Proust's Queer Metalepses

1. Quoi!

Two young men stand on the threshold of an all-male brothel, unable to bring themselves to enter. Unable to decide, perhaps, if they can trust each other's complicity enough to risk the adventure together. "Quoi! Après tout on s'en fiche?" says one of the young men, over and over, apparently addressing some aspect of their situation at the threshold. The "quoi" itself is given an exclamation point rather than a question mark; it seems unable to be clearly interrogative, seems more of a simple sound--expressive of the need for there not to be silence, perhaps the need to perpetuate the possibility of entering. And then there is the half-interrogative sentence: "Après tout on s'en fiche?" After all, what does it matter? What does it matter whether or not we go in? What does it matter what happens if we do go in? What does it matter if you are not as good a friend as I think you are? What do I know about what matters to you or to me? What does it matter that I can't quite say I want to have sex with a man? This scene from Le Temps retrouvé seems somehow paradigmatic of the difficulty of queer sexual expression in Proust.

The narrator of the Recherche apparently understands as much, and launches into an intriguing analysis of what is going on here:

"Quoi! Après tout on s'en fiche?" Mais il avait beau vouloir dire par là qu'après tout on se fichait des conséquences, il est probable qu'il ne s'en fichait pas tant que cela car cette parole n'était suivie d'aucun mouvement pour entrer mais d'un nouveau regard vers l'autre, suivi du même sourire et du même après tout on s'en fiche. C'était, ce après tout on s'en fiche, un exemplaire entre mille de ce magnifique langage, si différent de celui que nous parlons d'habitude, et où l'émotion fait dévier ce que nous voulions dire et épanouir à la place une phrase tout autre, émergée d'un lac inconnu où vivent ces expressions sans rapport avec la pensée et qui par cela même la révèlent. (4: 401)

"Est-il plus belle définition de l'inconscient?" asks Gérard Genette, after citing that last sentence, from the words "magnifique langage" to the end (thereby leaving out the context of the effort to engage in queer sex). He juxtaposes it to a definition of the unconscious Freud gave, and decides in Proust's favor. Freud (as cited by Genette) said, "Comme la personne qui parle est décidée à ne pas faire apparaître (la tendance refoulée) dans le discours, elle commet un lapsus, c'est-à-dire, que la tendance refoulée se manifeste malgré lui, soit en modifiant l'intention avouée, soit en se confondant avec elle, soit enfin en prenant tout simplement sa place." Proust's definition is preferred because it seems "plus rigoureuse peut-être en son ambiguïté même" ("Proust et le langage indirect" 279).

But these two fellows are actually at the door of the male brothel, so they already seem fairly compromised or committed. (As indeed the narrator appears to be, given that he is on the other side of the threshold!) And it doesn't seem that the sentence in question contains any lapsus per se, nor does it seem to be really a "phrase toute autre." In its capacious ambiguity (it's true the narrator believes he can tame the sentence's ambiguity by insisting that it's a question of "s'en ficher des conséquences") it seems perfectly capable of meaning whatever it is supposed to mean. Whatever it meant, the narrator notes in a parenthetical remark a paragraph later that the two did finally put an end to the moments of hesitation the sentence filled: "les deux Russes...