Our social personality...

But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as “seeing some one we know” is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen.

Giotto in week 6

Merci beaucoup encore to Proustiannes Mientje and Lynn for serving tea and madeleines (Mientje brought them straight from Paris!) at our last meeting. Everyone was transported....

Here are a few links to illustrations of the fresco in the Arena Chapel in Padua. Some duplication, but didn't know which would show up well on your screens. Double click the images to enlarge them.

Seven Vices of Giotto

Seven Virtues of Giotto

(Padua) - Allegories of the Vices - Wikimedia Commons

(Padua) - Allegories of Virtues - Wikimedia Commons

Past to Present : 19th Century Antique photographs gallery (some actors)

Sarah Bernhardt - Wikipédia

The Sarah Bernhardt Pages

Catégorie:Actrice /Actresses du XIXe siècle - Wikipédia 

Catégorie:Acteur/Actors du XIXe siècle - Wikipédia

Colonne Morris (Morris columns)

Advertising column - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brill on whatamieating.com::Brill (Schopthalmus rhombus/Rhombus laevis) A flatfish lesser cousin of turbot with the same fine white nutritious firm flesh. It is fished in shallow waters of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean The top of the body is smooth grey or beige with small pearly markings The underside is creamy-white and it has small smooth scales. The bones are good for stock and it is itself often cooked off the bone. Can be used as a substitute for turbot.

Cardoon on whatamieating.com (Scolymus cardunculus/Cynara cardunculus). A white vegetable from southern Europe it is a member of the thistle family as is the globe artichoke. It resembles a large coarse head of celery and is similar to fennel and stalks are blanched in the same way that celery is. The stalks are flat long and wide with notched sides and a suede-like finish. They should be grated and peeled in the same way as celery and it is cooked in the same way In many parts of Europe they are likely to be served with ham in a white sauce or braised

Steeple and Church at Combray : week 5

Interior & exterior Combray church photos at the Ecclesiastical Proust Archive :: WOW! There's an outstanding search feature, so you can search for Combray church windows and color!

Illiers-Combray - French Wiki

Walking Combray  :: Someone went to Illiers-Combray & took pictures.

Pictures of the church steeple (unfortunately, no birds)

The church from the outside

Map :: Modern

..."The [tea] leaves, which had lost or altered their own appearance, assumed those instead of the most incongruous things imaginable, as though the transparent wings of flies or the blank sides of labels or the petals of roses had been collected and pounded, or interwoven as birds weave the material for their nests."

•  conversational reading blog :: nice blog entry on Combray, steeples, and other stuff we haven't gotten to yet.

• Daily Proust … This writer from S.C. started reading & blogging. Here are his church entries. Looks like he didn’t finish. Or at least he stopped blogging.

Combray (vol I): Pages for October 2009

(Enright paging; yours may differ)

Week 5
Combray. Aunt Léonie’s two rooms (66); her lime-tea (69). Françoise (71).

Week 6
The church (80). M. Legrandin (-). Eulalie (93). Sunday lunches (97). Uncle Adolphe’s sanctum (99). Love of the theater: titles on posters (100).

Week 7
Meeting with “the lady in pink” (104). My family quarrel with Uncle Adolphe (109). The kitchen-maid: Giotto’s “Charity” (110).

Week 8-
Reading in the garden (115). The gardener’s daughter and the passing cavalry (121). Bloch and Bergotte (124). Bloch and my family (125).

Week 9-
Reading Bergotte (129). Swann’s friendship with Bergotte (135). Berma (135). Swann’s speech mannerisms and mental attitudes (135). Prestige of Mlle Swann as a friend of Bergotte’s (138; cf. 582). The curé’s visits to Aunt Léonie (142). Eulalie and Françoise (148).

Gopnik on the Dreyfus Affair

Found this in last week's NEW YORKER Magazine. Dreyfus becomes important later in A LA RECHERCHE. Gopnik mentions Proust in the middle of the piece. There's also a nice podcast on the site. Extremely important politics & anti-Semitism, 1896.

