The Captive V pp 408-44

p 411 | Ultramontanism is a clerical political conception within the Catholic Church that places strong emphasis on the powers of the Pope. From the Middle Ages: when a non-Italian was elected to the papacy, he was said to be papa ultramontano, that is, a Pope from beyond the mountains (referring to the Alps). Foreign students at medieval Italian universities were also referred to as ultramontanes.

p 414 | Queen of Naples: Maria Sophie in Bavaria (1841-1925) was the last Queen consort of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

p 418 | Camille Chevillard, French composer/conductor, 1859-1923.

p 422 | Hunt-the-thimble is a party game.

p 441 | Second Eclogue of Virgil

[ 442 | Causeries du Lundi: (tr. “Monday Chats”) were a series of informal essays by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. The 640 critical & biographical essays on literary topics & European authors were published weekly in several Paris newspapers, on Mondays, for over 20 years (1849-69), later collected into 15 volumes. The most famous French exponent of the biographical method of literary criticism, Sainte-Beuve was Proust's critical bête noire: his writings on literature, published posthumously, were given the title Contre Sainte-Beuve. No doubt it amused him to present, through Brichot, Sainte-Beuve's work as a collection of stale gossip. (Clark notes)

p 442: Phidias (c. 480–430 BC) was a Greek sculptor, painter, and architect. His statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

p 443 | Aspasia was an ancient Greek woman philosopher, who had a "salon" and maybe influenced Socrates.

p 444 | quod di omen avertant = May the gods avert this omen (Cicero)

p 444 | The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) is the 1st novel of Anatole France.

The Captive V pp 369-91

p 382 | Thomas Couture (1815-79): French history painter & teacher.

Romans during the Decadence (1847)

 p 383 | Georges Enesco (Romanian violinist, 1881–1955); also a composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher, often considered Romania's most important musician. Lucien Capet (French violinist, 1873–1928); Jacques Thibaud (French violinist, 1880–1953). 

p 383 | Étienne Pierre Théodore Rousseau (1812–67) was a French painter of the Barbizon school (realism in art).

p 385 | Angelus: The Angelus (Latin for "angel") is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation... called the "prayer of the devotee", traditionally recited three times daily: 6:00 am, noon, and 6:00 pm.... The Angelus is usually accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell, which is a call to prayer and to spread good-will to everyone. The angel referred to in the prayer is Gabriel, a messenger of God who revealed to Mary that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God.

p 386 | florilegium=a collection of literary extracts; an anthology.

p 386 | Auguste Vacquerie (French writer, 1819-95); Paul Meurice (French writer, 1818-1905); Victor Hugo (1802–85).

p 387 | "...not in the least timorous..." = not showing or suffering from nervousness, fear, or a lack of confidence.


p 389 | beadle=A beadle is a church leader. Often, a beadle serves as an usher or manages charities for the church. The noun beadle isn't used very often in American English, though it's still fairly common in Britain, where beadles hold symbolic or ceremonial jobs in parishes or at universities.

p 389 | sursum corda (Latin: "Lift up your hearts" or literally, "Hearts lifted").

p 390 | The Most Serene House of Condé was a French princely house and a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. The name of the house was derived from the title of Prince of Condé that was originally assumed around 1557 by the French Protestant leader, Louis de Bourbon (1530–1569), uncle of King Henry IV of France, and borne by his male-line descendants. 

p 390 | ... wearing a ruff... : An item of clothing worn in Western Europe from the mid-16th century to the mid-17th century, primarily. The ruff, worn by men, women and children, evolved from the small fabric ruffle at the drawstring neck of a shirt or chemise. This changeable piece of cloth could be laundered separately while keeping the wearer's doublet from becoming soiled at the neckline.

p 391 | Man proposes, but God disposes is a translation of the Latin phrase Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit from Book I, chapter 19, of The Imitation of Christ by the German cleric Thomas à Kempis.

The Captive V pp 289-310

p 290 | per fas et nefas: Latin for "Through right and wrong."

p 290 | Il Sodoma (1477–1549) was the name given to Renaissance painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi.  After separating from his wife, he was considered by contemporaries to have been homosexual.

p 292 | Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921)

p 294 | kakochnyk: hair style resembling diadems worn by Russian aristocratic women. Léon Bakst : Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Kokoshnik

p 306 | Xavier Boniface Saintine (1798 – 1865) was a French dramatist and novelist.

p 309 | Montesquiou family; Uzès family; House of La Trémoille; Duke of Luynes

p 309 | Abbé François-Xavier de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1757–1832) was a French clergyman and politician.

p 310 | philippic: a discourse or declamation full of bitter condemnation; tirade.

