The Guermantes Way: III p 308-19

p 308 | Émile Augier 1820 – 89) was a French dramatist,  the 13th member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française, 31 March 1857. However the line "Qu'importe le cflacon pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse!" was written by Romantic poet Alfred de Musset, not Augier.

p 308 |  Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 – 1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement. His play Les Sept Princesses  (The Seven Princesses) was published in 1891.  In one act, it concentrates essentially on decor and atmosphere rather than on action.  

p 308 | Joséphin Péladan (1858- 1918) was a French novelist.   He established the Salon de la Rose + Croix for painters, writers, and musicians sharing his artistic ideals, the Symbolists in particular. Treharne notes:  "Sar Péladan": the French Decadent writer Joseph Péladan (1858-1918), novelist, essayist, and author of "occultist" dramas. He claimed to be a Rosicrucian magus (Sar). 
p 311 | graminivorous: feeding on grass; herbivorous
p 312 | Maria Dorothea of Austria (1867–1932) was a member of the Hungarian line of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and an Archduchess of Austria and Princess of Bohemia, Hungary, and Tuscany by birth. Through her marriage to Philippe, Duke of Orléans, she was also the Duchess of Orléans.
p 313 | Dulcinea:  the name Don Quixote gives to the (blissfully unaware) woman he has made himself The Champion of, for whom he is willing to risk his life. In the Spanish of the time, Dulcinea means something akin to an overly elegant "sweetness." To refer to one's "Dulcinea" is to refer to the object of one's hopeless devotion and idealized love. 
p 313 | Dreyfusard = Dreyfus was framed (Marcel, Zola, writers, artists, Jews);
             anti-Dreyfusard = Dreyfus was guilty (govt, nobility & military).

 p 315 | Treharne notes:  the Zola trial: Zola was brought to trial in 1898, after the publication of his famous letter to the president of the Republic, published in L'Aurore of January 13 of the same year and entitled "J'accuse," proclaiming the innocence of Dreyfus after Esterhazy's acquittal. 
p 315 | Treharne notes: Miribel (1831-93) had been chief of staff of the French army.  Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry, an ardent anti-Dreyfusard, forged a crucial incriminating document against Dreyfus. This was exposed in 1898, and he was imprisoned. He committed suicide the day after his imprisonment.
p 315 | Georges Picquart (1854–1914) was a French army officer. As chief of the army's intelligence section in 1896, Picquart discovered that the memo used to convict Dreyfus had been the work of Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. Though warned to conceal his discovery, Picquart persisted & continued his investigation. He was hindered & sabotaged by subordinate officers, notably Major Henry. As a consequence, Picquart was relieved of duty with the Bureau. After the Zola trial, Picquart was himself accused of forging the note that had convinced him of Esterhazy's guilt. He was then arrested for forgery & was awaiting court martial while the French Supreme Court was reviewing the Dreyfus case. After a second court-martial, Picquart resigned from the army, but the exoneration of  Dreyfus in 1906 also absolved Picquart, who was, by an act of the Chamber of Deputies, promoted to brigadier-general. He later entered Georges Clemenceau's first cabinet as Minister of War (1906-09). 
p 315 | Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. 
p 316 | Moira : one of the three Fates who controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death.
p 318 | Treharne notes: "Patrie Française": an anti-Dreyfus league founded in 1898 by various literary figures, soon joined by a great many academics, opposed to a retrial. 
p 319 | Treharne notes: the "Syndicate": during the Dreyfus Affair, French anti-Semites chose to imagine that the country was the victim of a conspiracy led by a Jewish "Syndicate."  

My Favorite Marcel

Everyone's talking about this picture again, now asserting that it shows Marcel was the first to play air guitar. Well, why not? He loved music, he loved the girl standing on the chair (Jeanne Pouquet, one of his models for Gilberte Swann) even though she was affianced to his friend Gaston Arman de Caillavet.  Others are Gabrielle Schwartz, Gabriel Trarieux, the Daireaux and the Dancognée girls.

This great photograph is the only one I've seen of Proust enjoying a moment of true levity, sporting a sly, mischievous smile. Readers of his novels know that in addition to being a sickly recluse, he was also an extremely amusing & intelligent man -- the kind you'd want at your dinner parties & salons, despite his overcoat -- with his writing filled with biting humor & slashing satire. (You just have to find it!)

