Dennis Abrams on three trees at Hudmisil

Quoting from The Proust Project.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 386?) Dinner Guests of Mme de Villeparisis' Parents

• CHOPIN, Frédéric (French/Polish composer, 1810-49)
• LISZT, Franz (Hungarian composer, 1811-86)
• LAMARTINE, Alphonse de (French poet, 1790-1869)
• CHATEAUBRIAND, François-René, Vicomte de (French writer & statesman, 1768-1848)
• BALZAC, Honoré de (French novelist, 1799-1850)
• HUGO, Victor (French poet, novelist & playwright, 1802-85)
• VIGNY, Alfred de (French poet, 1797-1863)
• Molé, Mathieu Louis (French judge & statesman, 1781-1855)
• FONTANES, Louis, Marquis de (French man of letters & statesman, 1757-1821)
• VITROLLES, Eugene Francois Augusto d'Arnaud, Baron (French politician, 1774-1854)
• BERSOT, Ernest (French philosopher & journalist, 1816-80)
• PASQUIER, Etienne Denis, Duc de (French statesman & author, 1767-1862),
• LEBRUN, Pierre-Antoine (French poet, 1785-1873)
• SALVANDY, Comte de (French writer & politician, 1795-1856)
• DARU, Pierre-Bruno, comte (French politician & writer, 1767-1829)
• STENDHAL [Henri Beyle] (French novelist, 1783-1842)
• MÉRIMÉE, Prosper (French novelist, 1803-70)
• SAINTE-BEUVE, Charles-Augustin (French writer, 1804-69); information on Sainte-Beuve's ideas about literary criticism and Proust's response to them (Contre Sainte-Beuve)

Dennis Abrams, over at The Cork-Lined Room, notes why it is important to pay attention to Proust's -- and his characters' -- name-dropping. 

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 388-94) Notes for May

p 388 | Mme BLANDAIS: wife of the notary from LeMans on holiday at the Grand Hotel.  ... 

...a young page who attracted the eye no less by the unusual and effective colouring of his hair than by his plant-like epidermis. Inside, in the hall, corresponding to the narthex, or Church of the Catechumens in a primitive basilica...(388)

  The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at the end of the nave, at the far end from the church's main altar. Catechumen, in the early Church, was the name applied to one who had not yet been initiated into the sacred mysteries, but was undergoing a course of preparation for that purpose. 

p 389 | "...like those pupils of Mme. de Maintenon who, in the garb of young Israelites, carry on the action whenever Esther or Joad ‘goes off.’ (389)

Françoise d'Aubigné, Mme de MAINTENON, (mistress, later wife of Louis XIV, 1635-1719)

Boys of humble background might become pages, or apprentice footmen. Unlike the hall boys, who did heavy work, these pages performed light odd jobs and were liveried when the aristocrat was entertaining.

...The arborescent page... (389)  arborescent:  Like a tree in structure, growth, or appearance; branching. About 1675, from Latin arborescens, present active participle of arboresco (“become a tree”). All one image: he's set on "alien soil" witn a "vegetable immobility."

Apple tree in bloom

"...I sought to carry them back in my imagination to that roadside, to multiply them, to spread them out, so as to fill the frame prepared for them, on the canvas, all ready, of those closest to the outline of which I knew by heart, which I so longed to see—which one day I must see again, at the moment when, with the exquisite fervour of genius, spring was covering their canvas with its colours..." (390)

..."sun radiant" ... ("soleil rayonnant", 390) : quoting Baudelaire's Chant d'automne (Song of Autumn)

... Leconte de Lisle's beautiful image of birds & boats (391), from the Oresteia of Aeschylus.

...The church at Carqueville, "quite buried in its old ivy" (391-2) is based on the church at Criqueboeuf. Another picture is here.

 
 Mme de Villeparisis paints flowers in watercolor (392), as did Proust's great friend & benefactor, Madeleine Lemaire.  She illustrated Proust's book of stories, arranged introductions, and invited him to her salon. 

... the conversational talent of Louis-Philippe...( 394). Wiki.  His museum.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 387-88) Notes for May 2011

But before all this I had drawn back my own curtains, impatient to know what Sea it was that was playing that morning by the shore, like a Nereid. (387)

THE NEREIDES (or Nereids) were 50 Haliad Nymphs or goddesses of the sea; patrons of sailors & fishermen, who assisted men in distress; goddesses who had the sea's bounty in their care. Individually they also represented facets of the sea, i.e, salty brine, foam, sand, rocky shores, waves and currents, as well as the skills possessed by seamen. The Nereides dwelt with their elderly father Nereus in a silvery cavern at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. Thetis was their unofficial leader, and Amphitrite was the queen of the sea. Together with the Tritones they formed the retinue of Poseidon.  In ancient art, they were depicted as beautiful young maidens, sometimes running with small dolphins or fish in their hands, or riding on the back of dolphins, hippokampoi (fish-tailed horses) and other sea creatures.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"...disclose to my wondering eyes the nymph Glauconome, whose lazy beauty, gently breathing, had the transparence of a vaporous emerald beneath whose surface I could see teeming the ponderable elements that coloured it? She made the sun join in her play, with a smile rendered languorous by an invisible haze which was nought but a space kept vacant about her translucent surface, which, thus curtailed, became more appealing, like those goddesses whom the sculptor carves in relief upon a block of marble, the rest of which he leaves unchiselled..."   

