On Friendship (with an Apology)

"But it really is time to join the others, and I've mentioned only one of the two things that I meant to ask you, the least important one. The other is more important to me, but I'm afriad you will say no. Would you mind if we were to call each other tu?"

"Mind? I'd be delighted. 'Joy! Tears of joy! Undreamed-of happiness!'"

"Oh, thank you...thank you...After you! It's such a pleasure to me that you needn't bother about Mme de Guermantes if you'd prefer--calling each other tu is enough." (from The Guermantes Way) 

Here, the fictional Marcel is making a formal declaration that his friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup has reached a more intimate stage. They'd been close buddies for months. Marcel (initially motivated to drop in on his friend so that he could somehow break into the honeycombed world of Saint-Loup's aunt, the Duchesse de Guermantes) has found the perfect friend. Saint-Loup caters to the sickly Marcel's every need with remarkable sincerity and understanding. Marcel, in turn, seems divided between the love he has for the Duchesse and the intense affection he has for Saint-Loup.

I sometimes wish that we had a formal mode of address in English with this little stepping stone of the informal "you." How you come about this decision to eliminate the distance between yourself and another person and how you choose to communicate this without getting the cold shoulder has something in common with a marriage proposal. It's an elaborate social ritual that puts friendship on the same level as romantic love. And why not? Why shouldn't friendships be cultivated with the same delicacy as one's love interests?

Mon dieu! I have an apology to make. I confused the Princesse de Guermantes with the Duchesse de Guermantes in my last blog entry. The description of the woman in her loge at the theater was that of the Princesse de Guermantes, not to be confused with the Duchesse who is Marcel's ideal love interest. She's the one he saw as a young boy in the cathedral at Combray. And the Duchesse is also the one who is deliciously jolie laide as you can see in the following description: 

...I caught sight of the profile, beneath a navy-blue toque, of a beaklike nose against a red cheek, barred across by a piercing eye like some Egyptian deity...Mme de Guermantes was dressed in fur to the tip of her toque...Amid this natural plumage, her tiny head curved out its beak, and the prominent eyes were piercing and blue.