When reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, it can be hard to distinguish between the narrator and Proust himself. However, Proust reminds us of two key differences: the narrator is neither Jewish nor homosexual. In his essay, Friedländer attempts to dissect this ambiguity and others. He discusses family, love, time, death, and draws an interesting parallel between ‘In Search’ and ‘The Arabian Nights’. Friedländer is a historian, writing here as a lover of Proust rather than as a specialist. However, the elements he highlights are extremely interesting and enrich the reading of Proust’s masterpiece. Excellent!
“In his eloquent defence of homosexuality in the opening pages of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Narrator compares the fate of the invert with that of the Jew: both are compelled by social conventions to hide their true nature. The fate of both groups is similar as far as being pariahs is concerned, but while the Jews, even if rejected by many, do not, and rarely can, hide their Jewishness, inverts usually cannot, except among themselves, openly admit their sexual preferences.
In the words of the Narrator, the inverts are a “race upon which a curse is laid and which must live in falsehood and perjury because it knows that its desire, that which constitutes life’s dearest pleasure, is held to be punishable, shameful, an inadmissible thing… sons without a mother, to whom they are obliged to lie even in the hour when they close her dying eyes; friends without friendships, despite all those which their frequently acknowledged charm inspires and their often generous hearts would gladly feel – but can we describe as friendships those relationships which flourish only by virtue of a lie…?” (Search, IV, 20).”