes badly. The fault lay, according to Bouvard, in an excessive quest for originality; and according to Pécuchet, in the decadence of contemporary life.
“Let us be brave enough to keep our conclusions to ourselves in social circles,” said Bouvard. “We would appear as carping critics and, by alarming everyone, we would displease them all. Let us provide reassurance rather than anxiety. Our originality will be enough of a drawback for us as it is. We should even try to conceal it. We don’t have to talk about literature.”
But other things really are important.
“How should you bow to someone? With your whole body or just your head, slowly or quickly, as you are standing or clicking your heels together, moving closer or staying put, tucking in your lower back or transforming it into a pivot? Should your hands hang down your sides, or hold on to your hat, or wear gloves? Should your face remain serious or smile throughout the duration of your bow? But how can one immediately resume one’s gravity once one has finished bowing?”
Introducing someone is difficult too.
Whose name should you begin with? Should you indicate the person you are naming with a wave of the hand, or a nod of the head, or should you remain motionless and look indifferent? Should you bow in the same way to an old man and a young man, a locksmith and a prince, an actor and an academician? An affirmative response satisfied Pécuchet’s egalitarian ideas, but shocked Bouvard’s common sense.
How could you give everyone their correct title?
You say “hello” to a baron, a viscount and a count; but “hello, my lord” seemed to them too pedestrian, and “hello, marquess” too cavalier, given their age. So they resigned themselves to saying “prince” to a prince and “my lord” to a duke, even though this latter usage struck them as revolting. When they got as far as the Highnesses, they became perplexed; Bouvard, flattered at the idea of his future acquaintances, imagined a thousand sentences in which this form of address appeared in every shape and size; he would accompany it with a bashful little smile, bowing his head slightly, and hopping from foot to foot. But Pécuchet declared that he’d get confused and keep muddling them up, or would burst out laughing in the prince’s face. In short, to simplify things, they just wouldn’t go into the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
But the Faubourg extends everywhere, and only from a distance does it look like a compact and isolated whole!… In any case, titles are even more respected in the upper echelons of the banking world, and as for the titles of foreign parvenus, you just can’t keep count of them. But in Pécuchet’s view, you should be intransigent when it came to fake nobles, and make a point of not giving them their full titles, even on the envelopes of letters or when talking to their servants.
Bouvard, more of a sceptic, saw their obsession with titles as merely a more recent fad, but one just as respectable as that of the great lords of old. In any case, in their opinion, the nobility had ceased to exist ever since it had lost its privileges. The nobility supports the clergy, is backward, doesn’t read books, does nothing, just has a good time, just as the bourgeoisie does; they found it absurd to respect it. It was only possible to frequent it because you could still express your contempt while doing so.
Bouvard declared that in order to know where they would pay their social calls, to which suburbs they would venture once a year, and where the arenas of their habits and vices would be located, they first of all needed to draw up an exact plan of Parisian society. It included, in his view, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the world of finance, that of foreign parvenus, Protestant society, the world of the arts and the theatre, and the official and scholarly world.
The Faubourg, in Pécuchet’s view, concealed beneath its rigid exterior all the libertinage of the Ancien Régime. Every noble has mistresses and a sister who is a nun, and conspires with the clergy. They are brave, run up debts, ruin and abuse moneylenders, and are inevitably the champions of honour. They reign through their elegance, invent extravagant fashions, are exemplary sons, affectionate towards the common people, and hard on bankers. They always have a sword in their hand, or a woman riding behind them; they dream of the restoration of the monarchy, and are dreadfully lazy, but not haughty with ordinary folk; they cause traitors to flee and they insult cowards, and they deserve, thanks to a certain chivalric aura, our unwavering affection.
On the other hand, high finance, dignified and dour, inspires respect but also aversion. The financier is consumed by worries even at the wildest ball. One of his countless clerks is always turning up to bring him the latest news from the Stock Exchange, even at four in the morning; he hides his greatest
