The Enigma of Character

Chapter Three The Enigma of Character […] An encounter extended, as if, by a sudden progress in our rela- tions, she had stopped beside me, in her garden hat, and had let me ex- amine at my leisure, for the first time, that full cheek, that turn of the neck, that corner of the eyebrows (hitherto concealed by the rapidity of her passing, the confusion of my impressions, the unreliability of memory); and their contemplation, like that of the throat and arms of a woman I had never seen except in a high-necked, long-sleeved gown, was for me a voluptuous discovery, a mark of favor. Those lines it had once seemed almost forbidden to look at I could now study as in a trea- tise of the only geometry which had any value for me. Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way Marcel Proust studied photographs of individual people for clues as to their social origins and moral characters. As semiologist Mieke Bal put it in The Mottled Screen (1997), the narrator of In Search of Lost Time undertakes an “ethnographic quest” that consists of a ceaseless representation and explora- tion of others.1 Proust’s physiognomic and ethnographic quest through photography occurs in the pages of his novel as well as in the events of his life.2 Bal also noted Proust’s use of “the detective-type detail” in descriptive pas- sages of the Search.3 Reliance on such details parallels the morphological inquiries of Giovanni Morelli and Bernard Berenson and French biometricist/ criminologist Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914). Proust’s portraitist Jacques- Émile Blanche compared Proust to Bertillon: Monsieur Proust, like a Bertillon, has his [photographic] record cards, his fingerprints and has only to open up one of his files to build up a picture of characters who are touching or absurd. He adds to his quali- 1 Bal 1997, 244. 2 Brassaï 2001, 35. 3 Bal 1997, 8, 80. 90 In looking back one learns to see ties of alienist and psychologist, the rare spice of a sharp irony that would be implacable if it were not tempered by sympathy.4 Other new techniques for visualization that ripened toward the fin-de-siècle included X-ray photography, enlargements of microscopic samples, astro- nomical (telescopic) photographs, and psychiatric photographs, including those made of hysterical patients at the Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris. Ethno- graphic and orientalist photographs, and dramatic images of cast figures from the excavations at Pompeii added elements of romance and mystery to what was new and exciting in visual culture. Proust searched portraits and snapshots for physiognomic details and insights as to the social status and inherent character of various subjects. As portrait photography of actresses, aristocrats, and ordinary people flooded Paris in the form of cabinet cards and cartes-de-visite (visiting cards), photographs were also at a premium as acquired souvenirs. Ideas of “sympathetic magic” about photographs and their subjects were also current in the modern- ist imagination. Medical and Police Photography In modern Europe, and especially in France around the turn of the century, interpretive physiognomy was a preoccupation, and photographs were used for purposes of diagnosis and classification in medical and police work. Mar- cel’s father, Adrien Proust, was an eminent Paris physician who at one time worked at the Salpêtrière Hospital together with his near-contemporary col- league, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-93).5 Adrien Proust wrote about hysteria and nervous diseases, among other topics, publishing L’hygiène du neu- rasthénique with Gilbert Ballet, an expert on delusions and aphasia, in 1897.6 Dr. Proust’s personal library was stocked with a great number of medical books, and it is therefore likely that Marcel was acquainted with the photographs of interesting cases (catalepsy, seizure, hysteria, and other nervous conditions) made under the auspices of Charcot and published in the Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (1875-79) and the Nouvelle iconographie de la Salpêtrière, covering the years 1898 through 1918 (fig. 34).7 4 Blanche 1914, trans. Hodson, 116-17. 5 Le Masle 1936, 35. 6 Proust and Ballet 1897. 7 Genin 1999, 103. .

Load more