Proust... the mini-series

Found this blog mentioned in the ongoing conversation of the Proust Yahoo group. Interesting photos, no?

Proust for Nook -- all books in one file! (Modern Library ed.)

In Search of Lost Time, complete & unabridged, 6 books: Volumes I-VI: Swann's Way, Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Captive & The Fugitive, Time Regained.

Also for kindle.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 608-627)

My grandmother and Saint-Loup (608). Saint-Loup and Bloch (609). Still lifes (613; cf. 373). Afternoon party at Elstir’s (615). Yet another Albertine: a well-brought-up girl (619). Albertine on the esplanade: once more a member of the little band (623). Octave, the gigolo (625). Albertine’s antipathy for Bloch (627).

p 608 |  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 – 1865) was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was the first person to call himself an anarchist.

p 613 | Still life painting: for example, Vincent Van Gogh's Still life with bottle, two glasses, cheese and bread, 1886, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

p 614 | Another clash between intelligence and sensibility vs will: going to Elstir's party.

p 617 | Strawberry tart

p 625 | Golf in 19th century Cabourg; see the map here. Click the + to zoom in & map to remove the photo. You can see the public golf course just south of the Grand Hotel. {Zoom in closer to see the Promenade Marcel Proust right along the beachfront, and a gift shop called "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu."} Here's a history of Victorian golf.

p 628 | Alexandrine: a verse in iambic hexameter 
Arouet=Voltaire: François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), pen name Voltaire:  French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, free trade and separation of church and state. Voltaire was prolific, writing in almost every format, including plays, poetry, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws with harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.  Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) whose work and ideas influenced important thinkers of the American & French Revolutions.

p 628 | Cavelleria rusticana ("Rustic Chivalry"): a one-act opera by Mascagni (1890)

Kirk McElhearn reads Proust in Paris & London

Kirk McElhearn, an American in Paris & London, has written a wonderful essay on re-reading Proust. The pleasures are even greater, the second time around, because you know the characters and you know what's going to happen. Try this page to read his reviews of critical texts, audio books, and biographies.

Pages for October

10/6 ::The name Simonet (519, 528, 578). Rest before dinner: different aspects of the sea (523).

10/13 :: Dinners at Rivebelle (529). The astral tables (533). Euphoria induced by alcohol and music (534-39).

10/20 ::  Euphoria induced by alcohol and music (539-53)

10/27 ::  Meeting with Elstir (553). A new aspect of Albertine (558-64).

Within a Budding Grove (vol II)

Part 1 MADAME SWANN AT HOME

A new Swann: Odette’s husband (1; cf. 112 sqq.). A new Cot­tard: Professor Cottard (3). Norpois (5); the “governmental mind” (6); an ambassador’s conversation (8). “ ‘Although’ is always an unrecognized ‘because’ ” (10). Norpois advises my father to let me follow a lit­erary career (13).

My first experience of Berma (15). My high expectations of her, as of Balbec and Venice (17). A great disappointment (20). Françoise and Michelangelo (21). The auditorium and the stage (24; cf. I 100).

Norpois dines at our house (29). His notions about litera­ture (31); financial investments (33); Berma (37); Françoise’s spiced beef (39); King Theodosius’ visit to Paris (41); Balbec church (48); Mme Swann (49); Odette and the Comte de Paris (58); Bergotte (60); my prose poem (62; cf. 35); Gilberte (65). Gestures which we believe have gone unnoticed (67); why M. de Norpois would not speak to Mme Swann about me (70).

How I came to say of Berma: “What a great artist!” (72). The laws of Time (74). Effect produced by Norpois on my par­ents (75), on Françoise (76); the latter’s views on Parisian restaurants (78).

New Year’s Day visits (79). I propose to Gilberte that we should rebuild our friendship on a new basis (80); but that same evening I realize that New Year’s Day is not the first day of a new world (81). Berma and love (83). Gabriel’s palaces (84). I can no longer recall Gilberte’s face (84). She returns to the Champs-Elysées (85). “They can’t stand you!” (86) I write to Swann (86). Reawakening, thanks to involuntary memory, in the little pavilion in the Champs-Elysées, of the impressions experienced in Uncle Adolphe’s sanctum at Combray (89, 91; cf. I 99). Amorous wrestle with Gilberte (89). I fall ill (91). Cottard’s diagnoses (96).

A letter from Gilberte (98). Love’s miracles, happy and unhappy (99). Change of attitude towards me of Gilberte’s par­ents, unwittingly brought about by Bloch and Cottard (102). The Swann apartment; the concierge; the windows (103; cf. I 500). Gilberte’s writing-paper (104). The Henri II staircase (106). The chocolate cake (107). Mme Swann’s praise of Françoise: “your old nurse” (110). The heart of the Sanctuary: Swann’s library (111); his wife’s bedroom (113). Odette’s “at home” (114). The “famous Albertine,” niece of Mme Bontemps (116). The evolution of society (117). Swann’s “amusing socio-logical experiments” (128). Swann’s old jealousy (131) and new love (133).

