Notes on Week 18: More art

Odette as Zipporah....Botticelli  "The Trials of Moses" (1481-82) Sistine Chapel, Rome

He [Swann] had always found a peculiar fascination in tracing in the paintings of the old masters not merely the general characteristics of the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but rather what seems least susceptible of generalization, the individual features of men and women whom he knew . . . in the colouring of a Ghirlandaio, the nose of M. de Palancy

  Cattleya orchids   

By the way, there's a lovely Proust site, all in Italian. Click here to see her Proust photographs. Isn't it wonderful to be connected to a worldwide literary appreciation?

Our Lady of Laghet (Odette's medal). Photos here.

 "... those interiors by Pieter de Hooch....   {Pieter de Hooch, also spelled "Hoogh" or "Hooghe", baptized December 20, 1629 – 1684) was a genre painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was a contemporary of Dutch Master Jan Vermeer, with whom his work shared themes and style.}

Cinema Proust

Here are the movies we spoke of:

• Swann in Love (preview & imdb)
• Time Regained (site & imdb)

Swann in Love (vol I p 265 ff) Notes on week 17 :: Music

Who Wrote Vinteuil's Sonata?
Excellent blog article by Blair Sanderson on which composer's work may have been the model for Vinteuil's sonata -- truly a long-running literary mystery.  He makes a case for several different composers (Fauré, Franck, Debussy, Saint-Saens, even Wagner), and, best of all, includes musical links.

p 265 | By the way, Dr. Potain was a real person. (The sphygmomanometer was the first accurate and practical instrument for estimating blood pressure. In the version invented by Pierre Potain (1825-1901), a rubber tube with an aneroid manometer was attached to a compressible bulb filled with air. Major, Ralph H. Major, A History of Medicine. 1954., p. 890)

Loveseat in Beauvais fabric (1855)

The chairs and sofas of the latter half of the reign of Louis Quatorze are exceedingly grand and rich. The suite of furniture for the state apartment of a prince or wealthy nobleman comprised a canapé, or sofa, and six fauteils, or arm chairs, the frames carved with much spirit, or with "feeling," as it is technically termed, and richly gilt. The backs and seats were upholstered and covered with the already famous tapestry of Gobelins or Beauvais.  (Frederick Litchfield, Illustrated History of Furniture From the Earliest to the Present Time)

Here is a modern restoration of a settee and a Beauvais tapestry and another Beauvais-covered piece, about in the middle of the page.  From the text:

   And Mme. Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself upon a chair, made him get up. "You're not at all comfortable there; go along and sit by Odette; you can make room for M. Swann there, can't you, Odette?"
   "What charming Beauvais!" said Swann, stopping to admire the sofa before he sat down on it, and wishing to be polite.
     "I am glad you appreciate my sofa," replied Mme. Verdurin, "and I warn you that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well abandon the idea at once. They never made any more like it. And these little chairs, too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a moment. The emblems in each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the subject of the tapestry on the chair; you know, you combine amusement with instruction when you look at them;--I can promise you a delightful time, I assure you... (Swann in Love, Montcrieff tr.)

Axel's Castle by Edmund Wilson

Edmund Wilson was one of the most important literary critics of the 20th century. Axel's Castle is an essay collection covering Symbolist authors from Arthur Rimbaud to Gertrude Stein, and includes an excellent one on Marcel Proust. You can read the text here. Here is Wilson on Proust's multi-functional neurotic illnesses:

Proust had evidently come to use his illness as a pretext for escaping the ordinary contacts with the world, for being relieved from the obligations of punctuality and from embarrassing encounters. His super-normal sensitiveness must have made the social life which so fascinated him inordinately difficult for him; and his illness gave him a sort of counter-advantage over people whom, with the deep-rooted snobbery which co-existed with a bold and searching intelligence, he imagined to possess some advantage over him. His illness enabled him to come late and, by doing so, to attract attention; to attract attention and provoke compassion by sitting at dinner in his overcoat; or not to come at all and, by stimulating people's interest, to make them all the more eager to entertain him.  (p. 167)

In addition, here is a link to a 1927 article on Proust by Edmund Wilson in The New Republic.