A few years ago, while visiting a friend, I saw a poster on which the following sentence had been translated into English and diagrammed. <\/p>\n
Sans honneur que pr\u00c3\u00a9caire, sans libert\u00c3\u00a9 que provisoire, jusqu’\u00c3\u00a0 la d\u00c3\u00a9couverte du crime; sans situation qu’instable, comme pour le po\u00c3\u00a8te la veille f\u00c3\u00aat\u00c3\u00a9 dans tous les salons, applaudi dans tous les th\u00c3\u00a9\u00c3\u00a2tres de Londres, chass\u00c3\u00a9 le lendemain de tous les garnis sans pouvoir trouver un oreiller o\u00c3\u00b9 reposer sa t\u00c3\u00aate, tournant la meule comme Samson et disant comme lui: “Les deux sexes mourront chacun de son c\u00c3\u00b4t\u00c3\u00a9”; exclus m\u00c3\u00aame, hors les jours de grande infortune o\u00c3\u00b9 le plus grand nombre se rallie autour de la victime, comme les juifs autour de Dreyfus, de la sympathie – parfois de la soci\u00c3\u00a9t\u00c3\u00a9 – de leurs semblables, auxquels ils donnent le d\u00c3\u00a9go\u00c3\u00bbt de voir ce qu’ils sont, d\u00c3\u00a9peint dans un miroir, qui ne les flattant plus, accuse toutes les tares qu’ils n’avaient pas voulu remarquer chez eux-m\u00c3\u00aames et qui leur fait comprendre que ce qu’ils appelaient leur amour (et \u00c3\u00a0 quoi, en jouant sur le mot, ils avaient, par sens social, annex\u00c3\u00a9 tout ce que la po\u00c3\u00a9sie, la peinture, la musique, la chevalerie, l’asc\u00c3\u00a9tisme, ont pu ajouter \u00c3\u00a0 l’amour) d\u00c3\u00a9coule non d’un id\u00c3\u00a9al de beaut\u00c3\u00a9 qu’ils ont \u00c3\u00a9lu, mais d’une maladie ingu\u00c3\u00a9rissable; comme les juifs encore (sauf quelques-uns qui ne veulent fr\u00c3\u00a9quenter que ceux de leur race, ont toujours \u00c3\u00a0 la bouche les mots rituels et les plaisanteries consacr\u00c3\u00a9es) se fuyant les uns les autres, recherchant ceux qui leur sont le plus oppos\u00c3\u00a9s, qui ne veulent pas d’eux, pardonnant leurs rebuffades, s’enivrant de leurs complaisances; mais aussi rassembl\u00c3\u00a9s \u00c3\u00a0 leurs pareils par l’ostracisme qui les frappe, l’opprobre o\u00c3\u00b9 ils sont tomb\u00c3\u00a9s, ayant fini par prendre, par une pers\u00c3\u00a9cution semblable \u00c3\u00a0 celle d’Isra\u00c3\u00abl, les caract\u00c3\u00a8res physiques et moraux d’une race, parfois beaux, souvent affreux, trouvant (malgr\u00c3\u00a9 toutes les moqueries dont celui qui, plus m\u00c3\u00aal\u00c3\u00a9, mieux assimil\u00c3\u00a9 \u00c3\u00a0 la race adverse, est relativement, en apparence, le moins inverti, accable celui qui l’est demeur\u00c3\u00a9 davantage), une d\u00c3\u00a9tente dans la fr\u00c3\u00a9quentation de leurs semblables, et m\u00c3\u00aame un appui dans leur existence, si bien que, tout en niant qu’ils soient une race (dont le nom est la plus grande injure), ceux qui parviennent \u00c3\u00a0 cacher qu’ils en sont, ils les d\u00c3\u00a9masquent volontiers, moins pour leur nuire, ce qu’ils ne d\u00c3\u00a9testent pas, que pour s’excuser, et allant chercher comme un m\u00c3\u00a9decin l’appendicite l’inversion jusque dans l’histoire, ayant plaisir \u00c3\u00a0 rappeler que Socrate \u00c3\u00a9tait l’un d’eux, comme les Isra\u00c3\u00a9lites disent de J\u00c3\u00a9sus, sans songer qu’il n’y avait pas d’anormaux quand l’homosexualit\u00c3\u00a9 \u00c3\u00a9tait la norme, pas d’anti-chr\u00c3\u00a9tiens avant le Christ, que l’opprobre seul fait le crime, parce qu’il n’a laiss\u00c3\u00a9 subsister que ceux qui \u00c3\u00a9taient r\u00c3\u00a9fractaires \u00c3\u00a0 toute pr\u00c3\u00a9dication, \u00c3\u00a0 tout exemple, \u00c3\u00a0 tout ch\u00c3\u00a2timent, en vertu d’une disposition inn\u00c3\u00a9e tellement sp\u00c3\u00a9ciale qu’elle r\u00c3\u00a9pugne plus aux autres hommes (encore qu’elle puisse s’accompagner de hautes qualit\u00c3\u00a9s morales) que de certains vices qui y contredisent comme le vol, la cruaut\u00c3\u00a9, la mauvaise foi, mieux compris, donc plus excus\u00c3\u00a9s du commun des hommes; formant une franc-ma\u00c3\u00a7onnerie bien plus \u00c3\u00a9tendue, plus efficace et moins soup\u00c3\u00a7onn\u00c3\u00a9e que celle des loges, car elle repose sur une identit\u00c3\u00a9 de go\u00c3\u00bbts, de besoins, d’habitudes, de dangers, d’apprentissage, de savoir, de trafic, de glossaire, et dans laquelle les membres m\u00c3\u00aames, qui souhaitent de ne pas se conna\u00c3\u00aetre, aussit\u00c3\u00b4t se reconnaissent \u00c3\u00a0 des signes naturels ou de convention, involontaires ou voulus, qui signalent un de ses semblables au