The Fugitive V pp 712-32

p 720 | War of 1870 is the name used by the French for the Franco-Prussian War.

p 722 | Gilbert the Bad | see v. 1, p. 145:  "You may depend upon it, Mme. Octave," replied the Curé. "Why, it was just his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by proving that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and a direct descendant of Geneviève de Brabant, who was a daughter of the House of Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire."  ... "Gilbert's brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious prince, but, having early in life lost his father, Pepin the Mad, who died as a result of his mental infirmity, ...Gilbert, wishing to be avenged on Charles, caused the church at Combray to be burned down, the original church, ... Nothing remains of it now but the crypt, into which Théodore has probably taken you, for Gilbert burned all the rest." 

p 725 | Da capo: an Italian musical term that means "from the beginning" (literally, "from the head").

p 731 | Gabriel Fauré: Le Secret (video), song for voice & piano in D flat major, Op. 23/3 (1880-81); Duc de Broglie's Secret du Roi; Golgotha (According to the Gospels, Golgotha was, a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was crucified... Matthew's and Mark's gospels in Latin rendered Calvariæ Locus, from which the English word Calvary derives, trans. place of skulls, or Proust's Calvus Mons, or Bald Mountain); the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in NE Paris, is the 5th largest park in the city.

p 732 | Pascal's Pensées : The Pensées ("Thoughts") is a collection of fragments on theology and philosophy written by 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal.

The Fugitive V pp 695-712

p 706 | Châtellerault : a commune in the Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in France. It is located in the northeast of the former province Poitou (southwest of Paris).

p 707 | Loire River : France's longest river (171st in the world), 629 miles long, draining nearly 45, 200 square miles (more than a fifth of France's land area). It passes near Châtellerault.

p 710 | Painting of girl with her foot raised... Summer on the Beach (date unknown) by Paul-Gustave Fischer (Danish, 1860-1934). This is not the exact one, but an example.

p 711 | Leda and the Swan, drawing by Emmanuel Benner the Younger (French, 1836–1896)

The Fugitive V pp 654-95

ruins, 1871

p 657 | The Château de Saint-Cloud was one of Marie-Antoinette's châteaux, where Napoleon & Napoleon III declared themselves Emperor in their turn (in 1804 & 1852). It was built on a site over-looking the Seine about 5 km (3.1 mi) west of Paris.  The château was expanded by Phillipe of France, Duke of Orléans in the 17th century, and again by Marie-Antoinette in the 1780s. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, the château caught fire; most of the contents had been removed by Empress Eugénie. The standing roofless walls were finally razed in 1891. Now, a large park is on the site of the former palace, the Parc de Saint-Cloud, owned by the state. 

p 671 | Ortolans, leverets (a hare less than one year old),  rock-partridges...

p 675 | Byzantine Norman architecture

p 684 | novel in which a woman chooses not to speak (still searching)

p 695 | the baths at Balbec (Cabourg): Thalassotherapy: using sea-water as a form of therapy. Rules for sea-bathing at nearby Houlgate.

p 695 | A lorgnette is a pair of spectacles with a handle to hold them in place, rather than fitting over the ears or nose. The word "lorgnette" is derived from the French lorgner, to take a sidelong look at, and Middle French, from lorgne, squinting. They were invented by Englishman George Adams.

The Fugitive V pp 614-54

p 617-20 | Phèdre (originally Phèdre et Hippolyte) is a French dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677 at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris.

p 620 | ..."Jansenist" scruples...: Jansenism is so called after the Christian doctrine put forth by Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), a Dutch Catholic bishop, in his Augustinus, 1640. This doctrine favors grace and predestination rather than free will and good works. In this light, Phèdre would be less responsible for her actions, and less guilty. (Collier notes)

p 627 | Gare d'Orsay: former Paris railway station and hotel built in 1900. this station served the south and southwest of France, including Châtelleraut and Touraine. After closing as a station, it reopened in December 1986 as the Musée d'Orsay, an art museum.

