Biographical essay

Here's a short biographical essay by Charles Matthews at his Proust-reading weblog.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 446-49) Notes for July 2011

p 446 | "horseman beloved of Ares" (Greek god of war)
| "shore of Amphitrite" (Greek goddess of the sea, wife of Poseidon)
| "swift-shipped Meniers": probably refers to Henri Menier (1853-1913), a wealthy French yachting enthusiast, but may also include the rest of the family.

p 447| Charles Leconte de Lisle, French poet, 1818-94. 
| José-Maria de Heredia, Cuban-French poet, 1842-1905. Académician
| Parnassians: As a reaction to romantic poetry, this 19th century school of mostly French poets emphasized art for art’s sake, strict form & meter, and emotional detachment. 
| Suez Canal board (M. de Marsantes)
| Stereoscope: a 3-dimensional photo viewer; special cameras took these pictures.

p 448 | Incarville; Incarville to Cabourg [Balbec]
| Podestà:  Italian officials
| Renaissance medals:   historical records of events & leading figures of the Quattrocento, intended to be the chief source for posterity for the lives of deliberately glorified individuals. a recent sale; images; 

p 449 | violas da gamba, violas d'amore
| Phoenix Club: fictional exclusive club, founded by Charlus & his society friends
| Jockey Club: elite society gathering-place; photo
| Comte de Paris:  Philippe d'Orléans, Count of Paris (1838 – 1894) was the grandson of Louis Philippe I, King of the French. He was a claimant to the French throne from 1848 until his death.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 443-46) Notes for July 2011

p 443 | M. Legrandin (in Combray, engineer & man of letters; in Balbec, Mme de Cambremer’s brother).

| Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-89), Catholic dandy & polemicist from Normandy who wrote novels of provincial life in a belated Gothic-Romantic and derivatively Balzacian vein.

p 444 | "... Zeus Kronion. ..." here, and elsewhere, Bloch borrows tags from Leconte de Lisle's poems & translations from the Greek.

| "... black Ker.." female spirit of violent death (Greek).

| Samuel Bernard (1651-1739) Protestant banker who provided important funding for France during the reigns of Louis XIV & Louis XV.

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

Dennis Abrams on three trees at Hudmisil

Quoting from The Proust Project.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 386?) Dinner Guests of Mme de Villeparisis' Parents

• CHOPIN, Frédéric (French/Polish composer, 1810-49)
• LISZT, Franz (Hungarian composer, 1811-86)
• LAMARTINE, Alphonse de (French poet, 1790-1869)
• CHATEAUBRIAND, François-René, Vicomte de (French writer & statesman, 1768-1848)
• BALZAC, Honoré de (French novelist, 1799-1850)
• HUGO, Victor (French poet, novelist & playwright, 1802-85)
• VIGNY, Alfred de (French poet, 1797-1863)
• Molé, Mathieu Louis (French judge & statesman, 1781-1855)
• FONTANES, Louis, Marquis de (French man of letters & statesman, 1757-1821)
• VITROLLES, Eugene Francois Augusto d'Arnaud, Baron (French politician, 1774-1854)
• BERSOT, Ernest (French philosopher & journalist, 1816-80)
• PASQUIER, Etienne Denis, Duc de (French statesman & author, 1767-1862),
• LEBRUN, Pierre-Antoine (French poet, 1785-1873)
• SALVANDY, Comte de (French writer & politician, 1795-1856)
• DARU, Pierre-Bruno, comte (French politician & writer, 1767-1829)
• STENDHAL [Henri Beyle] (French novelist, 1783-1842)
• MÉRIMÉE, Prosper (French novelist, 1803-70)
• SAINTE-BEUVE, Charles-Augustin (French writer, 1804-69); information on Sainte-Beuve's ideas about literary criticism and Proust's response to them (Contre Sainte-Beuve)

Dennis Abrams, over at The Cork-Lined Room, notes why it is important to pay attention to Proust's -- and his characters' -- name-dropping. 

