Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 44-52

Licensed CC BY-SA 2.5

p 45 | Luxor obelisk on the Place de la Concorde

p 45 |Crescent moon & star (here, Venus)







p 46 | Ushers assist visitors by formally showing the way in a large building or to their appropriate seats. From the French huissier, ushers were servants or courtiers who showed visitors in and out of meetings in large houses or palaces.  Avenue Gabriel.

p 47-48 | French military painter Édouard Detaille, 1848-1912. The Dream is his 1888 (Le Rêve) painting that shows soldiers asleep on a battlefield dreaming of military glory.

p 50-51 | Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825–95, English biologist (comparative anatomist), known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for advocating the theory of evolution. Grandfather of Aldous Huxley, 1894–1963, English writer, perhaps best known for his dystopian novel Brave New World. A humanist, pacifist, & satirist, he later became deeply concerned that humans might become subjugated through the sophisticated use of the mass media or mood-altering drugs, or tragically impacted by misunderstanding or the misapplication of increasingly sophisticated technology.

p 51 | François de Malherbe, French poet, 1555-1628.

p 51 | ... dancing the Boston...": a type of waltz. Cotillion dance & favors.

p 52 | ... draught of honeydew"; or l'eau de mélisse

Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 28-44

p 29 | convolvulus: climbing morning glory plant with tendrils

p 30 | Saturn... as in Saturnalia?

p 30 | cross-dressing in 19th century Paris




p 32 | Rob Roy... Diana Vernon : two characters in Sir Walter Scott's 1817 novel Rob Roy.

sterile jellyfish on the beach

p 34 | ... cases where inversion is curable...

p 35 | urticaria = hives;

p 36 | Griselda;  Andromeda; Argonauts;

p 36 | Athénaïs Michelet: a French natural history writer; girandole = showy branching, e.g., fireworks, candelabra; vanilla = "...Blooming occurs only when the flowers are fully grown. Each flower opens up in the morning and closes late in the afternoon on the same day, never to re-open. If pollination has not occurred meanwhile, it will be shed. The flowers are self-fertile but need pollinators to perform this task. The flowers are presumed to be pollinated by stingless bees and certain hummingbirds, which visit the flowers primarily for nectar. Hand pollination is the most reliable method in commercially grown Vanilla." (Wikipedia)

Vanilla

p 39 | Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife); Primula veris (English Cowslip / primrose); infusoria (ciliates, protozoa, etc.); everything about plant reproductive morphology; hermaphrodite plants and animals

p 40 | Dioecious species have the male and female reproductive structures on separate plants.

p 42 | ... two angels posted at the gates of Sodom...: from Genesis 19: 1-29.

p 43 | Genesis 13:16 = "... other verse of Genesis..."

p 44 | Zionist movement=a nationalist movement that supports the creation of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the Land of Israel...Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in central & eastern Europe as a national revival movement, and soon after, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, which was then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire.(Wikipedia)

Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 22-28

p 22 | "Socrates was... ". Maybe. There was a teacher/student thing, an active/passive thing, a bisexual thing. Here's an overview.
p 23 | A Masonic Lodge, often termed a Private Lodge or Constituent Lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry.
p 25 | Sons of the Indre...":  i.e., natives of the département of the Indre, in central France.
p 26 | Union of the Left (Union des Gauches) was formed from a merger between two radical groups in 1885, another in 1899 in response to the Dreyfus Affair. {Sturrock, note 17}
p 26 | The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private music school, founded in 1894.
p 27 | Potin's : local grocery Proust would have known. In 1864 a shop was opened on the Boulevard Malesherbes.
p 28 | Saint-Simonianism: French political & social movement in the early 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). He was has been as a utopian socialist, the founder of sociology and a "prescient madman," who thought the growth of industrialization & scientific discovery would profoundly change society.
p 28 | Galatea: in mythology, a sea nymph who loved the shepherd Acis. The giant Polyphemus crushed him under a rock. 

Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 1-21

Sodom and Gomorrah (The Cities of the Plain)

p 1 | "...rose-pink campanile..." (bell tower; this one is Giotto's in Florence); coach-house = carriage house;  eyrie or aerie: large nest of a bird of prey, especially an eagle, typically built high in a tree or on a cliff.

p 2 | pollination

the chapel at Combray

 

 

 

 

 

 p 2 | Excellent essay on Count Robert de Montesquiou (above), who was a partial model for the Baron de Charlus...

p 7 | "... Beethoven's questioning phrases..." In Hammerklavier’s Adagio Sostenuto or the Sixteenth Quartet?

p 10 | Boer War (Second)

p 12 | Fanlight = window  transom

p 12 | pregnancy (of Nero) in the Golden Legend.

p 13 | Caliph of Baghdad dressed as a merchant 

p 14 | Gare d'Orléans; Orléans is about 83 miles ssw of Paris.

p 15 | Cathedral of Orléans

real penholder

stereoscope

 

 

 

 

 

p 15 | optical penholder  (stereoscope)

p 15 | ophthalmia = inflammation of the conjunctiva or the eyeball;