Combray (vol I p 22-55): Notes September 2009

marrons glacés::

 
Aristaeus and learning that...the realms of Thetis ...  into an empire hidden from mortal eyes, where Virgil...

a letter from Twickenham:: TWICKENHAM, London. Residence of the exiled Comte de Paris.

Marquise de Villeparisis (née Mlle de Bouillon, aunt of the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes; friend of M's grandmother from convent days; lover of the Duc de Norpois)

the des Laumes (Prince and Princesse des Laumes become the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes)

Sévigné: Mme de SÉVIGNÉ, author of the famous Letters (1626-96).

p 26 | the Maréchal de MacMahon :: (1808–93; President of the Republic 1873–79).

reign of Louis-Philippe :: Louis-Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850), was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. He was the last king to rule France, although Napoleon III, styled as an emperor, would serve as its last monarch.

Duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier :: (le chancelier; French statesman, 1767–1862)

...met a learned old man who knows Maubant very well :: MAUBANT (French actor, 1821–1902)

Mme. Materna:: (Austrian singer, 1847–1918)

Saint-Simon :: Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de SAINT-SIMON (French social philosopher, author of the Mémoires, 1675–1755) describes how Maulévrier : MAULÉVRIER, Marquis de (French Ambassador in Madrid, 1720–23).

novels of George Sand

Chartres Cathedral by Corot, of the Fountains of Saint-Cloud by Hubert Robert

Mount Vesuvius by Turner

p 54 | the engraving by Morghen  of Leonardo’s Last Supper

sculptures representing the miracle of Saint Théophile or the four sons of Aymon

Combray: Week 2

 Orris root -- From Wikipedia

Orris root is the root of some species of iris, grown principally in southern Europe: Iris florentina, and Iris pallida. Once important in western, it is now used mainly as a fixative and base note in perfumery, as well as an ingredient in many brands of gin (perhaps most famously in Bombay Sapphire gin). Orris root must generally be hung and aged for 5 years before it can be used for perfumery. Fabienne Pavia, in her book L'univers des Parfums (1995, ed. Solar), states that in the manufacturing of perfumes using orris, the scent of the iris root differs from that of the flower. After preparation the scent is reminiscent of the smell of violets.  

 Wild-currant bush:  Photo

fer·ru·gi·nous  adj. 1. Of, containing, or similar to iron.  2. Having the color of iron rust; reddish-brown. [From Latin ferrginus, from ferrg, ferrgin-, iron rust, from ferrum, iron.] (c The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language)

Bressant style:  {From HairTalk tm @ HairBoutique.com}  I am reading a translation of Swann's Way by Proust. In a recollection of childhood, the narrator talks about a man of his acquaintance who wore his hair in the "Bressant-style." The footnote reveals that "Jean-Baptiste Prosper Bressant (1815-86) was a well-known actor who introduced a new hairstyle, which consisted of wearing the hair in a crew cut in front and longer in the back." The translator could have just as well said that the Bressant-style"is popularly known as the mullet." Short in front and long in back is hardly a "new" trend. {Fr. wiki: Il introduit une nouvelle coupe de cheveux coupés en brosse sur le devant et longs derrière, étant probablement à l'origine à la coupe mullet. On parle alors de coiffe "à la Bressant."

Jockey Club:  from Wikipedia:: The Jockey Club de Paris is best remembered as a gathering of the elite of nineteenth-century French society. The club still exists at 2 rue Rabelais, and hosts the International Federation of Racing Authorities.... During the Second Empire and the Third Republic, the gentlemen of the Jockey Club held numerous boxes at the Opera, "many little suspended salons" in Marcel Proust's phrase, where the required ballet expected in every opera was never in the first act, when the Jockey Club would habitually still be at dinner. One result was the famous fiasco of the "Paris Tannhäuser" of 1861, when Wagner insisted on inserting the requisite ballet into the first act, and the second act, with the members of the Jockey Club arriving to view their favourites in the corps de ballet, was all but hissed off the stage: Wagner never permitted another production in Paris. Proust's Charles Swann was a member, a fact that Proust more than once noted as a signal honor, given his Jewish background.