Outings with the Swanns (134). Lunch with them (135). Odette plays Vinteuil’s sonata to me (140). A work of genius creates its own posterity (143). What the little phrase now means to Swann (145). “Me nigger; you old cow!” (149). Con­sistent charm of Mme Swann’s heterogeneous drawing-room (153). Princess Mathilde (157). Gilberte’s unexpected behavior (161).

Lunch at the Swanns’ with Bergotte (164). The gentle white-haired bard and the man with the snail-shell nose and black goatee (165). A writer’s voice and his style (168). Bergotte and his imitators (169). Unforeseeable beauty of the sentences of a great writer (170). Reflecting power of genius (174). Vices of the man and morality of the writer (181). Bergotte and Berma (183). “A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it” (186). A remark of Swann’s, prelude to the theme of The Captive (188). Gilberte’s characteristics inherited from both parents (190). Swann’s confidence in his daugh­ter (193). Are my pleasures those of the intelligence? (195). Why Swann, according to Bergotte, needs a good doctor (199). Combray society and the social world (199). My parents’ change of mind about Bergotte and Gilberte; a problem of etiquette (203).

Revelations about love (205; cf. I 129); Bloch takes me to a second-rate house of assignation (205). “Rachel when from the Lord” (207). Aunt Léonie’s furniture in the brothel (208). Ama­tory initiation at Combray on Aunt Léonie’s sofa (208). Work projects constantly postponed (210). Impossibility of happiness in love (214). My last visit to Gilberte (214). I decide not to see her again (217). Unjust fury with the Swanns’ butler (222). Waiting for a letter (222). I renounce Gilberte forever (224); but the hope of a reconciliation is superimposed on my resolve (226). Intermittence, law of the human soul (227).

Odette’s “winter-garden” (228): splendor of the chrysan­themums and poverty of the conversation: Mme Cottard (234); Mme Bontemps (234); effrontery of her niece Albertine (237); the Prince d’Agrigente (239); Mme Verdurin (239). Painful New Year’s Day (251). “Suicide of that self which loved Gilberte” (255). Clumsy interventions (256). Letters to Gilberte: “one speaks for oneself alone” (259). Odette’s drawing-room: retreat of the Far East and invasion of the eighteenth century (261). New hair-styles and silhouettes (265; cf. I 278).

A sudden impulse interrupts the cure of detachment (271); Aunt Léonie’s Chinese vase (272). Two walkers in the Elysian twilight (273). Impossibility of happiness (274). The opposing forces of memory and imagination (276). Because of Gilberte, I decline an invitation to a dinner-party where I would have met Albertine (277). Cruel memories (278). Gilberte’s strange laugh, evoked in a dream (281; cf. 217). Fewer visits to Mme Swann (283). 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).

2 WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE: Part 2 PLACE-NAMES THE PLACE

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). 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). The sea in the morning (341). Balbec tourists (345). 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). Resemblances (358). Po­etic visions of Mlle de Stermaria (364). The general manager (367). Françoise’s Grand Hotel connections (369). 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).

Different seas (387). Drives with Mme de Villeparisis (387). The ivy-covered church (391). Mme de Villeparisis’s con­versation (394, 408). Norman girls (396). The handsome fisher-girl (402). The three trees of Hudimesnil (404; cf. I 254). The fat Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld (416). 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). 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). The stereoscope (447).

M. de Charlus’s strange behavior (455). Mme de Villeparisis is a Guermantes (456). I recognize him as the man in the grounds of Tansonville (458; cf. I 199). Further weird behavior (463). Mme de Sévigné, La Fontaine and Racine (467). Charlus comes to my room (471).

Dinner at the Blochs’ with Saint-Loup (474). To know “without knowing” (477). Bloch’s sisters (477). The elegance of “Uncle Solomon” (481). Nissim Bernard (482); his lies (485). Bloch and Mme Swann in the train (489). Françoise’s view of Bloch and Saint-Loup (490). Saint-Loup and his mistress (490). My grandmother’s inexplicable behavior (500).

The blossoming girls (503). “Oh, the poor old boy… (508). The dark-haired cyclist: Albertine (510). The name Simonet (519, 528, 578). Rest before dinner: different aspects of the sea (523). Dinners at Rivebelle (529). The astral tables (533). Euphoria induced by alcohol and music (534). Meeting with Elstir (553). A new aspect of Albertine (558).