The Guermantes Way: III p 298-303

p 299 | Charles Victor Cherbuliez (1829 – 99) was a French novelist and author. He was the 11^th member elected to occupy seat 3 of the Académie française in 1881. Some paintings of radishes... none by Elstir Hebert's Virgin and Child (1872) and Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (see -->>)
p 302 | Pierre Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1843 - 1916) was a French economist. Several works have made their mark beyond the borders of his own country. Among these may be mentioned his Recherches économiques, historiques et statistiques sur les guerres contemporaines, a series of studies published between 1863 and 1869, in which he calculated the loss of men and capital caused by the great European conflicts. He also founded in 1873 the Économiste français. Leading representative in France of orthodox political economy, and most pronounced opponent of protectionist and collectivist doctrines. 
French Academy of Sciences
p 302-3  Fare da se : Ces mots italiens signifient faire par soi-même, se tirer seul d'affaire. Ils sont entrés dans un proverbe national fort cher aux Italien : L'italia farà da se, l'Italie se tirera d'affaire elle-même.  Take care of one’s own affairs; help one’s self alone.

p 303 | obsta principiis: Latin. Withstand beginnings; resist the first approaches or encroachments. Latin Proverb: resist the beginnings, nip in the bud.

          | arcades ambo:  both Arcadians : two persons of like occupations or tastes; also : two rascals.  Latin  
          | Marcel’s father (the real Adrien Proust) was elected to the Academy of Medicine & contributed to the creation of the Intl Ofc of Hygiene, the forerunner of the World Health Organization. See this newspaper article.
          | ("Kind of amusing..". (?) still not sure...) Drolatic:   "The great familiarity I had with the late François Rabelais (dear Reader), has moved and even compelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the drolatic dreams of the very excellent… The 120 woodcuts that make up the volume of Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel appeared without almost any text in 1565. But the short and somewhat babbling preface by the printer…

Enough time to read all these new Proust books?

The Collected Poems : A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text by Marcel Proust, Harold Augenbraum
On Sale Date: March 26, 2013: ISBN 9780143106906, 0143106902
Paperback $25.00 US / $26.50 Can.   384 pages
For the centennial of Swann's Way : the most complete volume of Proust's poetry ever assembled, in a gorgeous deluxe edition.  As a young man, Proust wrote both poetry and prose. Even after he embarked on his masterful In Search of Lost Time at the age of thirty-eight, he never stopped writing poetry. His verse is often playful, filled with affection and satire, and is peppered with witty barbs at friends and people in his social circle of aristocrats, writers, musicians, and courtesans.
Few of the poems collected here have ever been published in book form or translated into English until now. In this dual-language edition of new translations, Augenbraum has brought together nineteen renowned poets and poetry translators to bring Proust's exuberant verse back to life.
HAROLD AUGENBRAUM is the executive director of the National Book Foundation and founder of the Proust Society of America, and he has previously translated José Rizal and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca for Penguin Classics. He lives in New York City.
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Marcel Proust : A Life, with a New Preface by the Author by William C. Carter
On Sale : March 11, 2013  ISBN: 9780300191790, 0300191790
Paperback $30.00 US 1000 pages 47 b/w illus.  Reissued with a new preface to commemorate the first publication of à la recherche du temps perdu one hundred years ago, this biography portrays in abundant detail the extraordinary life and times of one of the greatest literary voices of the twentieth century.