mendiant dans le grand seigneur \u00c3\u00a0 qui il ferme la porti\u00c3\u00a8re de sa voiture, au p\u00c3\u00a8re dans le fianc\u00c3\u00a9 de sa fille, \u00c3\u00a0 celui qui avait voulu se gu\u00c3\u00a9rir, se confesser, qui avait \u00c3\u00a0 se d\u00c3\u00a9fendre, dans le m\u00c3\u00a9decin, dans le pr\u00c3\u00aatre, dans l’avocat qu’il est all\u00c3\u00a9 trouver; tous oblig\u00c3\u00a9s \u00c3\u00a0 prot\u00c3\u00a9ger leur secret, mais ayant leur part d’un secret des autres que le reste de l’humanit\u00c3\u00a9 ne soup\u00c3\u00a7onne pas et qui fait qu’\u00c3\u00a0 eux les romans d’aventure les plus invraisemblables semblent vrais, car dans cette vie romanesque, anachronique, l’ambassadeur est ami du for\u00c3\u00a7at: le prince, avec une certaine libert\u00c3\u00a9 d’allures que donne l’\u00c3\u00a9ducation aristocratique et qu’un petit bourgeois tremblant n’aurait pas en sortant de chez la duchesse, s’en va conf\u00c3\u00a9rer avec l’apache; partie r\u00c3\u00a9prouv\u00c3\u00a9e de la collectivit\u00c3\u00a9 humaine, mais partie importante, soup\u00c3\u00a7onn\u00c3\u00a9e l\u00c3\u00a0 o\u00c3\u00b9 elle n’est pas, \u00c3\u00a9tal\u00c3\u00a9e, insolente, impunie l\u00c3\u00a0 o\u00c3\u00b9 elle n’est pas devin\u00c3\u00a9e; comptant des adh\u00c3\u00a9rents partout, dans le peuple, dans l’arm\u00c3\u00a9e, dans le temple, au bagne, sur le tr\u00c3\u00b4ne; vivant enfin, du moins un grand nombre, dans l’intimit\u00c3\u00a9 caressante et dangereuse avec les hommes de l’autre race, les provoquant, jouant avec eux \u00c3\u00a0 parler de son vice comme s’il n’\u00c3\u00a9tait pas sien, jeu qui est rendu facile par l’aveuglement ou la fausset\u00c3\u00a9 des autres, jeu qui peut se prolonger des ann\u00c3\u00a9es jusqu’au jour du scandale o\u00c3\u00b9 ces dompteurs sont d\u00c3\u00a9vor\u00c3\u00a9s; jusque-l\u00c3\u00a0 oblig\u00c3\u00a9s de cacher leur vie, de d\u00c3\u00a9tourner leurs regards d’o\u00c3\u00b9 ils voudraient se fixer, de les fixer sur ce dont ils voudraient se d\u00c3\u00a9tourner, de changer le genre de bien des adjectifs dans leur vocabulaire, contrainte sociale, l\u00c3\u00a9g\u00c3\u00a8re aupr\u00c3\u00a8s de la contrainte int\u00c3\u00a9rieure que leur vice, ou ce qu’on nomme improprement ainsi, leur impose non plus \u00c3\u00a0 l’\u00c3\u00a9gard des autres mais d’eux-m\u00c3\u00aames, et de fa\u00c3\u00a7on qu’\u00c3\u00a0 eux-m\u00c3\u00aames il ne leur paraisse pas un vice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff:<\/p>\n
Their honour precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; their position unstable, like that of the poet who one day was feasted at every table, applauded in every theatre in London, and on the next was driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head, turning the mill like Samson and saying like him: “The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart!”; excluded even, save on the days of general disaster when the majority rally round the victim as the Jews rallied round Dreyfus, from the sympathy\u00e2\u20ac\u201dat times from the society\u00e2\u20ac\u201dof their fellows, in whom they inspire only disgust at seeing themselves as they are, portrayed in a mirror which, ceasing to flatter them, accentuates every blemish that they have refused to observe in themselves, and makes them understand that what they have been calling their love (a thing to which, playing upon the word, they have by association annexed all that poetry, painting, music, chivalry, asceticism have contrived to add to love) springs not from an ideal of beauty which they have chosen but from an incurable malady; like the Jews again (save some who will associate only with others of their race and have always on their lips ritual words and consecrated pleasantries), shunning one another, seeking out those who are most directly their opposite, who do not desire their company, pardoning their rebuffs, moved to ecstasy by their condescension; but also brought into the company of their own kind by the ostracism that strikes them, the opprobrium under which they have fallen, having finally been invested, by a persecution similar to that of Israel, with the physical and moral characteristics of a race, sometimes beautiful, often hideous, finding (in spite of all the mockery with which he who, more closely blended with, better assimilated to the opposing race, is relatively, in appearance, the least inverted, heaps upon him who has remained more so) a relief in frequenting the