Proust's Latin Americans

Paperolle No. 2 Proust’s Peruvians

Paperolle No. 2 Proust’s Peruvians Among the hundreds of characters in À la recherche du temps perdu, the only bona fide Latin American is an anonymous Peruvian who attends Charlie Morel’s recital, organized by Charlus at Madame Verdurin’s home, and finds himself enmeshed in a socialite’s intrigues, as Madame de Mortemart, one Charlus’s cousins, schemes to organize a soirée to which only a select few will be invited. As she whispers her invitations, her cunning gaze falls on those around him, including the Peruvian. Ce regard fut même si fort qu’après avoir frappé Mme de Valcourt, le secret évident et l’intention de cachotterie qu’il contenait rebondirent sur un jeune Péruvien que Mme de Mortemart comptait au contraire inviter. Mais soupçonneux, voyant jusqu’à l’évidence les mystères qu’on faisait sans prendre garde qu’ils n’étaient pas pour lui, il éprouva aussitôt à l’endroit de Mme de Mortemart une haine atroce et se jura de lui faire mille mauvaises farces, comme de faire envoyer cinquante cafés glacés chez elle le jour où elle ne recevrait pas, de faire insérer, celui où elle recevrait, une note dans les journaux disant que la fête était remise, et de publier des comptes rendus mensongers des suivantes, dans lesquels figureraient les noms, connus de tous, de personnes que, pour des raisons variées, on ne tient pas à recevoir, même pas à se laisser présenter.1 (Indeed the gaze was so powerful that after striking Mme de Valcourt, the unmistakable secretive intention that it conveyed bounced off and hit a young Peruvian whom Mme de Mortemart was in fact intending to invite. But he, filled with suspicion , seeing so plainly the smokescreen that was being set up without realizing it was not meant for him, promptly experienced a violent hatred for Mme de Mortemart and swore to play countless cruel jokes on her: to have fifty iced coffees sent to her on a day when she had no guests, for example, or, when she did have a party, Proust’s Peruvians 129 to put a note in the papers saying it was postponed, and to write lying accounts of subsequent parties which would include the well-known names of people whom, for various reasons, no one would wish to invite, or even be willing to meet.)2 Despite his fleeting appearance in Proust’s novel—we never hear about him or Mortemart again, and we have no idea if he manages to carry out his revenge—this minor character sparked a lively debate among Peruvian intellectuals. Luis Loayza, an important literary critic (and a friend of Mario Vargas Llosa, who dedicated his Conversation in the Cathedral [1969] to him), devoted an article to Proust’s anonymous Peruvian in 1962. “Why a Peruvian ?” he asks, “And what is the meaning of this literary ghost?” Loayza believes that “in the first place, [this] character exists because [he] is a Peruvian , that is to say, an exotic figure in France,” who belongs to the class of “rich travelers, the children of wealthy families who only expected one thing from their native country: their rents paid on time.” The Peruvian has succeeded in Paris: he is invited to Madame Verdurin’s soirée and spends his time “visiting the salons and has enough money to spend it in pranks of poor taste.” Loayza questions the young man’s allegiance to his country: “Would he ever think of going back? He is very comfortable where he is [. . .] in Lima there are no Verdurins—at least not yet. Why return?” Loayza closes his reflection by speculating on whether this Peruvian could have been based on one of Proust’s Latin American acquaintances: “At the turn of the century there were many Latin Americans in the elegant circles of Paris. It is likely that Proust thought about one of them and that, as he often did to hide his tracks, he called him a Peruvian to hide the portrait, or that this was the first exoticism that came to his pen.”3 Loayza’s inquiry was later developed by Fernando Iwasaki, another critic from Lima, who proposed to crack the mystery of the “conceited and capricious Peruvian” by searching for a model among Proust’s acquaintances. He found a likely candidate mentioned by both George D. Painter and Ghislain de Diesbach—a Latin American “who had been born in Lima around 1864” and...