Pages

2.03.2011

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 229-49) Notes for February 2011

  • Gift books of P.-J. Stahl [229]: P.-J. Stahl was the adapter of Little Women and Hans Brinker and is the pen-name of M. Pierre-Jules Hetzel, the publisher of the magazine Magasin d'éducation et de récréation ("Education and Entertainment Magazine") and longtime editor of Jules Verne. Reproduction here. More about Hertzel & Verne here.  "Molly remembered the quality of illustration in her children's books 'The pictures in our books were well drawn, but colour was very rare and highly prized' she recalled (A London Child, p. 51). She had a copy of P. J. Stahl Little Rosy's Voyage Round the World (1869) in English, it was a 'prime favourite' because each adventure was accompanied by a full-page illustration by Lorenz Frolich.

Battle of Grathe Heath by Lorenz Frolich
Louis XVI  drawing rooms (1643-1715); includes voyeuse chairs, with padded backs, so men could sit astride & rest their arms on them, perhaps to watch gambling. History of furniture link here.
Japanese Iris


Mlle Lili, heroine of the story
two intaglios cut into a topaz [230]
Parma violets [231]
Lespinasse [232]
du Deffand [232]

Henry Gréville (October 12, 1842, Paris - 1902), pen name for Mrs. Alice Durand, born Fleury, was a French writer.  This gown was an illustration in one of her books. [233]


Louis XV silk [233]

Empire samovar
Empire Samovar

samovar is a heated metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water in and around Russia, as well as in other CentralSouth-EasternEastern European countries, and in the Middle-East. Since the heated water is usually used for making tea, many samovars have an attachment on the tops of their lids to hold and heat a teapot filled with tea concentrate..  Though traditionally heated with coal or charcoal, many newer samovars use electricity and heat water in a similar manner as an electric water boiler. Antique samovars are often displayed for their beautiful workmanship. [233]

Jockey Club [234]
Vatel 
Scullion, male counterpart to Scullery maid, servant who performed menial kitchen jobs (washing, cleaning, etc.) in large households during Middle Ages and Renaissance. [237]

Uneroseparmilesroses

Redfern fashion,  c. 1913... [238]
Fecit? (made it, created it)
Raudnitz [238]

2.01.2011

Proust Literary Tour

Information on touring all the fun Proust sites in France.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II) Pages for February 2011

2/3:  Odette’s “winter-garden” (228): splendor of the chrysan­themums and poverty of the conversation: Mme Cottard (234); Mme Bontemps (234); her sassy niece Albertine (237); the Prince d’Agrigente (239);

2/10:  Mme Verdurin visits Mme Swann (239-42). Mmes Cottard & Bontemps, flowers, hats, invitations (242-50)

2/17:  Painful New Year’s Day (251). “Suicide of that self which loved Gilberte” (255). Clumsy interventions (256). Letters to Gilberte: “one speaks for oneself alone” (259). Odette’s drawing-room: retreat of the Far East & invasion of the 18th century (261-65).

2/24: New hair-styles and silhouettes (265; cf. I 278).  A sudden impulse interrupts the cure of detachment (271); Aunt Léonie’s Chinese vase (272). Two walkers in the Elysian twilight (273). Impossibility of happiness (274). The opposing forces of memory and imagination (276). Because of Gilberte, Marcel declines a dinner-party invitation where he would have met Albertine (277).



1.20.2011

Random Proust Sightings

February 15, 2011 Posted by Vicky Raab
When I started “The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore,” I began to have worrisome Proustian flashbacks of being a chimp in a weird but normal family of very cute chimps in very cute outfits who lived in my house and ate coveted breakfast cereals with me—Wheat Chex, Corn Chex, and Rice Chex—who are maybe on “The Ed Sullivan Show” around the time of the Beatles?  Read more New Yorker Book Bench blog
Published there in 2005 and discovered in a Paris book shop by FSG editor Lorin Stein (who commissioned an English translation, appearing in paperback this month), 03 is a single paragraph that runs for 85 pages, a young man's simultaneously punkish and Proustian meditations on his attraction toward a mentally disabled girl at a bus stop. The Daily Beast

