The Captive V pp 289-310

p 290 | per fas et nefas: Latin for "Through right and wrong."

p 290 | Il Sodoma (1477–1549) was the name given to Renaissance painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi.  After separating from his wife, he was considered by contemporaries to have been homosexual.

p 292 | Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921)

p 294 | kakochnyk: hair style resembling diadems worn by Russian aristocratic women. Léon Bakst : Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Kokoshnik

p 306 | Xavier Boniface Saintine (1798 – 1865) was a French dramatist and novelist.

p 309 | Montesquiou family; Uzès family; House of La Trémoille; Duke of Luynes

p 309 | Abbé François-Xavier de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1757–1832) was a French clergyman and politician.

p 310 | philippic: a discourse or declamation full of bitter condemnation; tirade.

The Captive V pp 272-89

p 272 | El Greco paints the Grand Inquisitor: This intense portrait depicts Fernando Niño de Guevara (1541–1609), who in 1596 was named cardinal and is dressed as such here. In 1599 he became Inquisitor General of Spain but resigned in 1602 to serve the rest of his life as Archbishop of Seville. The painting probably dates from the spring of 1600 when the cardinal was in Toledo with Philip III and members of the Madrid court.

p 275 | Jean Mounet-Sully (1841-1916), French actor.

p 276 | Hair en brosse: French phrase meaning cut short so it stands up like bristles on a brush. An example of en brosse is a man's military hair cut or a buzz cut.

p 279 | Queen of the May: The May Queen is usually a teenage girl who is selected to ride or walk at the front of a parade for May Day celebrations. She wears a white gown to symbolize purity and usually a tiara or crown.

p 281 | 19th century private detectives. 

p 284 | ... looks like a Bronzino.

p 289 | Le Gaulois: French daily newspaper, founded 1868.

The Captive V pp 261-72

p 261 | Cercle de l'Union interalliée : also known as the Cercle interallié, is a private social & dining club established in 1917. The clubhouse is the Hôtel Perrinet de Jars at 33 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. It adjoins the British Embassy and an annex of the embassy of Japan.

Duchesse of Uzes

p 262 | Uzès, Jacques, duc de (French aristocrat): The Duchesse of Uzes, née Rochechouart de Mortemart was the first woman in France to obtain a driving licence... in 1889 she and her son Jacques were fined for speeding at nearly 15 kph in their Delahaye in the Bois de Boulogne. Heiress to the Veuve Cliquot champagne fortune, she financed General Boulanger whose ambition was to overthrow the French Republic. She wrote under the name of Manuela, and also sculpted the statue of St Hubert (Patron of the Hunt) in the Sacré Coeur Basilica in Paris. She was a feminist who was interested in furthering social welfare, and became a friend of the anarchist Louise Michel.

p 262 | M. Cartier (French aristocrat, Mme de Villefranche’s brother; friend of Bréauté & La Trémoïlle) (character)

p 262-63 | Tissot's painting of the Rue Royale. Charles Haas is on the far right. Click here to see who else is in the picture.

p 264 | Antoine Léon Marie de Noailles (19 April 1841 Paris – 2 February 1909) 9th prince de Poix, from (1846) 6th duc espagnol de Mouchy, 5th duc français de Mouchy et duc de Poix, from 1854, was a French nobleman.

p 264 | Boucher tapestries :: François Boucher (1703–1770)

p 266 | Charles VII, called the Victorious or the Well-Served, was a monarch of the House of Valois who ruled as King of France from 1422 to his death.

p 265 | Quai Conti, right on the Seine, near Pont Neuf. Nice.

p 267 | Otto Wegener... photographer.... see photos here...
Otto Wegener (1849 - 1924) is a Swedish photographer who worked in Paris from 1867. He took this picture of Proust:

p 267 | Guillaume Lenthéric (Parisian hairdresser/perfumer, d. 1912)

p 270 | Praxiteles (Greek sculptor, 4th century B.C.):

p 270 | Jean de La Bruyère (French essayist, Académician, 1645–96).

p 270 | Theocritus (Greek poet, 3rd century B.C.):

p 272 | Chaps: a fissure or crack, especially in the skin.

Video : Marcel Proust (Ten Great Writers Part 5)

Video :  Marcel Proust (Ten Great Writers Part 5)

Click above or press Play.  Some dramatization, some conversation, some explication. All wonderful.  One hour long.

Possible chronology, in French

Chronologie des événements d'À la recherche du temps perdu...

Muhlstein Video (1 hour): Proust's Muse

The French Embassy live-streamed Anka Muhlstein and Dr. Valerie Steele, Nov. 22, 2016. Here is the recording.

The Captive V pp 231-60

p 231 | Passy : an area of Paris located in the 16th arrondissement, on the Right Bank, home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.

p 233 | ... Rue de Berri and Rue Washington are in the same neighborhood, the 8th arrondissement of Paris,

p 233 | Lemuel Gulliver is the fictional protagonist and narrator of Gulliver's Travels, a novel written by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726.

p 235 | Janus  is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past.

p 237 | ... old French silver... This is only from 1882.

p 240 | Anaxagoras  (c. 500—428 B.C.E.):  Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was an important Presocratic natural philosopher and scientist who lived and taught in Athens for approximately 30 years.

p 240 | .... the Apostles at Pentecost...The Christian feast day of Pentecost is 7 weeks after Easter Sunday. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles.

p 243 | amyl = amyl nitrite, a vasodilator, may have been used to treat / prevent chest pain (angina).

p 244 | Vermeer's View of Delft... and the little yellow wall

p 249 | Claude-Philibert Barthelot, comte de Rambuteau (1781–1869), Préfet of the former Départment of the Seine, caused pissoirs to be installed on Paris streets. See also pissotière.

p 255 |  Neurasthenia.... more than just neurotic?

p 257 |  Le Pêcheur d'Islande (An Iceland Fisherman, 1886 novel by Pierre Loti); Tartarin de Tarascon (Tartarin of Tarascon, 1872 novel by Alphonse Daudet)

p 26o |  Eyeglasses in 19th century France

The Captive V pp 210-30

p 217 | Gabriel Davioud, (French architect, 1823–81), Trocadero, Jardin des Champs-Élysées.