William C. Carter, professor emeritus of French at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the author of Proust in Love and a new, fully annotated edition of Proust's classic Swann's Way.
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Great Short Stories from "Pleasures of Days"/ Grandes Nouvelles de les plaisirs et les jours : Early Short Stories of Marcel Proust: A Dual-Language Book by Marcel Proust, Edward H Ousselin
August 21, 2013 :: ISBN 9780486497020, 048649702X
Paperback $16.95 US / $23.00 Can. 320 pages
Selections from the satirical, moving short stories and sketches featured in Proust's first published work. Telling reflections of the lives, loves, manners, and motivations of salon society in fin-de-siècle Paris.
These short stories and sketches are derived from a stunning volume of philosophical reflections, brief narratives, and prose poems from Proust's first published work. Set amid the salon society of fin-de-siècle Paris, the tales offer satirical and moving depictions of a fascinating cast of characters. Includes the original French with English translation on facing pages.
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Mirages and Mad Beliefs : Proust the Skeptic by Christopher Prendergast
On sale: May 26, 2013 ISBN 9780691155203, 0691155208
Hardback $45.00 US / £30.95 UK 248 pages
Marcel Proust was long the object of a cult in which the main point of reading his great novel In Search of Lost Time was to find, with its narrator, a redemptive epiphany in a pastry and a cup of lime-blossom tea. We now live in less confident times, in ways that place great strain on the assumptions and beliefs that made those earlier readings possible. This has led to a new manner of reading Proust, against the grain. In Mirages and Mad Beliefs, Christopher Prendergast argues the case differently, with the grain, on the basis that Proust himself was prey to self-doubt and found numerous, if indirect, ways of letting us know. Prendergast traces in detail the locations and forms of a quietly nondogmatic yet insistently skeptical voice that questions the redemptive aesthetic the novel is so often taken to celebrate, bringing the reader to wonder whether that aesthetic is but another instance of the mirage or the mad belief that, in other guises, figures prominently in In Search of Lost Time. In tracing the modalities of this self-pressuring voice, Prendergast ranges far and wide, across a multiplicity of ideas, themes, sources, and stylistic registers in Proust's literary thought and writing practice, attentive at every point to inflections of detail, in a sustained account of Proust the skeptic for the contemporary reader.

Christopher Prendergast is professor emeritus of French at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of King's College and the British Academy. He is the general editor of the Penguin translation of "In Search of Lost Time".
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Proust and the Visual by Nathalie Aubert
On sale: April 26, 2013  ISBN 9780708325483, 0708325483
Hardback  $140.00 US 288 pages
This edited collection considers the role of the visual in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and how it contributes to the novel's sense of modernity. The first few essays examine the philosophical implications of Proust's quest for truth, taking up analyses of the thing, the body, and the relation between the seer and the visible. The essays in the second section concentrate on the way meaning emerges from the description of experience, as well as the cultural environment in which it is inscribed through the workings and reworkings of certain images and textures. The final essays explore how Proust's unique approach to the visual has become in recent years the inspiration for other visual practices: film, sculpture, painting, and dance.
Nathalie Aubert is professor of French literature at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
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Murder Chez Proust : A Mystery by Estelle Monbrun
On Sale: July 2013  : ISBN 9781611458121, 1611458129
Paperback $14.95 US  Fiction / Mystery & Detective  240 pages
A clever, sharp satirical mystery.  When Adeline Bertrand-Verdon, the haughty, conniving president of the Proust Association, is murdered, Inspector Jean-Pierre Foucheroux is called on to lead the investigation. Soon Inspector Foucheroux is overwhelmed by a seemingly endless list of suspects: from her assistant to her colleagues, her fiancé to her lover, almost everyone Adeline knew had motive to kill her. Meanwhile, Gisele Dambert, the beautiful assistant with the royal blue eyes and more than a hint of mystery, is on her own search for the lost Proust notes that would allow her to finally enter the glittering world of the literary elite.

This clever, satirical novel presents a dazzling array of sharp, unscrupulous professors and scholars in the image-obsessed world of academia. An assortment of suspects-the professor who plagiarizes his students' work, the manipulative director-bring intrigue and drama to the novel. Suspense and withering commentary on the morally questionable intellectual elite combine to form a clever mix of whodunit and satire.

Estelle Monbrun, nom de plume of Elyane Dezon-Jones, is a well-known French author and distinguished Proust scholar. Monbrun has published extensively in both France and in the United States and has taught French at Barnard College and at Washington University in Saint Louis. Monbrun splits her time between Paris, France, and Sarasota, Florida.
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Marcel Proust by Adam Watt
On Sale: May 15, 2013  ISBN 9781780230948, 178023094X
Paperback $16.95 US  224 pages  30 halftones
In this concise biography, Adam Watt explores the life of a writer whose every experience was stored, dissected, and redeployed within a vast fictional work.  After considering Proust's earlier years of personal and aesthetic experiment, Watt provides an engaging account of two intertwined processes taking place against the vibrant backdrop of Belle Époque Paris and World War I: the progress of In Search of Lost Time and the simultaneous decline of its author. He demonstrates how Proust's own periods of ill health and isolation reflected his narrator's thoughts on desire, love, and loss, as well as his contemplation of beauty, memory, aging, and the possibility of happiness. Drawing on the author's immense correspondence, the accounts of his contemporaries, and the insights of recent scholarship, Marcel Proust offers a rewarding new portrait of the novelist once described as "the most complicated man in Paris."

