Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 305-323

p 305 | Brief history of tipping, with more here

p 305 | Dinard, France, on the coast of Brittany, Deauville; Balbec=Cabourg (coast of Normandy, on the French side of the English Channel)

p 305 | "on the rocks" ; General de Beautreillis (character)

p 318 | Arabian Nights; the Galland translation appeared in 12 volumes early in the 18th century; the Mardrus appeared between 1899 and 1904, and restored the risqué elements that Galland had censored (Storrock)

p 319 | Augustin Thierry (1795-1856), a medieval historian of Romantic views, who wrote notably about the Merovingians and the Norman Conquest of England. Part of his search for local color involved using the Germanic forms of Merovingian names long since Gallicized by other writers. (Storrock)

p 319 | Carolingians; Merowig

p 319 | Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818-94), the most prominent of the post-Romantic Parnassian school of poets, who took much of his subject matter from antiquity.

p 319 |Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), the most lyrical and thus least Parnassian of Romantic poets.

p 319 | Characters in the Odyssey 
 
p 323 | Viviane is a good fairy in Chrétien de Troyes's 12th-century romance of Lancelot, who turns the hero into a perfect knight. Puss in Boots is a character in one of Perrault's fairy tales.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 245-305

Paul Decauville (1846-1922), industrialist and politician, who in­vented a narrow-gauge railway that could be demounted and transported. (Sturrock)

p 248 | Rosemonde: a slip of the pen for Albertine. (Sturrock)

“ascenseur”…“accenseur”: In French, the difference in sound is between “assenseur” and “acksenseur.” Ascenseur means “elevator” or “lift.” (Sturrock)

the recidivism… single negative: Proust’s lift boy omits the normal ne in front of the verb used negatively. Bélise is a character in Les Femmes savantes, in which Molière makes fun of grammatical pedantry. (Sturrock)

p 272 | Legend has the poetess Sappho throwing herself into the sea off Lesbos as a result of her unrequited love for a boatman. (Sturrock)

p 278 | Henri le Sidaner (1862-1939), a minor Impressionist, best known for his cityscapes of Bruges and Venice. (Sturrock)

p 287 | “M. Degas assures us…: Degas had much to do with the re­vival of Poussin’s reputation during the 1890s. (Sturrock)

p 289 | “Their giant’s wings…”: a line from a celebrated sonnet in which Baudelaire describes the ungainliness of an albatross when it is on the ground, using the bird as a symbol for the Poet. In French, “Leurs ailes de géant les empêchent de marcher.” (Sturrock)

The Congrégations were religious bodies that ran many schools (and some hospitals) in France; they were dissolved in 1904. “Wars in the East” refers to the 1904-05 war between Russia & Japan; the Japanese victory created European fears that the “yellow” races might prove too strong for the white. (Sturrock)

p 288, 290-91: Tetralogy: the four operas of Wagner’s Ring cycle.  (Sturrock)

p 291 | Jules Massenet (1842-1912), a composer best known for op­eras, especially Manon and Don Quixote. (Sturrock)

Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 203-245

p 205 | Caen

p 205 | French Legion of Honour
 
p 205 | L'Écho de Paris was a daily newspaper in Paris, 1884 to 1944.

Caillaux

p 205 | Joseph Caillaux (1863-1944), a Radical politician who served as prime minister from 1911 to 1912.

p 205 | "under the thimble ... thumb": the manager says "sous la coupole" instead of "sous la coupe," which improves the joke, since "sous la coupole" refers to the meeting place of the Académie Française (being re­ceived sous la coupole means being elected to the Academy). (Sturrock)


p 210 | M. Paillard was a well-known Paris restaurant, patronized by some of Proust's friends.

From  A Companion to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited: "Paillard’s was one of leading restaurants of Paris... created in 1880 when M. Paillard took over an establishment situated at the corner of the Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin and the Boulevard des Capucines from the Bignon brothers. According to Larousse Gastronomique, ‘Favourite dishes were chicken Archduke, Georgette potatoes, calves’ sweetbreads with asparagus tips, fillets of sole Chauchat and, above all, stuffed duck, rivalling the duck au sang of the Tour d’Argent.’  The culinary term paillard is of course named after the famous chef, who trained under the great Escoffier himself. It is a thin slice of veal (or now, any meat) pounded even thinner until it is translucent and then grilled or fried for a few seconds only."

p 216 | Lethe: the stream of oblivion & forgetfulness, was one of the rivers of the underworld and its goddess (Greek mythology).