1.13.2011

Within a Budding Grove (vol II p 185-98) Notes for January 2011

p 185 | Port-Royal (Abbey, then hospital in Paris)

p 198 | Ludion:  Cartesian devil or Cartesian diver. See Wikipedia. 

p 198 | "Mage with arched nose & fair hair in Luini fresco" (p. 198) resembled Swann:  Go here for full picture (Adoration of the Magi)



1.01.2011

Within a Budding Grove (vol II) Pages for January 2011

1/6:  Lunch at the Swanns’ with Bergotte (164). The gentle white-haired bard and the man with the snail-shell nose and black goatee (165). A writer’s voice and his style (168). Bergotte and his imitators (169). Unforeseeable beauty of the sentences of a great writer (170). Reflecting power of genius (174). Vices of the man and morality of the writer (181). Bergotte and Berma (183). “A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it” (186). A remark of Swann’s, prelude to the theme of The Captive (188).

1/13:  Gilberte’s characteristics inherited from both parents (190). Swann’s confidence in his daugh­ter (193). Are my pleasures those of the intelligence? (195). Why Swann, according to Bergotte, needs a good doctor (199). Combray society and the social world (199). My parents’ change of mind about Bergotte and Gilberte; a problem of etiquette (203).

1/20:  Revelations about love (205; cf. I 129); Bloch takes me to a second-rate house of assignation (205). “Rachel when from the Lord” (207). Aunt Léonie’s furniture in the brothel (208). Ama­tory initiation at Combray on Aunt Léonie’s sofa (208). Work projects constantly postponed (210). Impossibility of happiness in love (214). My last visit to Gilberte (214-17).

1/27:  I decide not to see her again (217). Unjust fury with the Swanns’ butler (222). Waiting for a letter (222). I renounce Gilberte forever (224); but the hope of a reconciliation is superimposed on my resolve (226). Intermittence, law of the human soul (227).

11.13.2010

Perfect description of Proustian sentences...

and the impatience they cause, by Clive Bell, over here at a Proust Reader.

11.04.2010

Pages for November

11/4:  Consistent charm of Mme Swann’s heterogeneous drawing-room (153). Princess Mathilde (157). Gilberte’s unexpected behavior (161).  Lunch at the Swanns’ with Bergotte (164).

11/12:  The gentle white-haired bard and the man with the snail-shell nose and black goatee (165). A writer’s voice and his style (168). Bergotte and his imitators (169). Unforeseeable beauty of the sentences of a great writer (170). Reflecting power of genius (174).

11.01.2010

Within a Budding Grove (vol II p 158 ff) November Notes 2010

"I felt the surprise that one feels on opening the correspondence of that Duchess d'Orléans who was by birth a Princess Palatine... [Elizabeth-Charlotte, p157]
p 158 | "... her Württemberger mother..."
"... so typically Second Empire..." [1852-1870]

p 158 | "... had she known Musset..." [Alfred de Musset, French writer, 1810-1857]

p 159 | The Czar and Czarina went to Les Invalides in October 1896, covered by the New York Times

p 160 | ~~ Compèigne...

~~
Alpilles....  emeralds of the Grand Canal...

[...
leave cards upon these Royalties...p1xx;]  More information about calling cards. This describes what men do, but using women's cards was probably similar.


... anniversary of her grandfather's death...
[Jewish custom] .... The final period of formal mourning is avelut, which is observed only for a parent. This period lasts for twelve months after the burial. During that time, mourners avoid parties, celebrations, theater and concerts. For eleven months of that period, starting at the time of burial, the son of the deceased recites the mourner's Kaddish every day. After the avelut period is complete, the family is not permitted to continue formal mourning; however, there are some continuing acknowledgments of the decedent. Every year, on the anniversary of the death, family members observe the deceased's Yahrzeit (Yiddish, lit. "anniversary"), when sons recite Kaddish, and all mourners light a candle that burns for 24 hours.
“What difference can it make to me what people think? I think it’s perfectly absurd to worry about other people in matters of sentiment. We feel things for ourselves, not for the public. Mademoiselle has very few pleasures; she’s been looking forward to going to this concert. I am not going to deprive her of it just to satisfy public opinion.”   (Gilberte begins to sound like her mother here; )

Proustiennes at play