Adam Watt is associate professor of French at the University of Exeter and a member of the Equipe Proust at the ITEM/ENS, Paris, France. He is the author of Reading in Proust's "A la recherche" and The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust.
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Marcel Proust : The Ark and the Dove by Patricia Mante-Proust, Mireille Naturel, Josephine Bacon
On Sale: April 1, 2013  ISBN 9783283012182, 3283012180
Hardback  $65.00 US / $71.95 Can.   192 pages
Through the exclusive documents that Patricia Mante-Proust inherited, she revisits her rich family history in images and anecdotes.
This first publication of a collection of original Proustian treasures includes numerous documents from the family's collection in the National Archives and items found in the drawers of Aunt Léonie's famous house in Illiers-Combray, as well as correspondence, rare and unpublished manuscripts, and memories rediscovered in the places that Proust frequented and loved. Its purpose is to celebrate a life and an era that, through the magic of an inimitable style, will live for eternity. For a long time I used to go to bed early is probably one of the most famous quotations from French literature, the very first words of an epic structure compared by its author to a cathedral. In the case of Remembrance of Things Past it is impossible to distinguish between the author and the work. No writer has ever pushed introspection and remembrance to such a level. Through his prodigious quest for the flavor of the little madeleine cake, he has acquired an almost mystical aura for generations of readers throughout the world. Proust has often been described as feverish, excessively shy, a recluse in his cork-lined room; yet, between visions and real-life experiences, who was Marcel Proust in reality? Could the famous Questionnaire that he compiled and answered and that bears his name shed any light on this enigma?
"This is an accessible volume of memorable pictures, words, and other odds and ends." - Publishers Weekly

Patricia Mante-Proust is the great-grand-niece of the writer and the keeper of his estate. Mireille Naturel is the general secretary of The Society of Friends of Marcel Proust. She is the author of Proust and Flaubert: the Secret of Writing and Proust and the Literary Act: Receiving and Creating, the editor of How Proust is Received Abroad and Correspondence and Manuscripts, and she produced the critical edition of Swann in Love for Flammarion.

The Guermantes Way III p 271-298

p 274 |  So what is a Duke, specifically in France?
p 275 |  At-home days
p 276 | The excellent writer G---"...  ; could this be Gide?
p 277 | Adolphe Thiers (French historian, President of the Republic 1797–1877): Prosper    MÉRIMÉE (French novelist, 1803–70); Émile Augier (playwright, 1820­–89): 
p 286 | Vicomte de Borelli, (society poet, late 19th century); Gustave Schlumberger (historian, 1844–1929);  Vicomte Georges d'Avenel (historian & economist, 1855–1939); Pierre Loti (novelist, 1850–1923);  Edmond Rostand  (playwright, 1868–1918, author of Cyrano de Bergerac); Paul Deschanel (French president, 1855–1922); Antonio Pisanello (Italian painter & medallist, c. 1380–1456); Jan Van Huysum (Dutch flower painter, 1682-1749) "... meticulous, dead herbals."

==============================================

mayflowers

apple

cherry

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p 291 | Hera: Greek goddess, Queen of the Olympians
p 294 | Temperature in Mme de V's rooms:  22 C. = 71 F. & 25 C=77 F.
            | Antenor Greek mythological counselor to Priam in the Trojan war; Alpheus = in Greek mythology a river (the modern Alfeios River) & river-god.

The Guermantes Way: III p 263-71

p 263 | Icarus (Son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax) ; Theseus (mythical founder-king of Athens) and Heracles (a divine hero in Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Alcmene, was the greatest of the Greek heroes, later known as Hercules.)

p 263 | The Golden Rose is a gift that popes have for centuries conferred as a token of esteem and paternal affection on illustrious churches and shrines, as well as on distinguished persons, governments or cities conspicuous for their Catholic endeavor and loyalty to the Holy See.
p 263 | Alphonse de Lamartine (French writer, poet, politician, 1790-1869).
p 263 | Marie-Antoinette :  her hairstyles and her life.

