Today, we have another two part quote. These sentences are so long and full of detail that parts must be skipped and even broken apart to fully digest and respond to it properly.
In this scene, M. Vinteuil's wife died, and his daughter brought home a girlfriend (she is a lesbian). The novel is from the early 20th century, so this is obviously the talk of the town.
To make it even more scandalous, he lusts after her (or at least the rumors in town say this, the novel leaves it unclear).
This complicated state gives Proust so much inner life to work with. This is a man simultaneously in mourning and lust, shame and honor, restraint and indulgence.
It's hard to think of a better character for Proust to explore.
On page 161:
"Anyone who, like ourselves, had seen M. Vinteuil at that time, avoiding people whom he knew, turning away as soon as he caught sight of them, growing old within a few months, ..., could hardly have failed to realize that he was dying of a broken heart,..."
This is heart-wrenching. After a death of anyone, but in particular, after the death of a spouse it is of vital importance to find community and support somewhere.
But because his daughter has publicly shamed the family by bringing her lover home, and everyone believes he has a broken heart over this lover, he feels he must avoid people he knows.
He must deal with the hell of ostracization at exactly the time he needs to be relying on others.
Even worse is that many people aren't shunning him, but he feels he must avoid them out of his own personal embarrassment.
My favorite phrase from this entire segment of the novel is that Proust casually throws in "growing old with a few months."
It's such a heartbreaking image. This man, under such strain, grows old from it all in a few months. It's like his entire life up to this point just collapses into a single moment of growing old.
"There is probably no one, however rigid his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he himself had been most outspoken in condemning."
Then Proust turns the paragraph on its head and makes it about hypocrisy. The townspeople whisper and joke about his situation, but they haven't examined their own lives first.
We all have been here. We've all been outspoken critics of something, and then something in our lives comes along that is more important and we compromise on our values.
This is one of Proust's genius moments of recognizing humanity for what it is. Humans are flawed and complicated. We always compromise. We always judge others for when they compromise as if we ourselves would never be so flawed.
In doing this, we cause others undue stress and possibly age them and cause them to lose years of their life unnecessarily.
We really must be more tolerant and less judgmental. People live in different ways with different values.
Most people have so many forces working on them at any given moment that we can't comprehend their situation fully. But we should be sure that we would probably react the same way as them if the roles were reversed.
Thus, we cannot judge them as if we understood, because no matter how much we think we understand, we don't.
Rumors and joking about people's personal lives cause real harm, even though they can seem harmless at the time. The person will almost always notice.
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