The Fugitive V pp 752-82

p 754 | All Saints' Day: a Christian festival in honor of all the saints, held (in the Western Church) on November 1.

Mme du Barry

Charles I

 

p 755 | Charles I at the Hunt by Van Dyck;  

Mme du Barry

 

p 769 | Causeries du lundi: Weekly essays by Sainte-Beuve; they were ruminations on authors and their works, with an emphasis on French literature. His reputation as one of the most important French literary critics of the day rested on these columns, in which he guided the literary tastes of the populace.

p 769 | Mme de Boigne: Éléonore-Adèle d’Osmond, Comtesse de Boigne, born at the Château de Versailles in 1781.

p 769 | Le Constitutionnel was a French political and literary newspaper, which published Sainte-Beuve's "Monday Chats" from Oct. 1849 to Nov. 1852 and from Sep. 1861 to Jan. 1867. They were ruminations on authors and their works, with an emphasis on French literature. His reputation as one of the most important French literary critics of the day rested on these columns, in which he guided the literary tastes of the populace.

p 769 | Paul de Noailles, 6th Duke of Noailles (1802–85), historian.

p 770 | Sophie d'Arbouville (1810-50) French poet & novelist.

p 779 | Russo-Japanese War (1904-05)

The Fugitive V pp 732-52

p 736 | "...Venus was the desire of Jove...": Not sure, but sources say Jove was the father of Venus.

photo: Lionel Allorge

p 737 | Chevreuse Valley, sw of Versailles.  ==>

p 742 | Fabrice del Dongo: Romantic hero of Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme.

p 744 | paintings by Titian in the Louvre (at left, Woman with a Mirror, c. 1515).

p 746 | (Mme de) Pompadour provided Louis XV...: Wikipedia disputes this here.

p 751 | ... geometry in space..., psychology in time...

The Fugitive V pp 712-32

p 720 | War of 1870 is the name used by the French for the Franco-Prussian War.

p 722 | Gilbert the Bad | see v. 1, p. 145:  "You may depend upon it, Mme. Octave," replied the Curé. "Why, it was just his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by proving that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and a direct descendant of Geneviève de Brabant, who was a daughter of the House of Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire."  ... "Gilbert's brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious prince, but, having early in life lost his father, Pepin the Mad, who died as a result of his mental infirmity, ...Gilbert, wishing to be avenged on Charles, caused the church at Combray to be burned down, the original church, ... Nothing remains of it now but the crypt, into which Théodore has probably taken you, for Gilbert burned all the rest." 

p 725 | Da capo: an Italian musical term that means "from the beginning" (literally, "from the head").

p 731 | Gabriel Fauré: Le Secret (video), song for voice & piano in D flat major, Op. 23/3 (1880-81); Duc de Broglie's Secret du Roi; Golgotha (According to the Gospels, Golgotha was, a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was crucified... Matthew's and Mark's gospels in Latin rendered Calvariæ Locus, from which the English word Calvary derives, trans. place of skulls, or Proust's Calvus Mons, or Bald Mountain); the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in NE Paris, is the 5th largest park in the city.

p 732 | Pascal's Pensées : The Pensées ("Thoughts") is a collection of fragments on theology and philosophy written by 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal.

The Fugitive V pp 695-712

p 706 | Châtellerault : a commune in the Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in France. It is located in the northeast of the former province Poitou (southwest of Paris).

p 707 | Loire River : France's longest river (171st in the world), 629 miles long, draining nearly 45, 200 square miles (more than a fifth of France's land area). It passes near Châtellerault.

p 710 | Painting of girl with her foot raised... Summer on the Beach (date unknown) by Paul-Gustave Fischer (Danish, 1860-1934). This is not the exact one, but an example.

p 711 | Leda and the Swan, drawing by Emmanuel Benner the Younger (French, 1836–1896)

The Fugitive V pp 654-95

ruins, 1871

p 657 | The Château de Saint-Cloud was one of Marie-Antoinette's châteaux, where Napoleon & Napoleon III declared themselves Emperor in their turn (in 1804 & 1852). It was built on a site over-looking the Seine about 5 km (3.1 mi) west of Paris.  The château was expanded by Phillipe of France, Duke of Orléans in the 17th century, and again by Marie-Antoinette in the 1780s. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, the château caught fire; most of the contents had been removed by Empress Eugénie. The standing roofless walls were finally razed in 1891. Now, a large park is on the site of the former palace, the Parc de Saint-Cloud, owned by the state. 