 GLAUKONOME was the Nereid of the "mastering the grey" sea. (cf. Hesiod, Apollodorus)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"...seated beside Mme. de Villeparisis in her barouche..."  (A 4-wheel fancy carriage with a fold-up hood at the back and with two inside seats facing each other.)

Saint-Mars le Vêtu ... or Quetteholme (387): fictional towns near Balbec;   FÉTERNE. The Cambremer estate near Balbec (388).

Within a Budding Grove (vol II Pages for May 2011)

May 5: Different seas (387). Drives with Mme de Villeparisis (387). The ivy-covered church (391). Mme de Villeparisis’s con­versation (394, 408). Norman girls (396). 

May 12:  The handsome fisher-girl (402). The three trees of Hudimesnil (404; cf. I 254). The fat Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld (416).

May 19: My grandmother and I: intimations of death (419).  Robert de Saint-Loup (421). My friendship with him (430), but real happiness requires solitude (431; cf. 664).

May 26:  Saint-Loup as a work of art: the “nobleman” (432). A Jewish colony (432). Va­riety of human failings and similarity of virtues (436). Bloch’s bad manners (442). Bloch and his father (443; cf. 476).  

I said to myself: "Here I am: this is the Church of Balbec. This square, which looks as though it were conscious of its glory, is the only place in the world that possesses Balbec church. All that I have seen so far have been photographs of this church—and of these famous Apostles, this Virgin of the Porch, mere casts only. Now it is the church itself, the statue itself, they, the only ones—this is something far greater."

Within a Budding Grove (vol II Pages for April 2011)

April 7:   My grandmother’s kindness (334). The sea in the morning (341). Balbec tourists (345). 

April 14:  Bal­bec and Rivebelle (346). Mme de Villeparisis (349). M. and Mlle de Stermaria (351). An actress and three friends (352). The weekly Cambremer garden-party (355). 

April 21:  Resemblances (358). Po­etic visions of Mlle de Stermaria (364). The general manager (367). Françoise’s Grand Hotel connections (369). 

April 28:  Meeting of Mme de Villeparisis and my grandmother (371). The “sordid moment” at the end of meals (372; cf. 613). The Princesse de Luxembourg (377). Mme de Villeparisis, M. de Norpois and my father (381). The bourgeoisie and the Faubourg Saint-Ger­main (384).

Balbec is Cabourg

Map showing Paris to Cabourg; click the + to zoom in.

Balbec is the fictional name of Cabourg, a town near the sea in the Basse-Normandie region of France. Proust spent the summers of 1907 and 1914 in the Grand Hôtel at Cabourg. Random walk site.

Gare de Dives-Cabourg, Dives-sur-Mer. From Gregory Deryckère 

Train station in Balbec-Plage (right);

Proust in Cabourg (photos and audio); 


The Grand Hotel still looks like a great place for les vacances  (below)

Getting ready for Balbec

Full text of Place-Names: the Place (at the end of Swann's Way)

Departure for Balbec  according to Waggish

Place-names on the way to Bal­bec-Plage (326).

[p303] Gare Saint-Lazare : Important Parisian railway station


 ..."certain skies painted with an almost Parisian modernity by ..."Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) and Paolo Veronese (1528–88): 

(above)  Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (1626-96)  [p305]; one of her many letters (right)
[p308] "... not the enraptured traveller Ruskin speaks of..."
John Ruskin (1819–1900) was an English art critic and social thinker, also remembered as a poet and artist. His essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He was also a great traveller and travel writer; see this Times article.
[p309] Chardin or Whistler 
[p310] Marcus Atilius Regulus: Roman general and consul; not sure what text his mother is quoting. 

[p311] Villa Montretout

[p314] Mme de Simiane: "Mme de Sévigné corresponded with her daughter for nearly thirty years. A clandestine edition, containing twenty-eight letters or portions of letters, was published in 1725, followed by two others the next year. Pauline de Simiane, Mme de Sévigné's granddaughter, decided to officially publish her grandmother's correspondence." (wiki)
[p322] Trocadéro museum, changed from Proust's time, now contains the Musée national des Monuments Français, which is where M. saw the casts of the statues of the church.
[p324] Quimperlé ; Pont-Aven

Place Names (v I) Pages for March 2011

3/3: Cruel memories (278). Gilberte’s strange laugh, evoked in a dream (281; cf. 217). Fewer visits to Mme Swann (283). Exchange of tender letters, progress of indifference (286). 

3/10: Exchange of tender letters and progress of indifference (286). Approach of spring: Mme Swann’s ermine and the guilder-roses in her drawing-room; nostalgia for Combray (288). Odette and the “Down-and-outs Club” (290). An intermediate social class (295).

3/17:  NEW BOOK! Part 2 PLACE-NAMES:  THE PLACE (searchable text online)

Departure for Balbec (299). Subjectiveness of love (300). Contradictory effects of habit (301). Railway stations (303). Françoise’s simple and infallible taste (309).  Alcoholic euphoria (312). Mme de Sévigné and Dostoyevski (315). Sunrise from the train (316); the milk-girl (317). Balbec church (322). “The tyranny of the Particular” (324).

3/24: Place-names on the way to Bal­bec-Plage (326). Arrival at Balbec-Plage (327). The manager of the Grand Hotel (327, 332). My room at the top of the hotel (333; cf. I 8). Attention and habit (333, 339). My grandmother’s kindness (334).