Video Proust

Ronald Bergan on his role in the longest film ever. Okay, this 3-year-old post from the Guardian references this "home video" recording of A la recherche du temps perdu. You can go to this website, type in a page number (9, 24 and other random numbers worked for me; 1 did not), click voir, and watch regular people read a page o'Proust. I will do one too, as soon as I can figure out how. Anyone else?

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 449-68) Notes for July 2011

p 449 | M. first sees Charlus at Tansonville:  “Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?” called out in a piercing tone of authority a lady in white, whom I had not seen until that moment, while, a little way beyond her, a gentleman in a suit of linen ‘ducks,’ whom I did not know either, stared at me with eyes which seemed to be starting from his head; the little girl’s smile abruptly faded, and, seizing her trowel, she made off without turning to look again in my direction, with an air of obedience, inscrutable and sly."

 by Armand Guillaumin

p 450 |  "Possessing, by virtue of his descent from the Ducs de Nemours and Princes de Lamballe, documents, furniture, tapestries, portraits painted for his ancestors by Raphael, Velasquez, Boucher, ..."

Lebourg: Notre-Dame de Paris et la Seine 

p 460 | "a ‘modern style’ of decoration, employing Lebourg or Guillaumin."

p 468 |"she regarded Princes as enviable above all other men because they were able to have a Labruyère, a Fénelon as their tutors..."  

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 449...) French noble titles - Notes for July 2011

From a rather interesting article on French nobility and/or titles over at Heraldica.org:
"The origin of modern titles like duke, marquis, count lie in public offices held under Merovingian kings (6th-8th c.).

• A duke (Latin dux, literally "leader") was the governor of a province, usually a military leader.
• A count (Latin comes, literally "companion") was an appointee of the king governing a city and its immediate surroundings, or else a high-ranking official in the king's immediate entourage (the latter called "palace counts" or "counts Palatine").
• A marquis was a count who was also the governor of a "march," a region at the boundaries of the kingdom that needed particular protection against foreign incursions (margrave in German).
• A viscount was the lieutenant of a count, either when the count was too busy to stay at home, or when the county was held by the king himself.
• A baron (a later title) was originally a direct vassal of the king, or of a major feudal lord like a duke or a count.
• A castellan (châtelain) was the commander in charge of a castle.  A few castellanies survived with the title of "sire."

"An edict of 1575, rarely enforced, established a minimum size and income for the land to which the created title was attached, thus establishing a hierarchy which was purely notional:

• duc (duke)
• marquis (marquis)
• comte (earl)
• vicomte (viscount)
• baron (baron)"

Proust Online Course

Professor Carter's online Proust course appears to be ongoing.

Biographical essay

Here's a short biographical essay by Charles Matthews at his Proust-reading weblog.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 446-49) Notes for July 2011

p 446 | "horseman beloved of Ares" (Greek god of war)
| "shore of Amphitrite" (Greek goddess of the sea, wife of Poseidon)
| "swift-shipped Meniers": probably refers to Henri Menier (1853-1913), a wealthy French yachting enthusiast, but may also include the rest of the family.

p 447| Charles Leconte de Lisle, French poet, 1818-94. 
| José-Maria de Heredia, Cuban-French poet, 1842-1905. Académician
| Parnassians: As a reaction to romantic poetry, this 19th century school of mostly French poets emphasized art for art’s sake, strict form & meter, and emotional detachment. 
| Suez Canal board (M. de Marsantes)
| Stereoscope: a 3-dimensional photo viewer; special cameras took these pictures.

p 448 | Incarville; Incarville to Cabourg [Balbec]
| Podestà:  Italian officials
| Renaissance medals:   historical records of events & leading figures of the Quattrocento, intended to be the chief source for posterity for the lives of deliberately glorified individuals. a recent sale; images; 

p 449 | violas da gamba, violas d'amore
| Phoenix Club: fictional exclusive club, founded by Charlus & his society friends
| Jockey Club: elite society gathering-place; photo
| Comte de Paris:  Philippe d'Orléans, Count of Paris (1838 – 1894) was the grandson of Louis Philippe I, King of the French. He was a claimant to the French throne from 1848 until his death.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 443-46) Notes for July 2011

p 443 | M. Legrandin (in Combray, engineer & man of letters; in Balbec, Mme de Cambremer’s brother).

| Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-89), Catholic dandy & polemicist from Normandy who wrote novels of provincial life in a belated Gothic-Romantic and derivatively Balzacian vein.

p 444 | "... Zeus Kronion. ..." here, and elsewhere, Bloch borrows tags from Leconte de Lisle's poems & translations from the Greek.

| "... black Ker.." female spirit of violent death (Greek).

| Samuel Bernard (1651-1739) Protestant banker who provided important funding for France during the reigns of Louis XIV & Louis XV.

