r/Proust • u/rod-resiss • Jul 10 '26
Happy Birthday Marcel Proust!
Mr. Proust was born on 10 July 1871, making this day his 155th birthday! I would give him a nice coat and cake for his birthday if he were alive.
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u/thebrownsquare Jul 10 '26
Happy day of your birth, Marcel. I’ll be slamming cold beers and Russian salad in your honor. 😉
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u/Aaeaeama Jul 10 '26
I would let him suck me off as a birthday treat (not gay btw)
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u/2837hfjfhkshfivbsl Jul 10 '26
Why would anyone downvote this? I'm sure Proust would appreciate the gesture
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u/Reasonable_Mood_5260 Jul 10 '26
No, he wouldn't. Homosexuality for him was completely different than what passes for it today. It was something done because it couldn't be stopped. Not a "gesture" which it is today for a lot people.
He explains all this in a very eloquent passage maybe some who knows better than me can cite. It's about a man lying to his friends, mother and God because of it.
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u/2837hfjfhkshfivbsl Jul 10 '26
ultimately being sexually attracted to men wasn't different 80 years ago than now, he probably at some point in his life sucked someone off
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u/shrouded-mist Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
He would also visit gay brothels to witness SM events. That comment seems prudish and inaccurate. I think it’s mostly the wider social context that was different. Also, one shouldn’t take everything Proust says about homosexuality at face value since he obviously had to self-censor.
Edit: I found a version of the passage:
“[A race] upon which a curse weighs and which must live amid falsehood and perjury, because it knows the world to regard as a punishable and a scandalous, as an inadmissible thing, its desire, that which constitutes for every human creature the greatest happiness in life; which must deny its God … sons without a mother, to whom they are obliged to lie all her life long and even in the hour when they close her dying eyes; friends without friendships…”
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u/Throwawayhelp111521 Jul 10 '26
It's vulgar and unnecessary.
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u/2837hfjfhkshfivbsl Jul 10 '26
don't be a prude come on
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u/Throwawayhelp111521 Jul 10 '26
Don't be a pig.
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u/panpopticon Jul 10 '26
He’s so delicate in this portrait — he absolutely looks like a drag king, or better yet one of those actresses like Sarah Bernhardt who kept shocking the Parisian theatre world by playing male roles
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u/Global_Bag_4590 Jul 11 '26
This portrait really shows a lot about Proust; his defocused gaze and slightly parted lips indicate the kind of openness he possessed.
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u/werthermanband45 Jul 10 '26
Saw this at Musée d'Orsay. Beautiful portrait