Black Swann

Sodom and Gomorrah, the fourth volume of In Search of Lost Time, begins with Marcel spying on the Baron de Charlus and the shopkeeper Jupien as the two men share a quick afternoon tryst.

For, to judge by what I heard in the early stages from Jupien's, which was simply inarticulate sounds, I assume few words were uttered. It was true that these sounds were so violent that, had they not constantly been taken up an octave higher by a parallel moaning, I might have thought that one person was slitting another's throat close beside me, and that the murderer and his resuscitated victim were then taking a bath in order to erase the traces of the crime.

On the one hand, despite the narrator's judgmental curiosity, the scene is as open and natural as society life is fundamentally false and repressed. On the other hand, there are definitely some sinister undertones to this "love scene."

In the next section of the book, what lurks underneath the pageant of nobles at the Princesse de Guermantes' well-appointed party and isn't allowed the light of day becomes warped and threatening.

As she walked beside me, the Duchesse de Guermantes allowed the azure light of her eyes to float in front of her, but undirected, so as to avoid the people with whom she was not keen to come into contact, but whom she could sometimes make out in the distance like a menacing reef. 

Proust calls homosexuals "inverts," as if to emphasize that whatever is not expressed turns on itself.

I couldn't help but think of this as I watched the film Black Swan yesterday. Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers, a prim ballerina who is adept at technique yet lacks the dark sexuality that the role of the Black Swan requires. Nina has no self-knowledge and she is imprisoned by an adolescent desire to be perfect. What she leaves unexpressed festers in real and imagined wounds that reach what a friend of mine called Grand Guignol for the film's over-the-top violence. (The Grand-Guignol was an actual theater in Paris that opened in 1897 and featured gory horror plays.)

Nina has a claustrophobic home life, surrounded by girlish stuffed animals and an overbearing mother. What's more, the ballet world is self-punitive. We see her strenuous exercises at the barre, and we hear the popping crunches of her toes, and yet these are scenes of self-starvation and a turning-against herself.

Watching Black Swan was a cathartic journey. When Nina morphs from an overprotected, innocent young woman to a mature force of darkness, there is a final release to all of that pent-up emotion. It reminds me of the emptiness of striving for perfection...just as the people at the Princesse de Guermantes' party fight tooth and nail to make their way into the inner sanctum, the creme de la creme of society, only to pose as total strangers to themselves.