Proust's Latin Americans

Epilogue

Epilogue On Wednesday, May 30, 1894, Robert de Montesquiou hosted a lavish garden party at his house in Versailles that brought together an impressive group of aristocrats from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, members of the Académie française, respected artists and poets, young intellectuals, and crowds of socialites. A twenty-two-year-old Marcel Proust was there, taking everything in and making mental notes about the elegant countesses and baronesses he would later describe in his novel. As usual, Gabriel de Yturri was there, making the rounds, greeting every guest, and making sure the day’s program unfolded as scheduled; he had just turned thirty-four and had lived with Montesquiou for nine years. The poet José-Maria de Heredia was also there, accompanied by his flirtatious daughters, waiting to hear his poems recited by the actress Julia Bartet. Antonio de La Gandara was there, accompanied by his wife, working the room—and the garden —surveying the various guests who would later become his models. Although his name does not appear in the program, the nineteen-year-old Reynaldo Hahn could have been there—he attended many of the count’s parties, where his compositions were often performed. Ramon Fernandez was barely two months old and was most likely at home with his nanny, but his mother, Jeanne, could have been there, accompanied by her diplomat husband, the other Ramón Fernández.1 The party at Versailles was only one of many occasions on which Proust’s Latin Americans found themselves in the same room. They had many opportunities to cross paths at Madeleine Lemaire’s gatherings, at Hahn’s recitals , at Heredia’s readings, at Jeanne Fernandez’s salon, not to mention at the opera, the theater, or any of the public spaces they frequented. There, they were often joined by many other Latin Americans who had made Paris their home—diplomats like Lucio V. Mansilla and Ventura García Calderón, writ- Epilogue 217 ers like Rubén Darío and Enrique Gómez Carrillo, socialites like Leonor Anchorena de Uriburu and Eugenia Huichi Arguedas de Errázuriz,2 and even exiled ex-presidents like Porfirio Díaz and Antonio Guzmán Blanco. Like the Jewish artists and intellectuals discussed by Carl E. Shorske in Fin de siècle Vienna, these Latin Americans constituted an important minority in turn-ofthe -last-century France whose presence—and whose contribution to their adoptive culture—has not been appropriately acknowledged. The complicated relationship between Proust’s Latin Americans and France recalls the rapport between the narrator and Albertine in the À la recherche. He pursues her; she ignores him. He finally seduces her, but she remains aloof, a stance that unleashes myriad doubts and insecurities: Does she love him? Is she being duplicitous? Is her heart elsewhere? Are her declarations of love sincere? And when she responds, the narrator is no longer sure he wants her anymore. Marcel’s Latin American friends experienced similar doubts and anxiety: they loved France, but did France love them back? Sometimes she did; often she did not. In the end they were all recognized as important writers and artists, but this respect came at the expense of their cultural identity, which was forgotten. The subtitle for this book could have been Les Latino-américans disparus. During their lives, Proust’s Latin Americans found themselves in a double bind. In France they were considered exotic foreigners; in their native countries, they were dismissed for being too French. “Were they really Latin Americans?” I was often asked as I was writing this book. All five were Latin Americans in the eyes of the law. They lived a good part of their lives as foreign residents in France, as citizens of Venezuela, Argentina, Spanish Cuba, and Mexico. With the exception of Ramon Fernandez, they all identified with the language and culture of their native countries. And all five exerted a great fascination on Latin American intellectuals, who recognized them—even if that recognition was neurotically couched as rejection—as fellow citizens who had found success in Paris. In the same years that the concept of Latin America gained currency, these five figures tested the boundaries of Latin American identity. From the start, “Latin America” was an idealistic construct that incorporated peoples as diverse as Patagonian Indians and Mexican mestizos, Uruguayan ranchers and Peruvian coca-planters, Afro-Cuban priests and Guatemalan Mayas. The concept of a shared identity linking the diverse countries, cultures , and peoples from Tierra...