Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 397-446

p 401 | Francis Planté (1839-1934), French pianist; Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941), a virtuoso pianist who twice became prime minister of his native Poland; Édouard Risler (1873-1929), a French pianist best known for his playing of Liszt and Beethoven. 

p 401 | "Qualis artifex pereo!": "What an artist perishes in me!," supposedly the Emperor Nero's last words. German classicists had been unable to agree on the worth or authenticity of the Latin poetry attributed to him. 

p 407 | Demoiselles de Caen (lobsters) are small Normandy lobsters; Pampille was the pen name of Mme Marthe Daudet, who wrote cooking & fashion columns in the right-wing paper L'Action run by her husband, Proust's friend Léon.

p 409 | Pierre de Ronsard (1524-85), greatest of French Renaissance poets. His popularity and prosperity in his own time was steady.   

p 411 | buen retiro: Spanish phrase literally meaning "good retreat", used here meaning toilet.

p 411 | An eminent publisher ... paper knife: possibly a description of Eugene Fasquelle, a Paris publisher known to Proust.

p 419 | Jean-Gilbert-Victor Fialin, Due de Persigny (1808-72), was a right-wing politician who became minister of the interior and ambassador to London under the Second Empire.

p 421 | Dumas fils was Alexandre Dumas (1824-95),  novelist & playwright, son of Alexandre Dumas, the novelist of the same name, best known as the author of La Dame aux camelias.

p 424 | Cancan: the word can refer to either an item of unkind gossip, or the quack of a duck. (mid 19th century: from French, a child's word for canard ‘duck,’ from Old French caner ‘to quack.’ The name can-can may be derived from the French for tittle-tattle or scandal. However the dance was also called the coin-coin, which could have become corrupted into can-can.

p 427 | Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95),  the  greatest  of French  fabulists; Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755-94), Voltaire's great-nephew and, as a writer of fables, much influenced by Rousseau.

p 427 | Julien de Monchateau ... "Pico della Mirandola": Francois de Monchateau was celebrated in France as a child prodigy (as was Pic0 della Mirandola in Renaissance Florence).

p 429 | Place Saint-Sulpice: where, in Paris, the cheapest and most tasteless religious objects can be bought.

p 430 |  Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810-92) specialized in casting bronze reproductions of classical statuary, popular with 19th-century bourgeoisie.

p 434 | Harpagon: the sexagenarian bourgeois miser in Molière's comedy L'Avare (The Miser).

p 434-37 | "Chantepie ... Does it deserve its name?": une pie is "a magpie," chanter means "to sing," so that the name should refer to a place where magpies sing.

p 438 | Jules Lachelier (1832-1918), French idealist philosopher, wrote influentially about the problem of induction, and is opposed here to John Stuart Mill, a philosopher known
in France in Proust's day as an extreme empiricist.

p 438 | Jean-Francois Millet (1814-75), celebrated for painting scenes of peasant life, notably the much reproduced L'Angelus.

p 439 | Chantereine: play on words... chanter, to sing and reine means "queen."

p 440-41 | Pont-a-Couleuvre would literally mean "Snake Bridge" or “Serpent bridge,” which was formerly Pont-à-Quileuvre, which in old French stands for Pont a qui l'euvre, in Latin Pons cui aperit, i.e., Pont a qui ouvre, closed bridge opened only upon payment.


p 441 | In none of La Fontaine's or Florian's fables does a frog find itself before the Areopagus, or supreme court of Athens.

p 443 | " 'She has good qualities ...'": the quotation from Mme de Sévigné, modified by Proust, refers to her daughter-in-law.

p 446 | Members of the French Senate, like Charles de Freycinet (1828-1923) and Justin de Selves (1848-1934). Sylva = Latin word for a wood.

p 447-48 | The Tour d'Argent, on the Left Bank, was, and is, one of the great restaurants of Paris; the Hotel Meurice, on the rue de Rivoli, was one of the city's best in Proust's day.  Emile Boutroux (1845-1921) taught philosophy at the Sorbonne, and at one time had Henri Bergson for a pupil. 

p 448-49 | The Forty are the "Immortals," or the 40 members of the Academie Francaise. Not all the names Brichot cites were actual Academicians.

p 449 | Paul Parfouru (1842-1917) was called Porel. He was an actor & theater director, who ran the Odéonon theater from 1884 to 1892, hence the reference to "Odeonia"; his son, Jacques Porel  (1893-1982), was a friend of Proust's.

p 449-51 | "...two trees...": Saint-Martin-du-Chene (un chene is an oak tree) & Saint-Pierre-des-Ifs (un if is a yew tree).

