Pages for May

For 5/31: Françoise holds court at lunch-time below stairs (12).  Jupien (14); his niece (16). 

For 5/24: START  THE GUERMANTES WAY v 3  PART 1

 Move into a new apartment in a wing of the Hôtel de Guer­mantes (1). Poetic dreams conjured up by the name Guermantes dispelled one by one (4-12).

Finish In the Shadow of Young Girls/Budding Grove.... if you haven't already...

The rejected kiss (701). The attraction of Albertine (702). The multiple utilization of a single action (707). Straying in the budding grove (716). The different Al­bertines (718). End of the season (724). Departure (728).

Within a Budding Grove (vol II p 677- )

p 680 | A game of "ferret" (jeu du furet or hunt-the-slipper). On his blog, Charles Matthews calls it "ring-on-a-string."
p 682 | Visit Trianon without getting up a party in Louis XVI costume (scroll down)
p 683 | Laura Dianti (portrait by Titian)

Within a Budding Grove (vol II p 671-77)

p 670 | Sophocles : greatest Greek tragedian, 497 B.C.
  Jean Racine, b. 1639. He was educated at The Petites écoles de Port-Royal, a place of intellectual excellence and educational experimentation.
| Athalie: Racine tragedy 1691.
| Esther: Racine drama 1689.
p 671 | Greek chorus
| Joad (Google translation from the French)
| Robert Garnier, French poet, b. 1544
|Antoine de Montchrestien, b. 1575. Aman = Haman
|Charles Sainte-Beuve, b. 1804, French literary critic; Proust wrote Contre Sainte-Beuve (Against Sainte-Beuve)
|Gustave Merlet, French literary academic, 1829–91.
|Nicolas Deltour, French professor & writer, 1822–1904.
|Edouard Gascq-Desfossé, French textbook author, c. 1886-1909.
p 676 | human life to zoophytes (invertebrate animals that resemble plants, such as sponges, corals and sea anemones)
p 677 | "Harmony in pink and gold": Fictional painting name, but sounds like he's referencing Whistler (surprise!): Finding a parallel between painting and music, Whistler titled many of his paintings "arrangements", "harmonies", and "nocturnes", emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. (Wikipedia)
|theogony : description of the creation of the gods.
 

| peacock       or        peony

Within a Budding Grove (vol II p 651-53)

Monet, Regatta at Sainte-Adresse

Balbec through Elstir’s eyes (651).

p 652 | Claude Monet, Regattas at Argenteuil.The Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (1867);  Regatta Society of Le Havre. 

 A regatta probably looked a lot like this.

 By the 1870s, about 200 sailboats were moored in the Argenteuil basin. Many were owned by Parisians (only a half-hour away by train), but others could be rented. Renoir’s painting shows the boats & spectators at a regatta. At least two were run every month between early spring and fall.

Renoir, A Regatta at Argenteuil

Vittore Carpaccio, Legend of St. Ursula (large)


 

 

Bucentaur = Large Venetian barge(of the Doge)

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 634-51)

Saint-Loup engaged to a Mlle d’Ambresac? (634). Albertine (635). Andrée (636). Gisèle (637). Days with the girls (643). Françoise’s temper (649). Balbec through Elstir’s eyes (651).

p 637 | Giotto's Idolatry.

         | Diabolo
...I was taking a short stroll with Albertine, whom I had found on the beach tossing up and catching again on the end of a string a weird object which gave her a look of Giotto's 'Idolatry'; it was called, as it happened, a 'Diabolo,' and has so fallen into disuse now that, when they come upon the picture of a girl playing with one, the commentators of future generations will solemnly discuss, as it might in front of the allegorical figures in the Arena Chapel, what it is that she is holding. II 637 

