Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah Review

The fourth volume of In Search of Lost Time begins with one of the great opening scenes in modern fiction: the narrator, hidden on a staircase, witnesses an encounter between the Baron de Charlus and the tailor Jupien that reveals, in the space of a few pages, what has been latent throughout the preceding volumes. The long preparation makes the revelation precisely calibrated: Charlus has been a figure of baroque eccentricity, fierce snobbery, and obscure menace — and the opening of this volume explains all of it while transforming nothing, which is exactly the effect Proust intends.

Proust’s treatment of homosexuality in the Belle Époque is simultaneously the most extensive and the most precise in the literature of the period. The term he uses — inversion — is the medical language of his time, but his analysis goes well beyond the medical. What he is describing is not a condition but a social position: the way that a desire which cannot be acknowledged shapes every aspect of how it is experienced and expressed. Charlus’s snobbishness, his rages, his strange generosities, his elaborate performances of heterosexual masculinity and equally elaborate betrayals of them — all of these are rendered as the effects of a life lived in concealment, and Proust’s sympathy is exact: not sentimental, not disapproving, but the sympathy of close observation.

The volume also extends the narrator’s jealousy about Albertine, now returning to Paris with him, into what will become its own separate obsession. The two strands — Charlus’s world and the narrator’s jealousy — are connected by Proust’s central epistemological theme: the impossibility of knowing another person’s inner life. Charlus cannot be known in polite society because his desire is concealed; Albertine cannot be known because the narrator’s jealousy is a machine for generating suspicions that evidence can neither confirm nor dispel. The social comedy of the Verdurins’ salon, where the volume spends considerable time, provides a third variation on the same theme: performance all the way down.

The result is the most formally ambitious volume of the Search — more explicitly organised around an argument than the earlier volumes, more willing to use its characters as demonstrations of a thesis. That it remains so humanly compelling despite this is a measure of how deeply Proust has by this point committed to the fullness of his people: even as case studies, Charlus and Albertine and the Verdurins are more present on the page than the central figures of most novels.

The Revelation on the Staircase

The fourth volume opens with one of the great set pieces in modern fiction. The narrator, concealed on a staircase, witnesses an encounter between the Baron de Charlus and the tailor Jupien that reveals, in a few pages, what has been latent throughout the preceding volumes. The long preparation is what makes the revelation land so precisely. Charlus has appeared until now as a figure of baroque eccentricity, ferocious snobbery, and obscure menace, and the opening of this volume explains all of it while transforming nothing — which is exactly the effect Proust intends. Nothing about Charlus is undone by the disclosure; everything is suddenly legible.

This scene establishes the volume as Proust’s most extended and most precise treatment of same-sex desire in the literature of the Belle Époque. The term he uses, inversion, belongs to the medical language of his period, but his analysis reaches far beyond the medical. What he describes is not a condition but a social position — the way a desire that cannot be openly acknowledged shapes every aspect of how it is felt and expressed. Charlus’s snobbery, his rages, his strange generosities, his elaborate performances of conventional masculinity and his equally elaborate betrayals of them are all rendered as the effects of a life lived in concealment. And here Charlus reaches his full complexity, becoming arguably the most completely realized character in the entire Search.

Jealousy and the Limits of Knowledge

Alongside the world of Charlus, the volume extends the narrator’s jealousy about Albertine — now returning to Paris with him — into what will become its own consuming obsession. The two strands are bound together by Proust’s central epistemological theme: the impossibility of truly knowing another person’s inner life. Charlus cannot be known in polite society because his desire is hidden; Albertine cannot be known because the narrator’s jealousy is a machine for generating suspicions that no evidence can confirm or dispel. Jealousy here is not a response to facts but to possibilities — an epistemological condition as much as an emotional one. The novel’s vision of inversion turns out to be fundamentally social: the desire invisible to the social world is in fact everywhere within it, concealed and performed in countless registers. Concealment and performance, Proust suggests, are not the opposites of identity but partly constitutive of it — we are, in some measure, what we hide.

Argument and Humanity in Balance

The extended sequences at the Verdurins’ salon provide a third variation on the same theme — performance all the way down — and they are essential to the novel’s architecture even as they ask real patience of the reader. This is, by design, the most formally ambitious volume of the Search, more explicitly organized around an argument than its predecessors and more willing to use its characters as demonstrations of a thesis. The risk of such a method is that people begin to feel like case studies, and the volume’s sociological framework occasionally produces exactly that impression. What is remarkable is how rarely it does. Charlus, Albertine, and the Verdurins remain more vividly present on the page than the central figures of most novels, even when Proust is most openly using them to prove a point. That a volume so committed to argument should remain so humanly compelling is a measure of how completely Proust has, by this stage, committed himself to the fullness of his people.