Place Saint-Sulpice

N.B. All entries based primarily based on Sturrock's notes.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 372-97

p 372 | William= German Emperor Wilhelm II. 

p 373 | the Abbaye-aux-Bois: where the celebrated hostess Mme de Récamierher had her salon in Paris, at which, during the 1820s, the great Romantic writers, Chateaubriand among them, read their works in public. 

p 373 | Émilie du Châtelet (1706-49), French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment, who had a long liaison with Voltaire. 

p 373 | ... Roman Empress...: possibly Agrippina, wife of Claudius I and mother of Nero, famous for her domineering ways.  (Sturrock) 

p 373 |... like Christ or the Kaiser...: a reference to Christ's injunction in Matthew 10:37; and to Kaiser Wilhelm II's declarations of 1891 that "The will of the King is the supreme law" and that soldiers should obey "without a murmur" if ordered to fire on their own families. (Sturrock) 

p 374 | "You alone did seem ...": "Toi seule me parus ce qu'on cherche toujours." (from Vigny) 

p 378 | Pierre Potain (1825-1901), a prominent Paris medical man, with several literary patients 
(see the Goncourts' Journal); Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-93), greatest of 19th-century neurologists in France, who influenced young Freud when he was a medical student in Paris.

p 380 |the comedies of Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763) contain numerous aristocrats, but no baronnes. (Sturrock)

p 380 | Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (1814-79) was a champion of Gothic architecture, responsible for the restoration of many medieval buildings. 

p 381 | "Charles-Maurice, Abbé of Perigord"=Talleyrand, both an unbeliever and a Catholic bishop.

p 384 | Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931), composer & teacher, was outspokenly anti-Dreyfus, and also anti-Semitic. The position of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was more nuanced; ironically, the fiercely partisan disagreements as to the merits or otherwise of his opera, Pelléas et Mélisande , caused it later to be likened to the Dreyfus Affair.

Molière

p 386 | squireen: A person who is half squire, half farmer.  
p 387 | Henri Meilhac (1831-97) wrote plays and comic operas, the best-known of which is La belle Hélène. Brichot is referring to Pascal's famous pensée: "If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed." (Sturrock) 
p 393 | Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was the real name of Molière, whose absurd character Argan, in Le malade imaginaire, is the model for Proust's pastiche of medical jargon. Mr. Purgon, a character from the same play.    (Sturrock) 

p 387 | "Uncle, I mean Sarcey": Francisque Sarcey (1827-99) was the leading drama critic of the day, nicknamed "Uncle" for his good sense and middlebrow tastes.   (Sturrock)
 
p 397 | Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-91), the archetypal American showman and publicist.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 357-72

p 358 | train transportation: here is a map of French railways, 1882. 

p 359 | pecus: Latin for "cattle, sheep, livestock."

p 361 | Emmaus: Luke's Gospel says that Jesus appeared (after his death & resurrection), before two of his disciples while they were on the road to Emmaus.

p 361 | The Sorbonne: Higher education reorganized considerably in France from 1885-96; new universal disciplines were created, often on the German model (Storrock).

p 363 | Trilby: A soft felt men's hat with a deeply indented crown and a narrow brim often upturned at the back.  Un smoking is a tuxedo or dinner jacket. Top Hat=>


p 364 | Princesse de Caprarola: a made-up title, character name; Caprarola is a city in central Italy.

p 370 | Abel-Francois Villemain (1790-1870), critic, Sorbonne professor, politician, Academician.

p 371 | douceur de vivre: the sweetness of living. Pococurantism = indifference, nonchalance, lack of concern. 

p 372 | Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), bishop, statesman, diplomat & political survivor.   

p 372 | Jean François Paul de Gondi (1613-7), Cardinal de Retz, was powerful in both the church and the state; some famous memoirs.  

p 372 | Struggle-for-lifer was an English phrase derived from the Darwinism of the late 19th century.  

