The Immoralist (1902)

I'm afraid this is another book that I remember reading, but don't remember much about. ( )

Apparently starring Oscar Wilde? This looks dope.

I wish I had read L’Immoraliste around the year 1904. That would have been about two years after it was published and about two years before Picasso started distorting eyes and mouths and jaws and limbs in his painted prostitutes.

I am trying to picture myself dressed in yards and yards of bombazine, chiffon and lace, shapely cut to follow my already markedly thin waist, thanks to those bone stays that have cinched it into a harness, sorry, a corset. I need to feel the effort of breathing in, languidly, and the relief of breathing out before I can breathe in again and hopefully catch the oxygen I did not quite get the previous time.

I would also need to feel the weight of my long hair pinned up around my head and pulled by combs that have scratched my scalp, and may be also of a wide-brimmed hat with feathers and ribbons, sitting on top of that mass of hair. And because of all that accoutrement I would have to stay well perked up rather than lean comfortably against the back of the velvety sofa.

If I want to digest this book properly, to imagine all that conscription seems more pressing than brushing up my Nietzsche.

Or, if I wanted to feel a frisson in any way related to the way Michel falls under the spell of young men in Bikra, rather than dismiss it as irrelevant or accept it in a politically correct fashion; I may have to look for some kind of additional aid. Jean-Léon Gérôme, who died in the year of my hypothetical reading --1904, has a handy proposal for blending sexuality and exotic aesthetics.




I would need all of the above, and other things too, to be able to appreciate the exhilaration that Michel, the claimed immoral-man, is having when in Tunisia, by the sea, he decides to take off his clothes and feel the bright sun that warms his skin and limbs and illuminates him into embracing a new life. Otherwise the idea of a scantly clad man on a beach might now evoke images of overweight tourists cooking themselves into red lobsters under a charring sun.

And similarly goes for getting the conceptual implications of the contrast between classical and gothic architecture. Or for feeling deeply disturbed by the possible implications of Michel’s pursued and revealed individualism, instead of just feeling irritated by this obnoxious and egotistical jerk who is being such an ass to his poor wife.

Because, sadly, many of the signs that in this book herald freedom have now lost their power, because, happily, now they are commonplace. If they did succeed in breaking conventions their effect was short-lived. If Gide’s novel can taste insipid now, and Picasso’s tortured figures have become cute magnets for the refrigerator, may be we have to look elsewhere for the liberating effect sought by modernity.

What about Coco Chanel’s dispensing with the corset?



Or may be not even that has changed us?





( )

Interesting look of total 'liberation' and its costs. Narrator varied wildly between fascinating and wholly repulsing. Back in its day, it might have been revolutionary. Now it has not aged well. ( )

The Immoralist begins with a letter, with the writer wondering how to react to the confession he has just heard from his friend Michel. From there, we read the confession of which he speaks. Michel tells the story of his marriage to Marceline, and the process of self-discovery that has compelled him to call his friends together to tell them about it.

I was under the impression before reading it that the immorality referred to in the title was homosexuality, and it is - to a degree. However, that topic is dealt with obliquely (though directly enough that it was controversial when the book was published in 1902). It's really more about how society constrains us from following our natural instincts, and whether that is a positive or a negative. Michel discovers a new self who refuses to accept popular morality's limitations on behavior and thought, but this leaves the world wide open, requiring Michel to decide what his boundaries are or should be. Whether the reader sees Michel as a trailblazer brave enough to stand up to the stifling society of his times, or a dissolute whiner enabled by his family's means will probably say more about the reader than about Michel.

The themes are highly philosophical, about the innate nature of humanity, society's role in curbing behavior, whether morality can or should be imposed by forces outside the individual. There is much to think about after reading this book, if you choose to. Which is not to say it was a difficult read, by any means - the writing was descriptive and flowing, and the story moves along well.

Recommended for: hedonists, people having an existential crisis, philosophers, fans of Camus.

Quote: "To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom." ( )