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