Electric trains in the Gare d'Orsay, ca. 1900

p 630 |"..close down the churches and ..." : An allusion to French legislation passed in 1904 and 1905 leading to the separation of Church and State (Loi sur les Congrégations).

p 634 | Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was an Italian diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, humanist, and Renaissance writer. Often called the father of modern political science, he was an official in the Florentine Republic, as well as writing comedies, songs, & poetry. "Machiavellianism" is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort he described most famously in The Prince (Il Principe), his most renowned work, in 1513.

Touraine

p 636 | Touraine: a traditional province of France, whose capital was Tours.

p 646 | Les Écorres...Marie-Antoinette: Farms near Balbec where Albertine and the girls may have visited; it was fashionable at the time to drive out into the countryside in Normandy and take tea on a farm.

p 648 | Cricqueville-en-Bessin is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in NW France. Its name is from its deep-water creek that forms a natural harbor, from Crycavilla.

p 654 | "to philosophise in my garret...": Collins offers a reference to a work by 19th-century novelist Émile Souvestre (1806–54), who wrote Un philosophe sous les toits (An attic philosopher in Paris, or A peep at the world from a garret : the journal of a happy man, 1850).

p 654 | ..."the goatherd's horn..." : 

The Fugitive V pp 563-614

p 589-90 | Helen... Trojan elders: On the old men of Troy, upon seeing Helen, from Homer's Iliad, but also referring to Pierre de Ronsard's Sonnets pour Hélène (1578), written for Hélène de Surgères, a young love. The quoted line is from one of the sonnets, Book II, LXVII, line 4.

p 609 | Manon is a comic opera in 5 acts by Jules Massenet, to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1884.

1896 by Nadar

p 614 | Mallarmé's The Swan (Le Cygne) (Great discussion here, if you have time) The poem, which opens with one of the most famous lines in French literature, has the reputation of being very difficult. First, the original text:

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujoud'hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n'avoir pas chanté la region ou vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligée a l'oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.
Fantôme qu'à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,

Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

******************************************

Can the virgin, beautiful and vivid day

Release this frosted and forgotten lake,

With a drunk blow of wings to reel away 

In névés of flights they have yet to make?

Without song or recognition, the image burns

Tediously into the surrounding cold.

Yet always the magnificence, and the long neck yearns

Beyond the white hardness of the winter's hold.

Fast though feathers be caught in soiling mud,

From a horror of life the bird sails on,

Cold and improbable in its own pure being,

A scorching pure whiteness in the glacial flood:

A dream wrapped in scorn, and a phantom, seeing

How futile is exile for the Swan.

p 614 | other lines... vespertine: Two stanzas from another Mallarmé poem, M'introduire dans ton histoire (1914). 

The Captive V pp 531-59

p 531 | The Ambrosian Library: The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery.

p 531 | Fortuny in Tiepolo pink: 

p 545 | Luxembourg Gallery = Musée du Luxembourg (Paris)

p 545 | Fourteenth of July = Bastille Day, French National Day, celebrated on July 14th each year.

p 547 | ...steeple of Saint-Hilaire.... (really Saint-Jacques in Illiers-Combray)

p 552 | Les Rochers: The 15th century Gothic mansion known as the Château des Rochers-Sévigné was the former residence of Madame de Sévigné in Brittany.

Château des Rochers-Sévigné (photo: Luna04 wiki)

p 554 | vetiver: a fragrant grass, related to sorghum; similar to lemongrass & citronella.

p 554 | Saint-Jean-de-la-Haise (Normandy, nw France); Gourville (Charente, sw France)

The Captive V pp 511-31

Photo: Georges Jansoone

p 512 | Creation of Woman (Eve) at Orvieto Cathedral (probably by Maitani). 

 p 514 | Jean-Philippe Rameau (French Baroque composer, 1683–1764); Alexander Borodin (Russian Romantic composer, 1833–87).

p 515 | Saint Cecilia is the patroness of musicians. While details of her story appear fictional, her existence & martyrdom are considered historical fact. A number of musical compositions are dedicated to her, and her feast day, November 22, became the occasion for concerts & musical festivals. |

p 516 | Bernardino Luini (c. 1480/82 – 1532) was a North Italian (Milanese) painter from Leonardo's circle, said to have worked with Leonardo directly.

p 517 | Giorgione (c. 1477/8–1510) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school in the High Renaissance, whose career was ended by his death at about 30. He is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are affirmatively acknowledged to be his.