Pages for July

July 7: Bloch and his father (443; cf. 476). The stereoscope (447).   M. de Charlus’s strange behavior (455).

July 14: Mme de Villeparisis is a Guermantes (456). I recognize him as the man in the grounds of Tansonville (458; cf. I 199). Further weird behavior (463).

July 21:  Mme de Sévigné, La Fontaine and Racine (467). Charlus comes to my room (471). Dinner at the Blochs’ with Saint-Loup (474). To know “without knowing” (477). Bloch’s sisters (477).

July 28:  The elegance of “Uncle Solomon” (481). Nissim Bernard (482); his lies (485). Bloch and Mme Swann in the train (489). Françoise’s view of Bloch and Saint-Loup (490). Saint-Loup and his mistress (490). 

Within a Budding Grove (vol II p 427-37)

p 427 | François-Adrien Boieldieu, French composer, 1775-1834, mostly operas, sometimes called "the French Mozart."
| Eugène Labiche, French playwright, 1815-88. Some consider him the equal of Molière; his plays are more complex & less coarse than other French farces. Académicien

p 428 | "... the wrong notes of ...." Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist & composer, 1829-94. -->

| According to The Esoteric Curiosa and other Proust scholars, Robert de Saint-Loup was, at least partially, based on Proust's blond friend Paul Ernest Boniface de Castellane, the Marquis de Castellane.  V

 
p 434 | caravanserais: a large inn enclosing a courtyard providing accommodation for caravans. Scroll down for a look. 
| 'lighftboy':  Bloch's funny pronunciation of 'liftboy' (with a long 'i'). See p 435-6. 

p 435 | corn-chandler:  retail dealer in corn, grains, and seeds. 
| punter:  gambler, esp. one who bets against a bookmaker. 
| phalanx:  A group of people or similar things forming a compact body or brought together for common purpose. 

p 436 | Stones of Venice by John Ruskin.  See Venice images here.

William Morris' Kelmscott Press Edition of Ruskin

Actual leaf from the Ruskin's notebook, at the Morgan Museum, NYC

p 437 | "Ill-breeding" = "la mauvaise education"
| photo of poppy fields
| “Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for everyone thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.” --  Rene Descartes
| The frequency of the virtues that are identical in us all is not more wonderful than the multiplicity of the defects that are peculiar to each one of us.
| But the variety of our defects is no less remarkable than the similarity of our virtues. p 438

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 415-25) Notes for June 2011

Duc de Nemours

p 415:  | The Marquise mentions the Duc de Nemours carrying a package up to her father. He was really Prince Louis d'Orléans, 2nd son of future king, Louis-Philippe. 

| The "unfortunate" Duchesse de Praslin had been murdered in 1847, most likely by her husband Charles de Choiseul-Praslin, an event that indirectly affected the start of the 1848 Revolution. Read the sordid story here. 

p 416: | The Choiseul family of Champagne.

Louis the Fat

| Louis the Fat (Louis le Gros) = Louis VI, King of France, 1108-37.

| Louis de Loménie (French scholar & writer, Académicien, 1815–78).
| Louis-Mathieu Molé, 1781-1855, French statesman, 18th Prime Minister, Académicien.

| Ximénès Doudan, French writer, 1800-82.
| Joseph Joubert, 1754-1824, writer, see samples translated by Paul Auster.
|"...the materialist position appeared to be crumbling..." 

p 420 | Saumur=historic west/central French town that has military training schools.

| Doncières is in Lorraine in northeastern France.

| Monocles, old and new

p 422 | Carriage-and-pair 

p 425 | Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, 1844-1900.

Nietzsche

| Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,  French philosopher, 1809-65. 

| Comte de Marsantes = Saint-Loup’s father