Here’s a little more on the classification of gays. Gide writes, “I call a pederast the man who, as the word indicates, falls in love with young boys. I call a sodomite . . . the man whose desire is addressed to mature men. I call an invert the man who, in the comedy of love, assumes the role of a woman and desires to be possessed. These three types of homosexuals are not always clearly distinct; there are possible transferences from one to another; but most often the difference among them is such that they experience a profound disgust for one another, a disgust accompanied by a reprobation that in no way yields to that which you (heterosexuals) fiercely show toward all three. The pederasts, of whom I am one (why cannot I say this quite simply, without your immediately claiming to see a brag in my confession?), are much rarer, and the sodomites much more numerous, than I first thought. . . . As to the inverts, whom I have hardly frequented at all, it has always seemed to me that they alone deserved the reproach of moral or intellectual deformation and were subject to some of the accusations that are commonly addressed to all homosexuals. . . . That such loves can spring up, that such relationships can be formed, it is not enough for me to say that this is natural; I maintain that it is good; each of the two finds exultation, protection, a challenge in them; and I wonder whether it is for the youth or the elder man that they are more profitable.”

Such silliness. Twink lovers, bears, and bottoms, I suppose. I wonder just how young Gide means when he says “young boys.” I have a preference for young guys myself, but I would certainly not say I preferred young boys. I have no sexual interest in boys. And even the boys who are of age but who seem very child-like are not sexually appealing to me. What IS appealing to me are young guys who mix maturity with youth—the boyish faced kid with the body of a man . . . a sizable dick, a hairy bottom, and a slightly muscled physique. I like the contrast of innocence and brawn. But boys, mere boys, hold no appeal. If forced to choose between pederast, sodomite, or invert, however, I suppose I’d be a pederast. That Gide thinks inverts deserve reproach is reproachable. His thinking on homosexuality is crude.

In May of 1921, just months before Proust’s death, Gide wrote this: “Spent an hour yesterday evening with Proust. . . He says that he has not been out of bed for a long time. Although it is stifling in the room in which he receives me, he is shivering; he has just left another, much hotter room in which he was covered with perspiration; he complains that his life is nothing but a slow agony, and although having begun, as soon as I arrived, to talk about homosexuality, he interrupted himself to ask me if I can enlighten him as to the teaching of the Gospels, for someone or other has told him that I talk particularly well on the subject. He hopes to find in the Gospels some support and relief for his sufferings, which he depicts at length as atrocious. He is fat, or rather puffy; he reminds me somewhat of Jean Lorrain. I am taking him Corydon, of which he promises not to speak to anyone; and when I say a word or two about my Memoirs: ‘You can tell anything,’ he exclaims; ‘but on condition that you never say: I.’ But that won’t suit me. Far from denying or hiding his homosexuality, he exhibits it, and I could almost say boasts of it. He claims never to have loved women save spiritually and never to have known love except with men. His conversation, ceaselessly cut by parenthetical clauses, runs on without continuity. He tells me his conviction that Baudelaire was homosexual: ‘The way he speaks of Lesbos, and the mere need of speaking of it, would be enough to convince me,’ and when I protest: ‘In any case, if he was homosexual, it was almost without his knowing it; and you don’t believe that he ever practiced. . .’ ‘What!’ he exclaims. ‘I am sure of the contrary; how can you doubt that he practiced? He, Baudelaire!’ And in the tone of his voice it is implied that by doubting I am insulting Baudelaire. But I am willing to believe that he is right; and that homosexuals are even a bit more numerous than I thought at first. In any case I did not think Proust was so exclusively so.” Just a paragraph later Gide bemoans his lack of facility at the piano. He says he does not like pianists because: “All the pleasure they give me is nothing compared to the pleasure I give myself when I play; but when I hear them I become ashamed of my playing—and certainly quite wrongly. But it is just the same when I read Proust; I hate virtuosity, but it always impresses me, and in order to scorn it I should first like to be capable of it.” I understand when Gide means.

If Gide’s thought on homosexuality is crude, Proust certainly does not further the cause in his writing. Elegant and beautiful as it is, his treatment of gays is harsh and relentlessly unsympathetic. Gide agrees. He writes in December, 1921, “I have read Proust’s latest pages with, at first, a shock of indignation. Knowing what he thinks, what he is, it is hard for me to see in them anything but a pretense, a desire to protect himself, a camouflage of the cleverest sort, for it can be to no one’s advantage to denounce him. Even more: that offense to truth will probably please everybody: heterosexuals, whose prejudices it justifies and whose repugnances it flatters; and the others, who will take advantage of the alibi and their lack of resemblance to those he portrays. In short, in considering the public’s cowardice, I do not know any writing that is more capable than Proust’s “Sodome et Gomorrhe” of confirming the error of public opinion.”

Gide is right. On the one hand, that Proust treats the subject of homosexuality so extensively in his books is exciting and surprising, given the times. Homosexuality is insinuated into every otherwise respectable aspect of society. Gays inhabit the Paris parlors, the butcher shops, and theaters. It gives readers the impression that it’s not a rare and dangerous scourge, but a part of everyday life. On the other hand, Proust’s every treatment of homosexuality is unsympathetic--gays are ugly and duplicitous. He mirrors exactly the sharply disdainful attitudes of the public, and one gets the feeling that he’s trying to have it both ways. He wants to write about gay life, his life, but he also wants to protect himself. Just as he said to Gide—you can write anything as long as you don’t say “I.”

There’s one final passage about Proust that I want to note. Proust’s chauffeur arrives at Gide’s house, returning the copy of Corydon that Gide had given him to read. What’s funny is that Gide notes how lengthy and convoluted the chauffeur’s speech is. “His sentence is much longer and more complicated than I am quoting it; I imagine he learned it on the way, for when I interrupted him at first, he began it all over again and recited it in one breath.” The chauffeur’s wife, who also lives with Proust, speaks in a similarly convoluted speech. Gide visited him in mid-May, 1921, and describes Proust as spending “hours on end without being able even to move his head; he stays in bed all day long, and for days on end. At moments he rubs the side of his nose with the edge of a hand that seems dead, with its fingers oddly stiff and separated, and nothing could be more impressive than this finicky, awkward gesture, which seems the gesture of an animal or a madman.”

During the visit Proust talks of nothing but homosexuality. What is most interesting is that Proust, near his death and having finished his work for the most part, is perhaps regretting his treatment of homosexuality. “He says he blames himself for that ‘indecision’ which made him, in order to fill out the heterosexual part of the book, transpose “Within a Budding Grove” all the attractive, affectionate, and charming elements contained in his homosexual recollections, so that for “Sodome” he is left nothing but the grotesque and the abject. But he shows himself to be very much concerned when I tell him that he seems to have wanted to stigmatize homosexuality; he protests; and eventually I understand that what we consider vile, an object of laughter or disgust, does not seem so repulsive to him. When I ask him if he will ever present that Eros in a young and beautiful guise, he replies that, to begin with, what attracts him is almost never beauty and that he considers it to have very little to do with desire—and that, as for youth, this was what he could most easily transpose (what lent itself best to a transposition). ”

In early January of 1921 Gide went to see Parade, by Cocteau, Satie, and Picasso. He writes: “went to see Parade—of which I don’t know what to admire more: pretense or poverty. Cocteau is walking up and down in the wings, where I go to see him; aged, contracted, painful. He knows that the sets and costumes are by Picasso, that the music is by Satie, but he wonders if Picasso and Satie are not by him.”