Оборот чувств "Прекрасной эпохи" и сплетни Рассказчика у Марселя Пруста

Логос. 2025. Т. 35. № 2. С. 143–168.

Mikirtumov I.

In this article, I want to connect the genre of gossip, which is an important device in Proust's "Recherche", with the circulation of pleasures in the "Belle Époque". I characterize its main features in connection with the phenomenon of decadence and try to show that the latter was a kind of designer's studio in which tastes and aesthetic standards were produced. In the Belle Époque, society integrated, there was an intensive cultural exchange, in which for four decades high society, the basis of which was the hereditary aristocracy, set the tone for all other strata. This determined the circulation of pleasures, which I compare with Marx's commodity fetishism. Decadence as such did not go beyond the sphere of social aesthetics. In his novel, Proust makes the narrator a considerable gossip. This is due to the need to realize the socio-critical function of the novel outside of ideological certainty. To do this, the writer must bring the lives of people who make up high society as close as possible, overcoming the fact that these people are uninteresting and that nothing happens to them. Instead of giving the narrative a “literary quality,” Proust turns the narrative into, in Jameson’s words, “whispering.” This is achieved, firstly, by the reader’s pleasure, caused by the discourse of gossip, which has positive social functions. Secondly, the narrator in the novel, a melancholic and morbid person, discovers a plan for an almost detective investigation in which he removes the tension between the past and the present, the imaginary and the real, as well as between the material of the novel and the narrative. The pleasure of talking about people enjoying themselves brings it to the narrator.

Keywords: декаданс, слухи, удовольствие, gossip, Marcel Proust, Марсель Пруст, Decadence, Belle Époque, pleasures, прекрасная эпоха, наслаждение

Publication based on the results of: Human in the Digital Environment: Inclusive and Adaptive Strategies of Culture, Biopolitics and Biosemiotics (2025)