The Captive V pp 156-168

p 159 | Renaissance Pietà: There are others, but Michaelangelo's is the main one.

p 161 | Prunier Restaurant in Paris specialized in seafood.

p 161 | Here's mackerel! (Il arrive le maquereau) = a pun because maquereau is French slang for a pimp, hence his thought wanders to the chauffeur.

p 161 | Cos lettuce=Romaine

p 162 | Praeceptis salutaribus moniti et divina institutione formati audemus dicere : "Instructed by Thy saving precepts, and following Thy divine institution, we are bold to say..." This is the opening to the Lord's Prayer in the Mass liturgy.

p 162 | Suave mari magno="How pleasant when on a great sea..." (Lucretius). These opening lines of Book II of Lucretius' poem De rerum naturae observe how pleasant it is, when we are on dry land, to watch another man battling to stay afloat in a stormy sea. Though the poet was commending not schadenfreude but philosophical detachment, the phrase is used proverbially to allude to someone who takes pleasure in the suffering of others. Proust, however, seems here to be using it literally and not figuratively. (Clark)


p 163 | Chasselas = White wine grape

p 163 | Rebattet, 12, rue du Faubourg- Saint-Honore. A very
fashionable pastry shop.

p 164 | "... ices not hawked in the street..." : small ices, to be eaten immediately, were certainly sold in the street before 1900: there is a 19th century photo of an ice-cream man with his cart by Eugene Atget. But what the characters are discussing here are sizeable, elaborate iced desserts sold in expensive shops. Scroll down on this page to see an example.


Eugene Atget p 165 | Monte Rosa is a huge ice-covered mountain in the Alps.

p 167 | Scheherazade is the fictional narrator of the Arabian Nights, a book which Proust loved both as a child and as an adult. She made up a new tale for 1001 nights to avoid being killed by the king.

p 168 | "...consecration-cross of his wheel = the steering-wheel of some cars at this time was cruciform, with no outer ring. Others were stylized, with a circle enclosing a cross.




p 168 ff: The Palace at Versailles;  Grand Trianon at Versailles;
Petit Trianon at Versailles
Hôtel des Réservoirs at Versailles
Vatel

The Captive V pp 147-156

p 147-49 | "Boris Godunov . . . Pelléas":  Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov was first performed in Paris in 1908, Debussy's Pelléas et Melisande in 1902, but Proust first heard them in 1911-13, when he was first working on The Captive.  The novelty of these music-dramas was that they did not observe the old operatic distinction between recitative and aria, but were through-composed (songs composed without repetitions, i.e., using different music for each verse), their essential dialogue delivered with only small variations of pitch. (Clark)

In Pelléas et Mélisande, instead of a librettist adapting the original play for him, Debussy chose to set the text directly, since Maeterlinck's play was in prose rather than verse. This contributes to the most famous feature of the opera: the almost complete absence of arias or set pieces... Instead, Debussy set the text one note to a syllable in a "continuous, fluid 'cantilena', somewhere between chant and recitative". (Wikipedia)

p 148 | Jean-Phillipe Rameau: these words appear in Phillipe Quinault's libretto Armide, set to music first by Lully in 1686 and then by Gluck in 1777  (not in an opera by Rameau, as Proust seems to have thought).  (Clark)

p 149 | "...Arkel . . .  Golaud ...  the King of Allemande...":  characters in Pelléas et Melisande. (Clark)

p 149 | Per omnia saecula saeculorum = for ever and ever, through all ages of ages, world without end; Requiescat in pace = May he/she rest in peace. Both phrases conclude prayers for the dead, both usually intoned with the last syllable falling a minor third, and followed by "Amen." (Clark)

p 149 | Cerement= Usually plural: a waxy cloth used for wrapping the dead, or any burial garments (Hamlet, act 1, sc 4)

p 150 | Costermonger: a person who sells goods, especially fruit and vegetables, from a handcart in the street.

p 150 | Antiphonary=one of 3 liturgical books used for the Divine Office (the others being the breviary & the choir psalter). The antiphonary contains, among other elements, antiphons, which are short sentences sung or recited before or after a psalm or canticle. Antiphonaries are fairly large so they are easily read by all members of a choir.  Trivium= the lower division of the 7 liberal arts:  grammar, logic, and rhetoric (input, process, and output).  Subjects of the trivium are the foundation for the quadrivium, the upper division of the medieval education in the liberal arts, which comprised arithmetic (number), geometry (number in space), music (number in time), and astronomy (number in space and time). Educationally, the trivium and the quadrivium imparted to the student the 7 liberal arts of classical antiquity. 

Basque beret

  Tinker = (especially in former times) a person who travels from place to place mending metal utensils as a way of making a living.

 p 152 | "What insolent mortal comes to meet his doom?" "Was it for you this stern decree was made?" "In you alone, a certain grace I see/That always charms and never wearies  me." (Lines from Esther by Racine).  (Clark)

p 155 | Hippolyte Taine (1828–93): critic and historian, who had a profound effect on French literature.  George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans (1819-80): English Victorian novelist who developed the method of psychological analysis characteristic of modern fiction.

p 156 |  Mnemotechnia:  a goddess not only of memory (time past) but of method (technia): she offers a way of remembering and recording the passage of time. (Ellen Eve Frank, Literary Architecture)