Marcel Proust_ A Life - Edmund White [9]
Asthma was one of the great decisive factors in Proust’s development. Because of it he was constantly treated as an invalid (and regarded himself as permanently sickly). Because of it he missed many months of school, was afraid to travel, and constantly had to cancel plans to see friends. Because of it he spent many days in a row, even weeks, lying perfectly still, struggling to breathe. And because of it, at least indirectly, he died an early death at fifty-one. Because of it, too, he was separated from nature, which he worshiped; if he wanted to see hawthorn trees in bloom, he had to be driven through the countryside in a hermetically sealed car. Because of it he was forced to spend much of his life in bed. As the years wore on and his condition worsened, he made only rare sorties outside and then only after midnight, when the dust of the day had settled. Because of it he was forced to embrace solitude, but it also provided him with a ready excuse for keeping people at bay when he wanted to work. Because of it his family and friends and servants were tyrannized by his needs, sometimes even his whims.
It used to be common to ascribe asthma to psychological factors, as though the terrible stifling were symbolic of psychic strangulation or a need for attention. Proust himself sometimes toyed with such explanations, though he reserves his deepest scorn for a doctor in his novel who advises the Narrator’s grandmother that her illness, uremia, is all in her head—advice which leads almost immediately to a stroke and her subsequent death. During his life Proust had the lining of his nose cauterized ten times, a painful intervention designed supposedly to make it less susceptible to pollen—all to no avail. Only with the discovery of cortisone, well after Proust’s death, did asthmatics win occasional relief. In the 1990s the genetic predisposition to asthma began to be tracked as well as the triggering role of mites in dust, although no cure is yet in sight. But if asthma does not have psychological causes, it has many psychological consequences, as Proust’s life dramatically proves.
Despite his bouts of asthma, Proust was able to attend school, even if only intermittently. In 1882, a year after his first asthma attack, he entered the Lycée Condorcet, a secondary school known for its glittery student body, including the young Eiffel (whose father’s tower would soon be completed), not to mention Jacques Bizet and Daniel Halévy (son and nephew, respectively, of the widow of the dead composer of Carmen). When Marcel was seventeen he fell in love with Bizet (Proust called him the “son of Carmen”), who apparently tolerated his attentions for a while but soon rejected him altogether. Daniel Halévy later recalled about Proust, “There was something about him which we found unpleasant. His kindnesses and tender attentions seemed mere mannerisms and poses, and we took occasion to tell him so to his face. Poor, unhappy boy, we were beastly to him.” Halévy saw him “with his huge oriental eyes, his big white collar and flying cravat, as a sort of disturbed and disturbing archangel.” Proust’s mother suspected that her son and Bizet were lovers and forbade Marcel to spend time alone with the boy. Marcel was furious. He threatened to spend all his time with Bizet outside their homes (“I’ll turn a café into a house for both of us”). He wrote Bizet about the enforced rupture: “Why? You see, I know nothing about it. And for how long? Perhaps forever, perhaps for a few days. Why? . . . Perhaps she worries for my sake about this affection that is a bit excessive, don’t you think? and which could degenerate (she may think this) into . . . a sensual affection . . . perhaps because she supposes that in general you have the same faults as I (a rebellious mind, a confused mind;