p 671 | Ortolans, leverets (a hare less than one year old),  rock-partridges...

p 675 | Byzantine Norman architecture

p 684 | novel in which a woman chooses not to speak (still searching)

p 695 | the baths at Balbec (Cabourg): Thalassotherapy: using sea-water as a form of therapy. Rules for sea-bathing at nearby Houlgate.

p 695 | A lorgnette is a pair of spectacles with a handle to hold them in place, rather than fitting over the ears or nose. The word "lorgnette" is derived from the French lorgner, to take a sidelong look at, and Middle French, from lorgne, squinting. They were invented by Englishman George Adams.

The Fugitive V pp 614-54

p 617-20 | Phèdre (originally Phèdre et Hippolyte) is a French dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677 at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris.

p 620 | ..."Jansenist" scruples...: Jansenism is so called after the Christian doctrine put forth by Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), a Dutch Catholic bishop, in his Augustinus, 1640. This doctrine favors grace and predestination rather than free will and good works. In this light, Phèdre would be less responsible for her actions, and less guilty. (Collier notes)

p 627 | Gare d'Orsay: former Paris railway station and hotel built in 1900. this station served the south and southwest of France, including Châtelleraut and Touraine. After closing as a station, it reopened in December 1986 as the Musée d'Orsay, an art museum.

Electric trains in the Gare d'Orsay, ca. 1900

p 630 |"..close down the churches and ..." : An allusion to French legislation passed in 1904 and 1905 leading to the separation of Church and State (Loi sur les Congrégations).

p 634 | Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was an Italian diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, humanist, and Renaissance writer. Often called the father of modern political science, he was an official in the Florentine Republic, as well as writing comedies, songs, & poetry. "Machiavellianism" is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort he described most famously in The Prince (Il Principe), his most renowned work, in 1513.

Touraine

p 636 | Touraine: a traditional province of France, whose capital was Tours.

p 646 | Les Écorres...Marie-Antoinette: Farms near Balbec where Albertine and the girls may have visited; it was fashionable at the time to drive out into the countryside in Normandy and take tea on a farm.

p 648 | Cricqueville-en-Bessin is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in NW France. Its name is from its deep-water creek that forms a natural harbor, from Crycavilla.

p 654 | "to philosophise in my garret...": Collins offers a reference to a work by 19th-century novelist Émile Souvestre (1806–54), who wrote Un philosophe sous les toits (An attic philosopher in Paris, or A peep at the world from a garret : the journal of a happy man, 1850).

p 654 | ..."the goatherd's horn..." : 

The Fugitive V pp 563-614

p 589-90 | Helen... Trojan elders: On the old men of Troy, upon seeing Helen, from Homer's Iliad, but also referring to Pierre de Ronsard's Sonnets pour Hélène (1578), written for Hélène de Surgères, a young love. The quoted line is from one of the sonnets, Book II, LXVII, line 4.

p 609 | Manon is a comic opera in 5 acts by Jules Massenet, to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1884.

1896 by Nadar

p 614 | Mallarmé's The Swan (Le Cygne) (Great discussion here, if you have time) The poem, which opens with one of the most famous lines in French literature, has the reputation of being very difficult. First, the original text:

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujoud'hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n'avoir pas chanté la region ou vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligée a l'oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.
Fantôme qu'à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,

Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

******************************************

Can the virgin, beautiful and vivid day

Release this frosted and forgotten lake,

With a drunk blow of wings to reel away 

In névés of flights they have yet to make?

Without song or recognition, the image burns

Tediously into the surrounding cold.

Yet always the magnificence, and the long neck yearns

Beyond the white hardness of the winter's hold.

Fast though feathers be caught in soiling mud,

From a horror of life the bird sails on,

Cold and improbable in its own pure being,

A scorching pure whiteness in the glacial flood:

A dream wrapped in scorn, and a phantom, seeing

How futile is exile for the Swan.

p 614 | other lines... vespertine: Two stanzas from another Mallarmé poem, M'introduire dans ton histoire (1914).