Boulanger by Nadar

p 372 | The boulangistes were the supporters of Georges Boulanger (1837-91), a French general and politician, popular during the Third Republic.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 342-357

p 343 | Amphitryon: in Greek mythology, during Amphitryon’s absence, Alcmene became pregnant by Zeus, who, disguised as her husband, visited her; she became pregnant again by her real husband when he returned the next day. Of these unions were born twin boys -- Iphicles was the son of Amphitryon, Heracles the son of Zeus. 

p 345 | Cliff of Criquetot: Not sure if this is it, but it is on the coast of France. 

p 346 | Marcel spent part of autumn 1891 at this beautiful manor in Trouville, home of Arthur Baignères, uncle of his school friend Jacques Baignères. Les Frémonts was the model for La Raspelière, summer home of the Verdurins. Built in an L-shape and on a small cliff, the property looks out on the Channel, and on the other side, the Norman countryside (my translation).

 p 347 | Revue des deux mondes; still being published here and an English introduction is here.

p 353 | French flower girl.

p 347 | Paper by Gene M. Moore on the little train (downloadable), referencing names of towns on the line.


p 356 | Les Maximes, first published in 1665, are by François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-80). Here's one: "Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers." Here are some more, and here's the whole book.

p 357 | "But won't you, indolent traveler, rest your head/And dream your dreams upon my shoulder?": from a poem by Alfred de Vigny (Storrock) 

Lyre

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 323-342

p 324 | Prothyraia, Hera, Neptune, Nereus, Leto, Protogonos, etc. see, for example, Greek Mythology; styrax; saffron; myrrh; manna; Orphic hymns; Amphietes; Orgiophant

p 325 | Sapphism, derived from Sappho.

p 329 | Esther and Athalie by Jean Racine.
 

p 329 | Edgar Dégas drew, painted, and sculpted many ballet dancers. 

p 331 | atavism; seraglio; purlieus

p 331 | La Juive (The Jewish Woman): an opera, with music by Fromental Halévy (1799-1862), first performed in 1835.

p 331 | "C'est un courrier de cabinet": popular tune from Les Brigands, an opera by Jacques Offenbach (1819-80). It was the equivalent of a King's or Queen's messenger.

p 331-32 | Céleste Albaret (née Gineste, 1891-1984), married to a taxi-driver employed by Proust, became his housekeeper in 1914 and worked for him until his death in 1922. Her memories were published in 1973 as Monsieur Proust. (See video here.) Marie Gineste, her unmarried sister, sometimes helped; both originally were from Auvergne.

Leger / Perse

p 336 | Alexis Saint-Leger Leger (1887-1975), French poet and diplomat wrote under the name Saint-John Perse. Éloges appeared in 1911. Real name=Alexis Leger. Nobel Prize for Literature (1960).

p 336 | "Here below the lilacs die...": first line of a poem by Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907), French poet, who received the first Nobel Prize for literature, in 1901. This poem was often set to music. 

p 336 | Archibishop of Tours; Bishop of Rodez.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 305-323

p 305 | Brief history of tipping, with more here

p 305 | Dinard, France, on the coast of Brittany, Deauville; Balbec=Cabourg (coast of Normandy, on the French side of the English Channel)

p 305 | "on the rocks" ; General de Beautreillis (character)

p 318 | Arabian Nights; the Galland translation appeared in 12 volumes early in the 18th century; the Mardrus appeared between 1899 and 1904, and restored the risqué elements that Galland had censored (Storrock)

p 319 | Augustin Thierry (1795-1856), a medieval historian of Romantic views, who wrote notably about the Merovingians and the Norman Conquest of England. Part of his search for local color involved using the Germanic forms of Merovingian names long since Gallicized by other writers. (Storrock)

p 319 | Carolingians; Merowig

p 319 | Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818-94), the most prominent of the post-Romantic Parnassian school of poets, who took much of his subject matter from antiquity.

p 319 |Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), the most lyrical and thus least Parnassian of Romantic poets.