Pavia

p 218 | Charterhouse of Pavia = Carthusian monastery of Pavia (Italy)


 



p 218 | Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506), Italian painter.

p 218 | Passy is an area of Paris, in the 16th arrondissement, on the Right Bank, traditionally home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.
 

Passy & the Seine

 

Bois de Boulogne

p 219 | The Bois de Boulogne is a large public park on the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. It was created between 1852 and 1858 during the reign of the Emperor Louis Napoleon.

p 229-30 | Ferdinand Barbedienne (French artist, 1810-92). Bronze worker, reproduced ancient and modern sculptures in bronze.

The Captive V pp 169-210

p 176 | Gregory the Great . . . Palestrina: Gregory the Great, Pope from 590 to 604, is supposed to have set the rules for Gregorian chant. A 16th-century Pope, Gregory XIII, had Palestrina adapt the old chants to the new liturgy of Pius V. (Clark)

p 180 | Charles de Sévigné, son of Madame de Sévigné.

p 185 | Les Fourberies de Nérine, a comedy in verse by by Théodore de Banville

p 195 | Danaides . . . Ixion: From Greek legend, they were condemned to never-ending tasks. The Danaides (the 50 daughters of Danaus) murdered their husbands and were condemned to spend eternity pouring water into a bottomless vessel. Ixion was attached by Zeus to a burning wheel which turned eternally in the Underworld.

p 196 | Trois Quartiers shop in Paris.

p 203 | midinette : Parisian seamstress or salesgirl in a clothes shop (French, from midi [noon] + dinette [light meal], since the girls had time for no more than a snack at midday). © Collins English Dictionary,, 12th ed, 2014

p 205 | Lamoureux concert = an orchestral concert society which once gave weekly concerts by its own orchestra, founded in Paris by Charles Lamoureux in 1881.

p 205 | The Longjumeau Postilion: An 1836 comic opera by Adolphe Adam. In 1915, the critic Frederic Masson wrote that this work compared to Wagner's Die Meistersinger.

p 207 | Human Comedy (title of Balzac's collected novels); The Legend of the Centuries (a collection of narrative poems by Victor Hugo); The Bible of Humanity (imaginative attempt at a synthesis of human history by Jules Michelet)

p 210 | 120 hp Mystère : a make of aircraft.

p 210 | L 'Education sentimentale: in Flaubert's novel of that name, the woman the hero loves sees in his house a portrait of a former mistress of his, whom she had known. She says, "I've seen that woman somewhere," but he replies, "Impossible, it's an old Italian painting."

The Captive V pp 156-168

p 159 | Renaissance Pietà: There are others, but Michaelangelo's is the main one.

p 161 | Prunier Restaurant in Paris specialized in seafood.

p 161 | Here's mackerel! (Il arrive le maquereau) = a pun because maquereau is French slang for a pimp, hence his thought wanders to the chauffeur.

p 161 | Cos lettuce=Romaine

p 162 | Praeceptis salutaribus moniti et divina institutione formati audemus dicere : "Instructed by Thy saving precepts, and following Thy divine institution, we are bold to say..." This is the opening to the Lord's Prayer in the Mass liturgy.

p 162 | Suave mari magno="How pleasant when on a great sea..." (Lucretius). These opening lines of Book II of Lucretius' poem De rerum naturae observe how pleasant it is, when we are on dry land, to watch another man battling to stay afloat in a stormy sea. Though the poet was commending not schadenfreude but philosophical detachment, the phrase is used proverbially to allude to someone who takes pleasure in the suffering of others. Proust, however, seems here to be using it literally and not figuratively. (Clark)


p 163 | Chasselas = White wine grape

p 163 | Rebattet, 12, rue du Faubourg- Saint-Honore. A very
fashionable pastry shop.

p 164 | "... ices not hawked in the street..." : small ices, to be eaten immediately, were certainly sold in the street before 1900: there is a 19th century photo of an ice-cream man with his cart by Eugene Atget. But what the characters are discussing here are sizeable, elaborate iced desserts sold in expensive shops. Scroll down on this page to see an example.


Eugene Atget p 165 | Monte Rosa is a huge ice-covered mountain in the Alps.

p 167 | Scheherazade is the fictional narrator of the Arabian Nights, a book which Proust loved both as a child and as an adult. She made up a new tale for 1001 nights to avoid being killed by the king.

p 168 | "...consecration-cross of his wheel = the steering-wheel of some cars at this time was cruciform, with no outer ring. Others were stylized, with a circle enclosing a cross.




p 168 ff: The Palace at Versailles;  Grand Trianon at Versailles;
Petit Trianon at Versailles
Hôtel des Réservoirs at Versailles
Vatel