Ristori

p 264 | Antoine Coysevox (French sculptor, 1640-1720); work in Versailles.
p 264 | Adelaide Ristori (Italian actress, 1821-1906)  >>
p 265 | Choiseul family
p  265-6 | House of France & the Medicis
p 266 | Franz Liszt (Hungarian composer, 1811-86).
p 266 | Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein (1819–87), Polish noblewoman who pursued a 40-year liaison/relationship with Liszt.
p 267 | Bowing as greeting
p 269 | preciosity = fastidious refinement
p 269 | Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, duchess de Chevreuse (1600–79), French aristocrat; Charles d'Albert, Duke of Luynes (1578–1621)

Liszt by Nadar

p 270 |  Carmen Sylva: poet/royalty
p 270 | Duchess of Aosta = Maria Letizia Bonaparte (1866–1926)
p 271 | Scriveners

The Guermantes Way: III p 252-63

Turkish Merchant Smoking in His Shop 

p 252-3 | Dreyfus Case; brief history of Jews in France (wiki is here)

p 253 | Molière's Mascarille

p 253 | Alexandre Decamp  >>>

p 254 | Garments of Assyrian scribes on a frieze from Susa

p 255-56 | Louis XVIII et le duc Decazes, 1815-1820 by Ernest Daudet;

Louis Élie Decazes (1780-1860), favorite of Louis XVIII. Murder will gradually lead to the fall of Decazes and his political career. Indeed, 13 February 1820, the Duc de Berry was assassinated by a worker saddler, Louvel. Press unleashed against Decazes then accused of being responsible for the assassination of the Duc de Berry. For the Bourbon dynasty, the event is even more serious for the Duc de Berry was the only one able to provide offspring to the dynasty. In addition, the emergency laws proposed by Decazes are rejected by the House. Decazes has no choice and is forced to resign. These events mark the end of the political career of a man whose principal merit has been to understand the duration of a regime depends on an understanding of the various forces of the nation. (Google translation of Wiki from the French)

Decazes

p 255 | M. de Castries would have been Charles de La Croix de Castries.

p 255 | The Duc de Berry, who was assassinated.

p 255 | The Duchesse de Berry, who Mme de Villeparisis's father wanted to dance with.

Molé

p 256 | Count Louis-Mathieu Molé, French politician & Academician (1781-1855).

p 258-9 | Queen of Sweden in 1894 (Sophia of Nassau)

p 259 | Henri d'Orleans, Duc d'Aumale (French general & historian, 4th son of Louis-Philippe, 1822-97).

p 259  | Achille Charles Léon Victor, Duc de Broglie (French statesman, 1785-1870)

p 259 | Adolphe Thiers (French historian, President of the Republic 1797-1877)

p 259 | Monseigneur Félix Dupanloup (French theologian, 1802-78)

p 259 | Charles Forbes (1810-70), was a French publicist, historian and Count of Montalembert.

p 259 | The Eastern Question

p 263 | Messalinas... Valeria Messalina (c. 17/20–48) was a Roman empress as the 3rd wife of Emperor Claudius. Also related to Emperor Nero, Emperor Caligula, Emperor Augustus. A powerful and influential woman with a reputation for promiscuity, she conspired against her husband and was executed when the plot was discovered.

p 263 | Parcae:  In ancient Roman religion and myth, the Parcae were the female personifications of destiny, often called the Fates: Nona, Decima, and Morta.

Swann's Way Centennial in NYC

Proust at the Morgan

The Guermantes Way: III p 247-52

p 247 | A bluestocking is an educated, intellectual woman.Until the late 18th century, the term had referred to learned people of both sexes. However it subsequently was applied primarily to intellectual women, and the French equivalent bas bleu had a similar connotation.

p 250 | MARIE-AMÉLIE (Queen of France; wife of Louis-Philippe, 1782-1866. >>>
p 250 | Conservatoire de Paris : a college of music and dance founded in 1795, 

p 251 | Beauvais tapestry furniture

p 251 | Queen of the Belgians (Louise of Orleans, 1812-50)

p 251 | Francois of Orleans, Prince de Joinville, 1818-1900.

p 252 | Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, 1837-98

p 252 | The Fronde was a civil war in France, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The word fronde means sling, which Parisian mobs used to smash the windows of supporters of Cardinal Mazarin.

p 252 | Marie-Félice Orsini, Duchesse de MONTMORENCY (née des Ursins; 1601–66).

Just finished reading Monsieur Proust's Library

Charming, short, easy-to-read study of how Proust's favorite authors figured into his masterwork. Get it here.

Excerpted here in The Paris Review and

3 Muhlstein videos from her speech on Charlus at the Center for Fiction (playlist is about 45 minutes for all three)