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Friday, December 25, 2015

Two reasons for Charlus' anti-Semitic outburst - vol 4 Search for Lost Time

Toward the end of vol 4 of In Search of Lost Time the imperious and hateful Baron de Charlus sets off on an anti-Semitic diatribe in the entire novel, a bitter, acrimonious attack on Marcel's friend Bloch, who is Jewish, and by extension on the entire Jewish population of Paris, the entire Jewish people. This spewing of hatred is an eruption of the anti-Dreyfus beliefs so prevlaent in the so-called nobility in Paris at the time - a major sub-theme of the entire novel - and is an eerie precursor to the diatribes of Nazi Germany some two decades down the road. What causes this eruption? Charlus throughout the novel continuously talks of his long "noble" lineage and his membership in many exclusive clubs or "orders." He's also the great enforcer of social protocol and the first to feel a snub or flub. But as we know by this point in the novel Charlus is also a not-so-secret homosexual and sadist, praying primarily upon much younger, more vulnerable men of a different social "class." In this scene in vol 4, Charlus has just asked Marcel to introduce him to his friend Bloch; for complex reasons (his own jealousy regarding this "girlfriend" Albertine), Marcel doesn't do it - which is in part what sets Charlus off against not only Bloch but against all Jews. Two possible reasons for this at least: first, he feels a compulsion to degrade, denigrate, and insult that which he cannot have. If he can't flirt w/ the young Bloch, then he is compelled to treat him as worthless dirt. Second and a little more mysterious: He only wants that which he can degrade (and by extension he projects his own feeling of shame and sordidness onto others). Through his long verbal attack on Bloch and the Jews Charlus seems in some way to arouse himself - to make the object of his momentary passion even more desirable because lower, more sinful, thereby more alluring. Charlus continuously crosses the boundary between respectability and shame - a pathetic figure, if hardly a tragic one.

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