Swann in Love (vol I, p 408) Notes on Week 24: Social Changes

The French, as soon as they invented photography and hot-air balloons, went up in the balloons and took pictures of Paris. Scroll down to #10 to see the lakes of the bois de Boulogne.

Genius photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue took this famous photo of a fashionable woman walking her dogs.

"End of century" woman by fashion illustrator Félix Fournery ==>>

From Paris from the Earliest 
Period to the Present Day; Volume 1,
by William Walton, courtesy of Gutenberg.org.

p 403 |A description of Chatou 

Renoir's 1881  painting

Vlaminck's Chatou bridge.

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata: 

A moment later she added, inarticulate with rage: "No, but, really, you see, the filthy creature..." using unconsciously, and perhaps responding to the same obscure need to justify herself -- like Françoise at Combray when the chicken refused to die -- the very words which the last twitches of an inoffensive animal in its death throes wring from the peasant who is taking its life.    ... Madame Verdurin revealed (p. 405).

p 408 | Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (September 27, 1627 – April 12, 1704) was a French  bishop  and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist. Court preacher to Louis XIV of France, Bossuet was a strong advocate of political absolutism  and the divine right of kings. He argued that government was divine and that kings received their power from God. He was also an important courtier and politician. (Wiki)

p 408 | Dante's Nine Circles of Hell ::  And who's in the last circle, where Swann puts the Verdurins? (Remember their name is a homophone of "ver du rein" or "kidney worm".  He says: "What a name! ... they are perfect specimens of their disgusting kind!")

p 411 | Victor Massé, French composer, 1822-84.  NYTimes review. The Opéra-Comique de Paris. 

Odette figures: Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on.

Tombs at Dreux

<<==  Chateau at Pierrefonds

"... take them to Beauvais or Saint-Loup-de-Naud.." 

Eugène Viollett-le-Duc (1814-79), French architect.  

Another group's thoughts on Swann.