Centaur

p 15 | Diane  de Poitiers, mistress of King Henri II of France. Her Renaissance house in Orleans was destroyed in June 1940. {Sturrock, note 10}

p 16 | mantle in gules (heraldry); "I have three popes in my family": possibly an allusion to three Renaissance popes from the Medici family in Florence from whom Charlus is supposedly descended: Leo X, Clement VII, and Leo XI. {Sturrock, note 11}

p 18 | "... word dear to the ancient Greeks...";  Athena: the goddess who protects Ulysses in both the Iliad & the Odyssey. In Book XIII of the Odyssey, she finally reveals herself to him, having earlier appeared in the guise of an adolescent. {Sturrock, note 12}

nymph

p 19 | Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (the writing on the wall); prophetic words written on the wall by the fingers of a man's hand during King Belshazzar's fatal feast in Babylon. They were interpreted by the prophet Daniel to mean that Belshazzar's reign, and indeed his life, were over (see Daniel 5). {Sturrock, note 13}

p 20 | A nymph in Greek & Latin mythology is a minor female nature deity usually associated with a specific location or landform. Not goddesses, nymphs are seen as divine spirits who animate nature, often shown as beautiful, young nubile maidens who dance and sing. Ephebes are young adolescent men of (military) training age.

p 20 | Original sin and racial predestination.

p 21 | ... honour precarious, liberty provisional, ... position unstable, ... the poet one day feted in every drawing room & applauded in every theatre in London, and the next driven from every lodging... (Oscar Wilde?, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labor, 1895-97.)

p 21 | turning the mill like Samson....

p 21 | "two sexes shall die... " Vigny poem, Proust's meaning, timing, connection to Baudelaire are all discussed beginning on page 18 of Proust's Lesbianism by Elisabeth Ladenson; a line from Alfred de Vigny's poem "La Colere de Samson", where Samson becomes disillusioned with women following his betrayal by Delilah. {Sturrock, note 14}

The Guermantes Way III p 784-87

p 784 | "... I could scarcely see into our courtyard, but I caught a glimpse of several others, and this though of no practical use to me, diverted me for a time..."

p 785 | coach-house (converted now)

p 787 | coins of the Order of Malta (wiki); Order of St. John in Jerusalem ; Grand Masters of the Order; Knights of Cypress & Rhodes; Knights Templar.

p 787 | House of Lusignan, Kings of Cyprus

The Guermantes Way III p 779-84

p 779 | French nobility hierarchy etc. (Almanach de Gotha)
p 780 | Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, Duchesse de Longueville (1619-75); Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé 
p 780 | Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia (1828–1885); Franco-Prussian War of 1870
p 780 | Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour (1721-64)
p 780 | Egeria or Egeria (mythology) ?
p 781 | "... Types of mind are so varied..."

"As I scarcely ever go out, I read a great deal. I have had sent me the works of Baudelaire, which have made me furious. Baudelaire was crazy! He died in a hospital, after having written some verses which attracted the good opinion of Victor Hugo, and which possessed no other merit than that of being immoral. Now they are making him out to be a man of genius, who was misunderstood!" [Title: Letters to an Unknown; Author: Prosper Mérimée)

p 783 | "how many quarterings one has..." In heraldry, a method of joining several coats of arms together in one shield.

p 783 | Joseph de Cléron, Comte d'Haussonville (1809–84), French politician & historian; his wife, Louise d'Haussonville.
p 783 | Mme Delessert (Mérimée's mistress)
p 784 | Elie Charles de Tallyrand, Prince of Chalais (b. 1809)

 

The Guermantes Way III p 735-41

Sabran

Tallien

p 735 | Choiseul & Mme de Praslin; Lucinge / Duc de Berry
p 735 | Mme Tallien (also here) and Mme de Sabran

p 735 | "The Prince d’Agrigente having asked why Prince Von had said, in speaking of the Duc d’Aumale   [Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale (1822–97) was a son of Louis-Philippe], ‘my uncle,’ M. de Guermantes had replied: “Because his mother’s brother, the Duke of Wurttemberg [Duke Alexander of Württemberg (1804–81)], married a daughter of Louis-Philippe [Princess Marie of Orléans (1813–1839), who was a daughter of Louis-Philippe].” 

Memling

Carpaccio

p 735 | ... reliquary painted by Carpaccio or Memling 

p 735-36 | ... [German] castle called Fantaisie...

p 736 | Balzac's La Comédie humaine; Eugène de Rastignac; Laurence de Cinq-Sygne

p 736 | Romanesque architecture

p 737 | A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. Milling existed in hunter-gatherer communities, and was important to the development of agriculture. The materials are often foodstuffs, esp. grain. Non-food substances needed in a fine, powdered form, such as building materials, may be processed by a miller; A poem by Jean de La Fontaine: The Miller, His Son And The Ass.

p 738 | Inverted commas: Quotation marks or inverted commas (also called quotes or speech marks) are punctuation marks surrounding a quotation, direct speech, or a literal title or name. They can also be used to show a different meaning of a word/phrase other than the one typically associated with it & are often used to express irony.

p 739 | verb. sap., Latin, abbreviation for verbum sapienti sat est ("a word is enough to the wise;" Proust wrote: "à demi-mot...").

p 741 | Chouan rising: A Royalist uprising in 12 French départements against the French Revolution, the First French Republic, and even under the Empire. It played out in 3 phases, from 1794 until 1800.