Prince Philippe, Comte de Paris: (eldest grandson of Louis-Philippe, 1838–94). Swann was his friend.

Prince of Wales: Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death on 6 May 1910. He was the first British monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which was renamed the House of Windsor by his son, George V.
    Before his accession to the throne, Edward held the title of Prince of Wales and was heir apparent to the throne for longer than anyone else in history.[1] During the long widowhood of his mother, Queen Victoria, he was largely excluded from political power and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite.
    The Edwardian period, which covered Edward's reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including powered flight and the rise of socialism and the Labour movement. Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet, the reform of the Army Medical Services,[2] and the reorganisation of the British army after the Second Boer War. He fostered good relations between Great Britain and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called "Peacemaker", but his work was unable to prevent the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

The aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain/Saint-Germain-des-Prés (wiki):  This central Rive-Gauche quarter is named for its 7th century abbey of which only a church is still standing. Its commercial growth began upon the 1886 completion of its Boulevard Saint-Germain and the opening of its cafés and bistrots namely its "Café de Flore" and "Deux Magots" terraces. Its fame came with the 1950s post-WW II student "culture emancipation" movement that had its source in the nearby University. Many jazz clubs appeared here during those times, and a few still remain today.  Located near the École des Beaux-Arts, this quarter is known for its artistry in general, and has many galleries along its rue Bonaparte and rue de Seine. In all, Saint-Germain-des-Prés is an upper-class bourgeois residential district, and its quality clothing and gastronomical street-side commerce is a direct reflection of this.

Week 1 info

These references surfaced this week:

• Geneviève de Brabant on Wikipedia
• Philosophy of Henri Bergson 
• Merovingian Dynasty (way earlier than we were guessing)
  
• Oxford Merovingian page
• Wiki page 

Also, Nabokov's lectures on literature contains one on Proust... at this link, you can perhaps read much of it in the preview box

Renée's Proustometer

I appreciated the Roger Shattuck paper for a glimpse of clarity for someone like me, new to Proust. Amazing that he once thought he may--purely as an excercise? write totally without chapters, paragraph breaks and sentence puctuation--just one giant sentence. I doubt I could have gotten through that! Anyway, I will use the paper to refer to as we go along. NOW, as for Renée on caffeine: YES, your Proustometer was waaaaaaay off the charts!

Summarizing Proust

Proustians:  Thank you for coming tonight and making the evening quite special for me. After leaving you, I was so excited, I went to AIA, where there was a perfectly outstanding sunset in mauve reflected on the unmoving ocean, while the great white moon broke through the rain-soaked clouds to cast its shimmering light across the water and up the beach right onto my feet.  I put this sunset moment at the end of all other sunset moments I've had and photographed and, as I often do, judged it the best ever. 

Because I'd fallen asleep before the group, I'd had some caffeine assistance to perk up; I see now that it kicked in just when I needed to lay out the direction your reading could go. Sorry I was so one-track.... more than a little like Monty Python's hilarious Summarize Proust Competition!

I just set up http://readproust.blogspot.com/ == a/k/a "Reading Proust for Fun." You all got invitations to both post and comment. You could use it to save thoughts / sentences / ideas for discussion.  Or if you hate it, I'll close it down.

One thing I meant to mention.... the French title... A la recherche du temps perdu  literally translates into In Search of Lost Time (ISOLT), which was finally used in the Enright translation in 1998. Scott-Moncrieff chose Remembrance of Things Past (RTP), which is not exactly the same idea at all, but is a phrase taken from a sonnet by Shakespeare.  He also named all the other books using Shakespearean phrases, which Proust hated. The latest translations restore the original titles.