Jammes

p 218 | Francis Jammes (1868-1938) wrote simple poetry, often on the theme of innocence re­covered. The stag in this dream sequence appears to derive from a story by Flaubert, "The Legend of Saint Julien the Hospitaler," in which a stag predicts to Julien that he will kill his father & mother (this reference may be relate to Proust’s guilt about the death of his mother). The fork comes from an earlier draft of the novel, where the sound of a fork striking a plate triggers the Narrator’s involuntary memories (like the madeleine). In the final book (Time Regained), the fork has become a spoon.(Sturrock)  After reading Swann's Way, Jammes wrote Proust a letter comparing him to Shakespeare and Balzac.

p 219 | Aias: Greek for Ajax in the Iliad, who, in his madness killed sheep & shepherds after mistaking them for fellow Greeks. (Sturrock)


p 223 | barouche: carriage

p 223 |Jonathan, i.e., John the Baptist. (Sturrock)
 
p 228 | Duc d’Orléans…: only two of the four separate houses of Orléans ever succeeded to the throne, with the second occasion in 1830, with King Louis-Philippe; the title of Prince de Tarente belonged indeed to the house of La Trémoille.

p 229 |Mme Marie de Sévigné (1626-96), considered to be one France’s greatest letter-writers; Proust admired the quick, spirited impressionism of her style. Mme de Beausergent is a character, not a person.(Sturrock)

p 231-2 | Bertrand de Salignac-Fénélon (1878-1914) was killed in the opening months of WWI. He was descended from a brother of François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénélon (1651-1715), writer, theologian, Archbishop; also known as the “Swan” of Cambrai, whose Aventures de Télémaque were interpreted as a veiled attack on Louis XIV.< (Sturrock).  He was Proust's very good friend and partial model for Saint-Loup.

p 232 | René Duguay-Trouin, Sieur du Guay (1673-1736), a sailor whose statue stands in his native Saint-Malo. (Sturrock)

p 232 | whitlow: an infection of the tip of the finger.

p 234 | The Abbess of Fontevrault was Marie-Madeleine Gabrielle de Rochechouart (1645-1704), who was the older sister of Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart (1640-1707), the Marquise de Montespan, who was the mistress of King Louis XIV

p 235 | Panathenaea: an Athenian festival to honor the goddess Athena, depicted on a frieze on the Parthenon, fragments of which are in the British Museum & the Louvre. (Sturrock)

p 240-1 | syncope ("sincup"): a short loss of consciousness and muscle strength, fainting, passing out.

p 243 | "angel lutanists, Italian cathedral, porphyry, jasper... " maybe Cappella Di San Brizio (Duomo) in Orvieto.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 195-203

p 195-6 | The Ligue de la Patrie Française was founded to bring together those opposed to Dreyfus, and as an answer to the Dreyfusard Ligue des Droits de l'Homme. (Sturrock)

p 197 | Duc d'Estrées so probably Charles de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville (1864-1907)

p 197 | Paul Doumer (1857-1932), a radical politician who became president of the Republic in 1931, only to be assassinated a year later; Paul Deschanel (1855-1922) became president in 1920, but resigned nine months later due to illness. (Sturrock)

p 197 |François de Charette (1763-96) led the counter-revolutionary Royalist uprising in the Vendée in 1793; his family remained strongly Royalist throughout the 19th century. Sosthène de Doudeauville (1825-1908), descended from another ultra-Royalist family, was a right-wing deputy for many years & ambassador in London 1873-74.  (Sturrock)

p 198 |Committee of Public Safety (Comité de Salut Public) was the most ferocious of the ruling institutions created by the French Revolution, lasting from 1793 to 1795; dominated first by Danton, then Robespierre. (Sturrock)

Zola in the 1890s

p 199 | Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), a left-wing journalist and politician, was prime minister from 1906 to 1909 & again in the last months of WWI, but later was not elected president;

Émile Zola (1840-1902), by then the country's leading writer, was the most prominent Dreyfus supporter during the Affair;  Joseph Reinach  (1856-1921), a politician, eventually wrote a 7-volume history of the Affair;

Fernand Labori (1860-1917), a lawyer, defended Émile Zola in 1898 in the Dreyfus trial, and Captain Alfred Dreyfus himself at the court martial in Rennes in 1899.< (Sturrock)

p 201 |Édouard Juda Colonne (1838-1910), violinist & conductor who founded the Concert National in Paris in 1871 and later the Association des Concerts Colonne.

 

by Falconet

p 201 | Revue des deux mondes: (Review of the Two Worlds) is a French monthly literary & cultural affairs magazine published in Paris since 1829.





p 203 | Étienne Falconet (1716-91), sculptor and ceramic artist, whose patron was Mme de Pompadour.  









p 203 | Blue Cineraria flowers