The ultimate reference book: The Almanach de Gotha, here at Wikipedia

Albertine is out of sequence for us

but I found this piece in the current issue of The London Review of Books. A meditation on authors and characters and the connection, real or imagined, between them, specifically, Marcel, Albertine, Proust, Alfred, Albert, Mallarmé.

 ** SPOILER ALERT **  Significant plot points are revealed beginning at #45

Ah, I see. It's to be a book. Of poetry.

Publication Date: June 25, 2014 | ISBN-10: 0811223175

Anne Carson's take on Albertine, Marcel Proust's famous love interest
The Albertine Workout contains fifty-nine paragraphs, with appendices, summarizing Anne Carson’s research on Albertine, the principal love interest of Marcel in Proust’s Á la recherche du temps perdu.

The Guermantes Way III p 730-34

p 730 | Danish port of Elsinore in Hamlet
p 731 | Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, French writer, 1619-92. 
p 731 | Rohan=House of Rohan (French aristocratic family)
p 731 | Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot, known as the chevalier de Rohan and the comte de Chabot (1683-1760), was a French nobleman most notable for an altercation with Voltaire. 
p 731 | House of Guéméné.
p 731 | The phrase “natural son” in a will meant an acknowledged child of the testator who had been born out of wedlock. 
p 731 | ?? Aimé, duc de Clermont-Tonnerre (1779-1865) was a French general and statesman. (Unmarried?)
p 732 | Belvédère =in architecture, a terraced pavilion; Jean Casimir-Périer (1847-1907) was the 5th President of the Third Republic; Croix du Grand-Veneur was an historical crossroads on the path of Joan of Arc.

p 732 | Xenophon (c.430–354 BC) was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, and student of Socrates. He went with the Ten Thousand, an army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger, who wanted to seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II. 
p 732 | Epicurus (341–270 BC), an ancient Greek philosopher, founder of Epicureanism. 
p 732 | Duchy of Uzès
p 733 | Roman poets
p 734 | François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641–91) was the French Secretary of State for War for much of the reign of Louis XIV. Louvois and his father, Michel le Tellier, would increase the French Army to 400k soldiers, which would fight 4 wars between 1667 and 1713. Commonly referred to as Louvois, he fathered three daughters.

The Guermantes Way III p 722-30

p 722 |General Louis Botha (S. African statesman, 1862-1919).
p 723 | Edward VII (1841–1910) was King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death. Before ascending the throne, he had been the Prince of Wales. Alexandra of Denmark (1844–1925) was his Queen consort.
p 724 | ... "Prince of Bulgaria..." Ferdinand I (1861–1948),born Ferdinand Maximilian Karl Leopold Maria of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, was the ruler of Bulgaria from 1887 to 1918, first as knyaz (prince regnant, 1887–1908) and later as tsar (1908–1918). He was also an author, botanist, entomologist & philatelist
p 725 | Saint Louis: Louis IX (1214–70), known as Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 until his death. An 8th-generation descendant of Hugh Capet, he was a member of the House of Capet, son of Louis VIII & Blanche of Castile. He is the only canonized king of France. 

"Louis' wisdom and fairness in administering justice was well-known in Europe. In summer, he would often go from church to a nearby park where he sat beneath an oak tree with several courtiers. "Is there anyone here who has a case to settle?" he would ask, and whoever did could come and speak with him freely. When faced with a problem between a rich person & a poor person, Louis always listened a little more carefully to the poor person. The rich, he said, had plenty of people ready to listen to them."

p 725 | Boaz: a major figure in The Book of Ruth in the Bible.

p 726 | Widow's weeds: Black clothes worn by a widow in mourning. Early 18th cent. (earlier as mourning weeds): weeds (obsolete in the general sense garments) is from Old English, waed(e), of Germanic origin.

p 727 | Republican: Republicanism is the ideology of governing a society or state as a republic, where the head of state is a representative of the people who hold popular sovereignty rather than the people being subjects of the head of state. The head of state is typically appointed by means other than heredity, often through elections.
p 727 | Prosody: the rhythm and pattern of sounds of poetry & language.
p 727 | Ducs de La Rochefoucauld and Ducs de Doudeauville.
p 728 | Duc de Montmorency
p 728 | Santrailles (Xaintrailles), Jean Poton de (French Marshal, 1390?–1461), was one of the chief lieutenants of Joan of Arc. He served as master of the royal stables, as royal bailiff in Berry & as seneschal of Limousin. In 1454 he was appointed a Marshal of France and was a leading figure on the French side in the Hundred Years War

p 730 | Catherine de Clèves (1548-1633) was, by marriage, Duchess of Guise from 1570 to 1588. She was Countess of Eu in her own right from 1564, and the widow of Antoine de Croy, Prince de Porcien. 
.