p 319 | Characters in the Odyssey 
 
p 323 | Viviane is a good fairy in Chrétien de Troyes's 12th-century romance of Lancelot, who turns the hero into a perfect knight. Puss in Boots is a character in one of Perrault's fairy tales.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 245-305

Paul Decauville (1846-1922), industrialist and politician, who in­vented a narrow-gauge railway that could be demounted and transported. (Sturrock)

p 248 | Rosemonde: a slip of the pen for Albertine. (Sturrock)

“ascenseur”…“accenseur”: In French, the difference in sound is between “assenseur” and “acksenseur.” Ascenseur means “elevator” or “lift.” (Sturrock)

the recidivism… single negative: Proust’s lift boy omits the normal ne in front of the verb used negatively. Bélise is a character in Les Femmes savantes, in which Molière makes fun of grammatical pedantry. (Sturrock)

p 272 | Legend has the poetess Sappho throwing herself into the sea off Lesbos as a result of her unrequited love for a boatman. (Sturrock)

p 278 | Henri le Sidaner (1862-1939), a minor Impressionist, best known for his cityscapes of Bruges and Venice. (Sturrock)

p 287 | “M. Degas assures us…: Degas had much to do with the re­vival of Poussin’s reputation during the 1890s. (Sturrock)

p 289 | “Their giant’s wings…”: a line from a celebrated sonnet in which Baudelaire describes the ungainliness of an albatross when it is on the ground, using the bird as a symbol for the Poet. In French, “Leurs ailes de géant les empêchent de marcher.” (Sturrock)

The Congrégations were religious bodies that ran many schools (and some hospitals) in France; they were dissolved in 1904. “Wars in the East” refers to the 1904-05 war between Russia & Japan; the Japanese victory created European fears that the “yellow” races might prove too strong for the white. (Sturrock)

p 288, 290-91: Tetralogy: the four operas of Wagner’s Ring cycle.  (Sturrock)

p 291 | Jules Massenet (1842-1912), a composer best known for op­eras, especially Manon and Don Quixote. (Sturrock)

Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 203-245

p 205 | Caen

p 205 | French Legion of Honour
 
p 205 | L'Écho de Paris was a daily newspaper in Paris, 1884 to 1944.

Caillaux

p 205 | Joseph Caillaux (1863-1944), a Radical politician who served as prime minister from 1911 to 1912.

p 205 | "under the thimble ... thumb": the manager says "sous la coupole" instead of "sous la coupe," which improves the joke, since "sous la coupole" refers to the meeting place of the Académie Française (being re­ceived sous la coupole means being elected to the Academy). (Sturrock)


p 210 | M. Paillard was a well-known Paris restaurant, patronized by some of Proust's friends.

From  A Companion to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited: "Paillard’s was one of leading restaurants of Paris... created in 1880 when M. Paillard took over an establishment situated at the corner of the Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin and the Boulevard des Capucines from the Bignon brothers. According to Larousse Gastronomique, ‘Favourite dishes were chicken Archduke, Georgette potatoes, calves’ sweetbreads with asparagus tips, fillets of sole Chauchat and, above all, stuffed duck, rivalling the duck au sang of the Tour d’Argent.’  The culinary term paillard is of course named after the famous chef, who trained under the great Escoffier himself. It is a thin slice of veal (or now, any meat) pounded even thinner until it is translucent and then grilled or fried for a few seconds only."

p 216 | Lethe: the stream of oblivion & forgetfulness, was one of the rivers of the underworld and its goddess (Greek mythology).

Jammes

p 218 | Francis Jammes (1868-1938) wrote simple poetry, often on the theme of innocence re­covered. The stag in this dream sequence appears to derive from a story by Flaubert, "The Legend of Saint Julien the Hospitaler," in which a stag predicts to Julien that he will kill his father & mother (this reference may be relate to Proust’s guilt about the death of his mother). The fork comes from an earlier draft of the novel, where the sound of a fork striking a plate triggers the Narrator’s involuntary memories (like the madeleine). In the final book (Time Regained), the fork has become a spoon.(Sturrock)  After reading Swann's Way, Jammes wrote Proust a letter comparing him to Shakespeare and Balzac.