Blue & gold Fortuny gown lined in pink (V 531)

The Captive V pp 501-11

p 501 | Pianola (player piano); a Velasquez Infanta, for example Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Pink Dress (attributed);

p 503 | Sacred Variation for the Organ = from Vinteuil's septet at the Verdurin's.

p 506 | Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808–89) was a French novelist and short story writer.

p 508 | Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1821-81, Russian novelist. His novels: The Idiot (1868), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

p 509 | Mihály Munkácsy (1844 – 1900) was a Hungarian painter, specializing in genre pictures and large-scale biblical paintings.

p 511 | Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1801) was a French novelist, best known for the 1782 epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons).  Stéphanie Félicité, Madame de Genlis (1746–1830) was a French writer.

  The Night Watch by Rembrandt.

The Captive V pp 444-501

La Tour

p 454 | Casser le pot à quelqu'un: "le sodomiser" (Dictionnaire de l'argot, Larousse, 1990). This is the only mention of by Albertine of anal sex. Although the explanation that follows suggests that the expression may have been used by lesbians to denote penetrative sex in general. (Clark note) 

p 470| Maurice de La Tour (1704-88) was a French Rococo portraitist who worked primarily with pastels. Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire, Rousseau, Madame de Pompadour, and Louis XV.

p 485 | "... mediaeval Last Judgments..."; logarithmic tables.

p 487 | Albert I, Prince of Monaco, 1848-1922; Théophile Delcassé (French foreign minister, 1898-1905; hated Germany).

p 497 | Treaty of Utrecht 1713 (King Louis XIV); Pont-aux-Choux silver designs... maybe something like this:

Bakst

p 497 | Jacques Roettiers, 18-century French gold/ silversmith; Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry (1743-93) was the mistress of King Louis XV. Josep Maria Sert (also José María Sert y Badía, Catalan painter, 1874-1945); Léon Bakst, Russian painter & set designer, 1866–1924; Alexandre Benois, Russian painter & ballet designer, 1870–1960.

p 501 | Winged Victory of Samothrace (ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre).

Winged Victory

The Captive V pp 408-44

p 411 | Ultramontanism is a clerical political conception within the Catholic Church that places strong emphasis on the powers of the Pope. From the Middle Ages: when a non-Italian was elected to the papacy, he was said to be papa ultramontano, that is, a Pope from beyond the mountains (referring to the Alps). Foreign students at medieval Italian universities were also referred to as ultramontanes.

p 414 | Queen of Naples: Maria Sophie in Bavaria (1841-1925) was the last Queen consort of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

p 418 | Camille Chevillard, French composer/conductor, 1859-1923.

p 422 | Hunt-the-thimble is a party game.

p 441 | Second Eclogue of Virgil

[ 442 | Causeries du Lundi: (tr. “Monday Chats”) were a series of informal essays by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. The 640 critical & biographical essays on literary topics & European authors were published weekly in several Paris newspapers, on Mondays, for over 20 years (1849-69), later collected into 15 volumes. The most famous French exponent of the biographical method of literary criticism, Sainte-Beuve was Proust's critical bête noire: his writings on literature, published posthumously, were given the title Contre Sainte-Beuve. No doubt it amused him to present, through Brichot, Sainte-Beuve's work as a collection of stale gossip. (Clark notes)

p 442: Phidias (c. 480–430 BC) was a Greek sculptor, painter, and architect. His statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

p 443 | Aspasia was an ancient Greek woman philosopher, who had a "salon" and maybe influenced Socrates.

p 444 | quod di omen avertant = May the gods avert this omen (Cicero)

p 444 | The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) is the 1st novel of Anatole France.