p 640 | Which would you rather have as a friend, Alceste or Philinte? Two characters from The Misanthrope, a 17th-century comedy of manners in verse written by Molière. Alceste: protagonist and "misanthrope," is quick to criticize the flaws of everyone around him, while Philinte is a polite man who recognizes the importance of occasionally veiling one's true opinions in a social context; considered to be Alceste's foil. (Wiki)
p 640 | Le Gaulois : French daily newspaper, founded 1868.
p 643 | ineluctable = inevitable ; atavusm = throwback, reversion to past style
p 644 | inflorescence = floral axis, flower cluster (girls as flowers); Dreyfusism = anti-Semitism (in this context, i.e., going back to the past. Note that Dreyfusards were pro-Dreyfus); clericalism = maintaining power of religious hierarchy ; anterior = preceding ; cryptogamous = member of a formerly recognized taxonomic group that included all seedless plants and plantlike organisms, such as mosses, algae, ferns, and fungi ; papilionaceae = legume, pea, bean family.
p 649 | Gisèle is a slacker!
p 651 | Eulalie is the retired domestic servant in Combray, who visits Aunt Léonie with the Curé and has an ongoing rivalry with Françoise (cf I 41-51).  St. Eloi (Elegius; patron saint of goldsmiths & coin collectors) ; Cimmerians = ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II p 629)

Albertine’s antipathy for Bloch (627).
On p 629, Albertine calls Bloch a "Yid." She calls him other things in other translations, as well as in the original French. So we began a discussion of Proust and Jewishness. Here are some links relevant to our talk last night.  

• Here is the full Montcrieff/Blossom text of RTP.  I did a search on the letters "Jew"  and found no sentence where the Narrator identifies himself or his mother as one.

• Links to full texts in French & English (scroll down)

• A PhD thesis by Milen Jissov on (MIS-)UNDERSTANDING ANTI-SEMITISM AND JEWISH IDENTITY From Bernard Lazare to Hannah Arendt.  It's in pdf format, and so can be read in Acrobat. Proust is chapter 4, beginning on page 113 and continuing through page 187.

• Jim Everett's blog addresses the Jewish question in Proust right here.  See comments also.

• Essay: What Proust taught me about being Jewish. Slightly off-topic, but interesting.

• Brief history of the Jewish community in France. Audio also.

• Info may be here, but I have no access. Another JSTOR article here.   

• The great Edith Grossman on translations

• Pages like this are why I love the internet. 

Proust... the mini-series

Found this blog mentioned in the ongoing conversation of the Proust Yahoo group. Interesting photos, no?

Proust for Nook -- all books in one file! (Modern Library ed.)

In Search of Lost Time, complete & unabridged, 6 books: Volumes I-VI: Swann's Way, Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Captive & The Fugitive, Time Regained.

Also for kindle.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 608-627)

My grandmother and Saint-Loup (608). Saint-Loup and Bloch (609). Still lifes (613; cf. 373). Afternoon party at Elstir’s (615). Yet another Albertine: a well-brought-up girl (619). Albertine on the esplanade: once more a member of the little band (623). Octave, the gigolo (625). Albertine’s antipathy for Bloch (627).

p 608 |  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 – 1865) was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was the first person to call himself an anarchist.

p 613 | Still life painting: for example, Vincent Van Gogh's Still life with bottle, two glasses, cheese and bread, 1886, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

p 614 | Another clash between intelligence and sensibility vs will: going to Elstir's party.

p 617 | Strawberry tart

p 625 | Golf in 19th century Cabourg; see the map here. Click the + to zoom in & map to remove the photo. You can see the public golf course just south of the Grand Hotel. {Zoom in closer to see the Promenade Marcel Proust right along the beachfront, and a gift shop called "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu."} Here's a history of Victorian golf.

p 628 | Alexandrine: a verse in iambic hexameter 
Arouet=Voltaire: François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), pen name Voltaire:  French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, free trade and separation of church and state. Voltaire was prolific, writing in almost every format, including plays, poetry, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws with harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.  Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) whose work and ideas influenced important thinkers of the American & French Revolutions.

p 628 | Cavelleria rusticana ("Rustic Chivalry"): a one-act opera by Mascagni (1890)

Kirk McElhearn reads Proust in Paris & London

Kirk McElhearn, an American in Paris & London, has written a wonderful essay on re-reading Proust. The pleasures are even greater, the second time around, because you know the characters and you know what's going to happen. Try this page to read his reviews of critical texts, audio books, and biographies.