30-May-11
PROUST AND GIDE
(Scene: The living room of a villa outside Florence in 1924. There is a framed photo of Rodin’s statue ‘The Age of Bronze’ on the rear wall. A coffee table is in the foreground with several books on it. Two chairs flank the table. Facing each other in the chairs are William Alexander Percy on the left and Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncreiff on the right.)
Percy: It was so nice of you to invite me. Norman Douglas has done me a great favor in introducing us to each other.
Scott-Moncreiff: Yes, he has. I have a number of books to give you as presents. I am sure that you are not likely to be aware of them, being American. There are no American editions of them, and some are not available in English even in England. Here is a copy of a very limited edition of a story of mine, ‘Even Song and Mowre Song’. It got me kicked out of Winchester in 1907 when I was a boy. It’s about two boys who have an affair with each other. Very outspoken.
(Scott-Moncreiff hands Percy the booklet.)
Percy: You were very bold.
Scott-Moncreiff: Even as a boy I was a part of the Wilde circle – Ross, Millard, Vyvyan Holland.
Percy: You amaze me. This is wonderful.
Scott-Moncreiff: I don’t give a damn. Robert Graves won’t speak to me. I was the lover of Millard and then of Wilfred Owen. The Sitwells hate me.
Percy: What are these other books?
Scott-Moncreiff: Two of them are in French and are by Andre Gide, who was a friend of Wilde. They have just been published. One is ‘Si le Grain ne Meurt’ and the other is ‘Corydon’. Dorothy Bussy says that she will translate them, but don’t hold your breath until the English permit such books. The first book is autobiographical and at the end of it he tells of being in Algeria with Wilde and Douglas. They shared boys with each other.
Percy: I must have this! (Snatches it)
Scott-Moncreiff: ‘Corydon’ is even more outspoken. It is a defense of Uranian love in four dialogues.
Percy: Wonderful! (Snatches it)
Scott-Moncreiff: He has a number of interesting arguments, even from biology. He says that homosexuality is more normal than heterosexuality. Of course he mentions the Greeks. He has ruined his reputation. The Nobel Prize would have been his, but for this. Have you read any of this man’s novels? Especially ‘L’Immoraliste’.
Percy: I am not aware of that.
Scott-Moncreiff: He wrote it in 1902, but there is no English translation. It is about a pederast in Tunisia. There is a conflict between Puritanism and hedonism, between Apollo and Dionysus.
Percy: As Nietzsche would say.
Scott-Moncreiff: As D.H. Lawrence would say. But with boys rather than women. Morally constrained people going to the Mediterranean and letting loose.
Percy: I could have written it. What are those other books on the table?
Scott-Moncreiff: Take them, I don’t like to reach. My leg, you know. I was blown up by the Germans. I lost so many friends and lovers in the war.
Percy: (Reaching for the books) These are translations by you. Who is Proust?
(Percy looks the books over.)
Scott-Moncreiff: Marcel Proust was an asthmatic half-Jewish novelist who became entirely bed-ridden and wrote an enormous society novel which I call ‘Remembrance of Things Past’! He died in 1922, but the later parts of the novel are still in process of being published in French by Gallimard, damn him. I have to deal with him. Imagine a publisher who is skittish about homosexuality, but who publishes a vast novel about precisely that theme.
Percy: ‘Cities of the Plain’. Sounds ominous.
Scott-Moncreiff: ‘Sodome Et Gomorrhe’. I had to change the title to prevent the British reading public from foaming at the mouth. It’s about the Baron De Charlus. Proust minced no words. It is all based on real people in high society.
Percy (Laughing): Can you imagine Henry James writing such a novel in such a way?
Scott-Moncreiff: No American would dare to write such a novel. No American would dare to publish such a novel.
Percy: You have educated me today. I had never heard of this Proust fellow. My idea of French literature is Anatole France.
Scott-Moncreiff: What of Stendhal?
Percy: Never heard of him. What did he write?
Scott-Moncreiff: ‘The Charter House of Parma’ and ‘The Red and The Black.’ I translated them. But they are not homosexual.
Percy: You make me feel ignorant. I thought that I knew everything about the French.
Scott-Moncreiff: There is a glorious dawn coming, but I shall not live to see it. I fear that I shall die before completing my translation of Proust, and the French edition is still two volumes short. This is a labor of Hercules.
Percy: You mentioned a Baron De Charlus.
Scott-Moncreiff: Yes, Robert De Montesquiou in real life. He died in 1921. He was also Des Esseintes in ‘A’ Rebours’ by Huysmans. He was painted by Boldini and by Whistler. He wrote a great deal of bad verse.
Percy: I wonder how I would be portrayed by a novelist? Perhaps a woman.
Scott-Moncreiff: Proust did that. Some of his women are based on men.
Percy (Glancing up): I see you have a photo of Rodin’s ‘The Age of Bronze.’
Scott-Moncreiff: A Belgian soldier. Rodin dared to avoid justifying such a male nude with the usual mythological or historical title. People were shocked.
Percy: And there was ‘The Thinker.’
Scott-Moncreiff: Yes. Why can’t the world accept a male nude as a male nude? Why does he have to be a thinker or a Hercules or an Adam or an Apollo or a Dionysus? Why not just a male Nude?
Percy: You know the answer as well as I. The implication of a male nude is so blatant. Especially with no fig-leaf. Not that Rodin has a reputation for being interested in naked men.
Scott-Moncreiff: The modern Michelangelo. And you know about Michelangelo.
Percy: Especially here in Florence. The David. You spoke of not living to see a dawn.
Scott-Moncreiff: Yes, my leg is broken, I seem to have cancer, and I am writing myself to death like Scott – not that I am related to him.
Percy: ‘Ivanhoe’. My father’s favorite novel.
Scott-Moncreiff: There shall be a dawn when we shall be able to go into a bookstore and obtain a novel about homosexuality without blushing, sold over the counter. Think of it!
Percy: This, your work, is only the beginning. We shall walk with heads unbowed in the bright sunlight.