One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 discussion

"...the same aberration that typified court life under Louis XIV, which removes scruples of conscience from the domain of the affections and morality and transforms them into questions of pure form" (~72.32%).

Somewhere early in this week's erotically charged part, around the narrator's impatient expectation to have dinner with and "possess" Madame Stermaria on the Isle de Bois, I realized that "to possess" in Proust means "to have Sex with". I vaguely recalled that he used it in earlier volumes already.

Then I searched my digital editions and found this interesting passage from the second volume that shows a twofold use of the word:

I knew I could never possess the young cyclist, unless I could also possess what lay behind her eyes. My desire for her was desire for her whole life: a desire that was full of pain, because I sensed it was unattainable, but also full of heady excitement
(p. 375)

And other uses of "posess" in this way, which made me think that i should have recognized its meaning much sooner:
(view spoiler)[

intellectual curiosity about what she might think on this or that subject did not outlast my belief that I might be able to kiss her. My dreams forsook her as soon as they ceased to be swayed by the hope of possessing her, which I had believed did not affect them.
(p. 511)

My hypothesis about the thoroughness of her virtue (my initial explanation of the vehemence with which she refused to be kissed and possessed by me), though not indispensable to my conception of her fundamental goodness and integrity, had to be rethought and more than once reformulated. It was so diametrically opposite to the one I had formed on the day when I first set eyes on Albertine!
(p. 517)

(hide spoiler)]

Later we find another tidbit of Proust's personal lifestyle philosophy, about the value of friendship, that I read about before in How Proust can change your Life. There it's shown that for Proust friendship should only be a mutual exchange of affection, that you shouldn't discuss intellectual matters among friends because you only endanger your friendship and the intellectual rewards are small, and that there's little inherent value in friendship.

"that it [friendship] is such a lowly thing, that I struggle to understand how ingenious men, Nietzsche for example, could have had the naivety to award it an intellectual value"
(my translation from german, loc. 12945 of 27382, 48%, Reclam Bibliothek edition)

I don't fully agree with Proust's view on friendship, though he made me shift further toward this direction and understand his viewpoint. Some people can't discuss critically or are hurt when you disagree with them, and with some friends intellectual discussion may not be fruitful at all. Meeting up with friends, casually talking to them about anything, while a pleasant activity, usually leaves you not much wiser than before.
There are more effective ways to progress intellectually than discussing vocally anyways, as you don't have access to material and you're forced to answer quickly.

That said, I believe you can gain important knowledge and little pointers towards things you could get a clearer picture of from talking to others, when they know something that you missed until now. Discussion has the advantage of interactivity, you can quickly get feedback about your thoughts, which may take longer to find among the undiscriminating information in books or other sources.
Also, mature, critically thinking people should be able to tolerate discussion with differing viewpoints.
And finally, friendship seems like one of the inherently rewarding aspects of life that make it worth living. It's just rarely as deep as we wished, and I more and more look for quality instead of quantity of friendship.

I think the use of "possession" to refer to sex is especially loaded considering the importance of jealousy in sexual relationships and desire. Think of Swann and Odette in volume one and Saint-Loup and Rachel earlier in this volume. Because of the weight of the word, to possess, it seems like there's a sense of dominance in the narrator's view of sexuality.

Regarding friendship and intellectual growth, my experience is quite different from yours and I'm puzzled by Proust's observations about friendship. Admittedly, even his friendship with Saint-Loup seems intellectually superficial although personally deep. The intellectual conversations that I recall throughout the novel seem mostly phony, as if the social status of the other person's opinions are more important then his or her genuine conviction. It's true that most of the profound observations are the internal musings of the narrator. But where did these ideas come from anyway?

Of course, he reads and thinks and this is one way he picks up a lot of ideas. But testing them in the fire of debate is what really hones the acuteness of my mind. I don't think the quick back-and-forth of a vocal debate is the best way to flesh out my ideas, but it's a great way to test and develop ideas that I naively thought were completely sound. This doesn't yet seem to be a major part of the narrator's process of maturity (although the fact that we don't usually know what he answers probably skews our view of his intellectual conversations).

Good point about the possession, Jacob.
And i agree on the value of discussion, though that's especially so for philosophy. In other areas i'd value discussion less, unless your discussion partner has read exactly what you're interested in.
Especially in literature I find detailed discussion almost impossible unless you have read the same thing at about the same time not long ago (like here). After some weeks or months it's already hard to talk about what you've read in detail. Well, it's complicated ;)

That's true. I guess I was thinking about philosophy and other theoretical disciplines. In school I found discussion based seminars the most valuable. Even now I'd rather have a chat about something theoretical then listen to a lecture. When I present my views I'm forced to defend, deconstruct, and rebuild my ideas. Of course it's difficult to have a real conversation with someone who isn't familiar with the ideas that have inspired a certain point of view. If you've been influenced by Foucault, it's hard to talk about your view on power with someone who hasn't read Foucault. If Proust has changed your life, how do have a conversation about time and memory with someone who asks you to describe the plot of ISoLT?

Sometimes people try to engage me in a conversation about politics. My views aren't particularly mainstream so it's hard to make that work. I often find myself repressing most of what I want to say. To return to the novel: even though it's implied that the main character, the autobiographer (I can't think of a way to refer to him, *sigh* should I just say Marcel? no, no, I can't do it) replies to his conversation partners I wonder if we don't get to read his replies because the narrator - the same man looking back at his experiences years later - is in a sense saying, "you wouldn't understand, I won't engage you in this conversation." He did engage at the time and he admits that in the narrative (through implication) but as a retrospective narrator he gets to decide again if he will or will not reply. This is pushing the pleasure I take in narrative conjecture to its limit, and I have no doubt there are many instances when this perspective wouldn't work, but it just struck me as a possible explanation when I mentioned that this thought often crosses my mind in a conversation. I'm still searching for a reason why the narrator doesn't quote himself.

Interesting wondering about the narrator's reasoning, Jacob. I hadn't thought of any of that, just that our narrator is concentrated on observing. Perhaps we will find out his reason in the last volume!