Le Temps retrouvé
Esquisse XX
(Cahier 49, 49v + paperolle)
Still to be added (most capital) which will allow there to be a
complete, original Jupien, a bit like Jérôme Coignard (Bretaux, I can't
remember the name, in Les dieux ont soif) on the glued down
piece of paper opposite. But it will be there where I say about Jupien
that he is running a brothel.
In short Jupien was now carrying on a line of work that could put him
in prison, all the more so since with the war he was obliged, so he said,
to call upon the younger classes who were not yet eighteen years old, and
yet he was more intelligent, more educated, more sensible, more honest
than the average person. It is just that it is not at all certain that
particular qualities of intelligence, of spirit, lead to an increased
morality in the way we conduct our life. On the other hand, to some extent
(which clearly is not the highest) the only effect of intelligence [two
illegible lines] Then where a working man of low intelligence,
narrow minded, may be patriotic and pious, a more intelligent working man
may easily be an internationalist. And where a working man of low
intelligence and ill-natured, if propositioned by the likes of M. de
Charlus will drag him off to the police courts, a working man who is in no
way an invert, but intelligent and kind, will take the whole thing as a
joke, and will try in whatever way he can to give him satisfaction. Jupien
had observed that in general the Charluses were superior to the
Guermantes. He saw nothing wrong in satisfying those tastes which in any
case were his own, and at the same time providing a living to the young
ruffians who he considered were better hearted than many people of better
class. There is no doubt that with a higher degree of intelligence and
immorality, Jupien would have been ashamed of his trade. But he was
precisely so to the extent that he had recognized that there was no value
in the scruples held by the masses and that he had not yet been able to
arrive at the scruples that the elite give themselves.
Everything that M. de Charlus recounts at the Verdurin's about choir
boys for example could be put in the mouth of Jupien which would make some
curious books: (Sesame but no lilies) in the discipline of the house. But
say that his trade had debased him, because in the beginning he would
never have imagined setting up a sort of pandemonium with chained up men
etc. (think about horses laying in wait). This debasement parallel perhaps
to that of M. de Charlus who little by little becomes one of those people
such as in Saint-Simon (Prince d'Harcourt) and who live mysteriously in
their debauchery.
Created 19.02.21