society of their kind, and even some corroboration of their own life, so much so that, while steadfastly denying that they are a race (the name of which is the vilest of insults), those who succeed in concealing the fact that they belong to it they readily unmask, with a view less to injuring them, though they have no scruple about that, than to excusing themselves; and, going in search (as a doctor seeks cases of appendicitis) of cases of inversion in history, taking pleasure in recalling that Socrates was one of themselves, as the Israelites claim that Jesus was one of them, without reflecting that there were no abnormals when homosexuality was the norm, no anti-Christians before Christ, that the disgrace alone makes the crime because it has allowed to survive only those who remained obdurate to every warning, to every example, to every punishment, by virtue of an innate disposition so peculiar that it is more repugnant to other men (even though it may be accompanied by exalted moral qualities) than certain other vices which exclude those qualities, such as theft, cruelty, breach of faith, vices better understood and so more readily excused by the generality of men; forming a freemasonry far more extensive, more powerful and less suspected than that of the Lodges, for it rests upon an identity of tastes, needs, habits, dangers, apprenticeship, knowledge, traffic, glossary, and one in which the members themselves, who intend not to know one another, recognise one another immediately by natural or conventional, involuntary or deliberate signs which indicate one of his congeners to the beggar in the street, in the great nobleman whose carriage door he is shutting, to the father in the suitor for his daughter’s hand, to him who has sought healing, absolution, defence, in the doctor, the priest, the barrister to whom he has had recourse; all of them obliged to protect their own secret but having their part in a secret shared with the others, which the rest of humanity does not suspect and which means that to them the most wildly improbable tales of adventure seem true, for in this romantic, anachronistic life the ambassador is a bosom friend of the felon, the prince, with a certain independence of action with which his aristocratic breeding has furnished him, and which the trembling little cit would lack, on leaving the duchess’s party goes off to confer in private with the hooligan; a reprobate part of the human whole, but an important part, suspected where it does not exist, flaunting itself, insolent and unpunished, where its existence is never guessed; numbering its adherents everywhere, among the people, in the army, in the church, in the prison, on the throne; living, in short, at least to a great extent, in a playful and perilous intimacy with the men of the other race, provoking them, playing with them by speaking of its vice as of something alien to it; a game that is rendered easy by the blindness or duplicity of the others, a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal, on which these lion-tamers are devoured; until then, obliged to make a secret of their lives, to turn away their eyes from the things on which they would naturally fasten them, to fasten them upon those from which they would naturally turn away, to change the gender of many of the words in their vocabulary, a social constraint, slight in comparison with the inward constraint which their vice, or what is improperly so called, imposes upon them with regard not so much now to others as to themselves, and in such a way that to themselves it does not appear a vice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
—Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah<\/em>, Fr<\/a> En<\/a>, tr. Moncrieff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few years ago, while visiting a friend, I saw a poster on which the following sentence had been translated into English and diagrammed. Sans honneur que pr\u00c3\u00a9caire, sans libert\u00c3\u00a9 que provisoire, jusqu’\u00c3\u00a0 la d\u00c3\u00a9couverte du crime; sans situation qu’instable, comme pour le po\u00c3\u00a8te la veille f\u00c3\u00aat\u00c3\u00a9 dans tous les salons, applaudi dans tous les […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1477,1475,1476],"class_list":["post-10935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-poster","tag-proust","tag-sentence-diagram"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulboccaccio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}