p 219 | Aias: Greek for Ajax in the Iliad, who, in his madness killed sheep & shepherds after mistaking them for fellow Greeks. (Sturrock)


p 223 | barouche: carriage

p 223 |Jonathan, i.e., John the Baptist. (Sturrock)
 
p 228 | Duc d’Orléans…: only two of the four separate houses of Orléans ever succeeded to the throne, with the second occasion in 1830, with King Louis-Philippe; the title of Prince de Tarente belonged indeed to the house of La Trémoille.

p 229 |Mme Marie de Sévigné (1626-96), considered to be one France’s greatest letter-writers; Proust admired the quick, spirited impressionism of her style. Mme de Beausergent is a character, not a person.(Sturrock)

p 231-2 | Bertrand de Salignac-Fénélon (1878-1914) was killed in the opening months of WWI. He was descended from a brother of François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénélon (1651-1715), writer, theologian, Archbishop; also known as the “Swan” of Cambrai, whose Aventures de Télémaque were interpreted as a veiled attack on Louis XIV.< (Sturrock).  He was Proust's very good friend and partial model for Saint-Loup.

p 232 | René Duguay-Trouin, Sieur du Guay (1673-1736), a sailor whose statue stands in his native Saint-Malo. (Sturrock)

p 232 | whitlow: an infection of the tip of the finger.

p 234 | The Abbess of Fontevrault was Marie-Madeleine Gabrielle de Rochechouart (1645-1704), who was the older sister of Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart (1640-1707), the Marquise de Montespan, who was the mistress of King Louis XIV

p 235 | Panathenaea: an Athenian festival to honor the goddess Athena, depicted on a frieze on the Parthenon, fragments of which are in the British Museum & the Louvre. (Sturrock)

p 240-1 | syncope ("sincup"): a short loss of consciousness and muscle strength, fainting, passing out.

p 243 | "angel lutanists, Italian cathedral, porphyry, jasper... " maybe Cappella Di San Brizio (Duomo) in Orvieto.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 195-203

p 195-6 | The Ligue de la Patrie Française was founded to bring together those opposed to Dreyfus, and as an answer to the Dreyfusard Ligue des Droits de l'Homme. (Sturrock)

p 197 | Duc d'Estrées so probably Charles de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville (1864-1907)

p 197 | Paul Doumer (1857-1932), a radical politician who became president of the Republic in 1931, only to be assassinated a year later; Paul Deschanel (1855-1922) became president in 1920, but resigned nine months later due to illness. (Sturrock)

p 197 |François de Charette (1763-96) led the counter-revolutionary Royalist uprising in the Vendée in 1793; his family remained strongly Royalist throughout the 19th century. Sosthène de Doudeauville (1825-1908), descended from another ultra-Royalist family, was a right-wing deputy for many years & ambassador in London 1873-74.  (Sturrock)

p 198 |Committee of Public Safety (Comité de Salut Public) was the most ferocious of the ruling institutions created by the French Revolution, lasting from 1793 to 1795; dominated first by Danton, then Robespierre. (Sturrock)

Zola in the 1890s

p 199 | Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), a left-wing journalist and politician, was prime minister from 1906 to 1909 & again in the last months of WWI, but later was not elected president;

Émile Zola (1840-1902), by then the country's leading writer, was the most prominent Dreyfus supporter during the Affair;  Joseph Reinach  (1856-1921), a politician, eventually wrote a 7-volume history of the Affair;

Fernand Labori (1860-1917), a lawyer, defended Émile Zola in 1898 in the Dreyfus trial, and Captain Alfred Dreyfus himself at the court martial in Rennes in 1899.< (Sturrock)

p 201 |Édouard Juda Colonne (1838-1910), violinist & conductor who founded the Concert National in Paris in 1871 and later the Association des Concerts Colonne.

 

by Falconet

p 201 | Revue des deux mondes: (Review of the Two Worlds) is a French monthly literary & cultural affairs magazine published in Paris since 1829.





p 203 | Étienne Falconet (1716-91), sculptor and ceramic artist, whose patron was Mme de Pompadour.  









p 203 | Blue Cineraria flowers