— Adam Donaldson Powell
Proust: the gay Don Juan of the Paris Elite
He gathered boys as others gathered jade,
first editions,
ivory saints,
or painted porcelains
sleeping beneath crystal domes.
No cabinet was ever quite complete.
Each handsome face arrived
like spring entering a shuttered room,
bringing laughter,
restless eyes,
the perfume of youth
that no manuscript could preserve.
He listened greedily—
not merely to their words,
but to the shape of their silences,
their provincial dreams,
their mothers,
their uniforms,
their awkward triumphs.
Every confession
became another thread
woven into the invisible tapestry
he carried home.
They believed themselves beloved.
Perhaps they were.
For a season.
A year,
perhaps another half
if beauty continued to surprise him.
Then, with exquisite courtesy,
the curtain descended.
No thunder.
No scandal.
Only the quiet rearrangement
of affection,
as though the heart
were merely another salon
whose furniture required refreshing.
Yet loyalty—
ah, loyalty—
he demanded as kings demand tribute.
The departed must remain faithful,
grateful,
orbiting forever
around the pale moon
of his remembrance.
Meanwhile,
another bright Apollo
climbed the staircase,
another smile
entered the ledger,
another conquest
became another proof
that time itself
might hesitate
before such appetite.
He hunted neither bodies
nor souls alone,
but the strange country
where beauty,
memory,
desire,
and possession
share the same address.
His lovers,
his stories,
his paintings,
his rare editions—
each joined the same collection,
carefully dusted,
lovingly admired,
never allowed
to remain entirely free.
Thus the great archivist of memory
became also
its elegant libertine:
a Don Juan
who kissed with one hand
and catalogued with the other,
forever searching
for the next beautiful youth
whose brief season
could be transformed
into permanence,
while permanence itself
slipped quietly away.
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