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 388-94) Notes for May

p 388 | Mme BLANDAIS: wife of the notary from LeMans on holiday at the Grand Hotel.  ... 

...a young page who attracted the eye no less by the unusual and effective colouring of his hair than by his plant-like epidermis. Inside, in the hall, corresponding to the narthex, or Church of the Catechumens in a primitive basilica...(388)

  The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at the end of the nave, at the far end from the church's main altar. Catechumen, in the early Church, was the name applied to one who had not yet been initiated into the sacred mysteries, but was undergoing a course of preparation for that purpose. 

p 389 | "...like those pupils of Mme. de Maintenon who, in the garb of young Israelites, carry on the action whenever Esther or Joad ‘goes off.’ (389)

Françoise d'Aubigné, Mme de MAINTENON, (mistress, later wife of Louis XIV, 1635-1719)

Boys of humble background might become pages, or apprentice footmen. Unlike the hall boys, who did heavy work, these pages performed light odd jobs and were liveried when the aristocrat was entertaining.

...The arborescent page... (389)  arborescent:  Like a tree in structure, growth, or appearance; branching. About 1675, from Latin arborescens, present active participle of arboresco (“become a tree”). All one image: he's set on "alien soil" witn a "vegetable immobility."

Apple tree in bloom

"...I sought to carry them back in my imagination to that roadside, to multiply them, to spread them out, so as to fill the frame prepared for them, on the canvas, all ready, of those closest to the outline of which I knew by heart, which I so longed to see—which one day I must see again, at the moment when, with the exquisite fervour of genius, spring was covering their canvas with its colours..." (390)

..."sun radiant" ... ("soleil rayonnant", 390) : quoting Baudelaire's Chant d'automne (Song of Autumn)

... Leconte de Lisle's beautiful image of birds & boats (391), from the Oresteia of Aeschylus.

...The church at Carqueville, "quite buried in its old ivy" (391-2) is based on the church at Criqueboeuf. Another picture is here.

 
 Mme de Villeparisis paints flowers in watercolor (392), as did Proust's great friend & benefactor, Madeleine Lemaire.  She illustrated Proust's book of stories, arranged introductions, and invited him to her salon. 

... the conversational talent of Louis-Philippe...( 394). Wiki.  His museum.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 387-88) Notes for May 2011

But before all this I had drawn back my own curtains, impatient to know what Sea it was that was playing that morning by the shore, like a Nereid. (387)

THE NEREIDES (or Nereids) were 50 Haliad Nymphs or goddesses of the sea; patrons of sailors & fishermen, who assisted men in distress; goddesses who had the sea's bounty in their care. Individually they also represented facets of the sea, i.e, salty brine, foam, sand, rocky shores, waves and currents, as well as the skills possessed by seamen. The Nereides dwelt with their elderly father Nereus in a silvery cavern at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. Thetis was their unofficial leader, and Amphitrite was the queen of the sea. Together with the Tritones they formed the retinue of Poseidon.  In ancient art, they were depicted as beautiful young maidens, sometimes running with small dolphins or fish in their hands, or riding on the back of dolphins, hippokampoi (fish-tailed horses) and other sea creatures.

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"...disclose to my wondering eyes the nymph Glauconome, whose lazy beauty, gently breathing, had the transparence of a vaporous emerald beneath whose surface I could see teeming the ponderable elements that coloured it? She made the sun join in her play, with a smile rendered languorous by an invisible haze which was nought but a space kept vacant about her translucent surface, which, thus curtailed, became more appealing, like those goddesses whom the sculptor carves in relief upon a block of marble, the rest of which he leaves unchiselled..."   

 GLAUKONOME was the Nereid of the "mastering the grey" sea. (cf. Hesiod, Apollodorus)

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"...seated beside Mme. de Villeparisis in her barouche..."  (A 4-wheel fancy carriage with a fold-up hood at the back and with two inside seats facing each other.)

Saint-Mars le Vêtu ... or Quetteholme (387): fictional towns near Balbec;   FÉTERNE. The Cambremer estate near Balbec (388).