Elstir’s studio (564); his seascapes (566); the painter’s “metaphors” (567). Elstir explains to me the beauty of Balbec church (573). Albertine passes by (578). The portrait of Miss Sacripant (585). “My beautiful Gabrielle!” (586). Age and the artist (588). Elstir and the little band (593). Nullity of love (596). Miss Sacripant was Mme Swann (600) and M. Biche Elstir! (604). One must discover wisdom for oneself (605). My grandmother and Saint-Loup (608). Saint-Loup and Bloch (609). Still lifes (613; cf. 373). Afternoon party at Elstir’s (615). Yet another Albertine: a well-brought-up girl (619). Albertine on the esplanade: once more a member of the little band (623). Octave, the gigolo (625). Albertine’s antipathy for Bloch (627). Saint-Loup engaged to a Mlle d’Ambresac? (634). Albertine’s intelligence and taste (635). Andrée (636). Gisèle (637).

Days with the girls (643). Françoise’s bad temper (649). Balbec through Elstir’s eyes (651). Fortuny (653). A sketch of the Creuniers (656). The mobile beauty of youth (662). Friend­ship: and abdication of oneself (664; cf. 430). Twittering of the girls (666). Letter from Sophocles to Racine (671). A love divided among several girls (676). Albertine is to spend a night at the Grand Hotel (695). The rejected kiss (701). The attraction of Albertine (702). The multiple utilization of a single action (707). Straying in the budding grove (716). The different Al­bertines (718).

End of the season (724). Departure (728).

Side quotes Archives

How Aunt Léonie was like Louis XIV...
My mother was afraid lest Françoise develop a genuine hatred of my aunt, who was doing everything in her power to annoy her. However, Françoise had come, more and more, to pay an infinitely scrupulous attention to my aunt’s least word and gesture. When she had to ask her for anything she would hesitate, first, for a long time, making up her mind how best to begin. And when she had uttered her request, she would watch my aunt covertly, trying to guess from the expression on her face what she thought of it, and how she would reply. And in this way — whereas an artist who had been reading memoirs of the 17th century, and wished to bring himself nearer to the great Louis, would consider that he was making progress in that direction when he constructed a pedigree that traced his own descent from some historic family, or when he engaged in correspondence with one of the reigning Sovereigns of Europe, and so would shut his eyes to the mistake he was making in seeking to establish a similarity by an exact and therefore lifeless copy of mere outward forms — a middle-aged lady in a small country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the ‘machinery’ of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her features, would provide Françoise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition to him, at the turning of an avenue, at Versailles.

From Contre Sainte-Beuve:
Perhaps, too, they may grant me that ravishing thing: a pleasure of the imagination, a pleasure of no reality, the only true pleasure of the poet; in a minute of real life they may grant me one of the rare moments that bring no disillusionment in their train. And from this impression and others like it something common to them all is liberated, something whose superiority to our everyday realities, even the realities of thought, and passion, and sentiment, we shall never be able to account for. Yet this superiority is so positive that it is almost the only thing we can never doubt. And when we recognise this thing, this common essence of our impressions, we feel a pleasure like no other pleasure, and while it stays with us we know that death is negligible. And after we have read pages containing the loftiest thought and the noblest sentiments and have remarked, “That’s really quite good,” if, suddenly and without our knowledge why or wherefore, from some seemingly casual word a breath of that essence is wafted to us, we know that this is Beauty.

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 522-32)

p 522 | Pencil drawings  by Pisanello. The drawing of Sigismund of Luxembourg is in the Louvre; did Proust see it there?

| Gallé's glass: Émile Gallé, Art Nouveau artist who worked in glass.

p 523 | confraternity: a group of men united for some particular purpose, esp Christian laymen organized for religious or charitable service; brotherhood [from Medieval Latin: confraternitas; see confrère, fraternity]
| reliquary:   (Ecclesiastical Terms) a receptacle or repository for relics, esp relics of saints [from Old French reliquaire, from relique relic]
| predella : (Art) a painting or sculpture or a series of small paintings or sculptures in a long narrow strip forming the lower edge of an altarpiece or the face of an altar step or platform.
| reredos:  a screen or wall decoration on the wall at the back of an altar, as a tapestry, painting, or piece of metalwork or sculpture.

|  <-- gray mullet 
p 526 | butterfly signature of James McNeill Whistler; his painting of Lady Meux, titled "Harmony in Pink and Grey."
| What Marcel saw out the window.... click "Photo Gallery" for Grand Hotel (modern) photos.  Webcams at Balbec.  
p 527 | First mention of Dreyfus! (So the year is maybe summer of 1895?)
p 529 | Cauteries... cautery: Agent or instrument that destroys abnormal tissue by burning, searing, or scarring, including caustic substances, electric currents, lasers, and very hot or very cold instruments.
p 531 | a fortiori: for similar but more convincing reasons.

Le Cercle de la Rue Royale (p 481)

Le Balcon du Cercle de la Rue Royale, by James Tissot, 1868

p 481 |  The Rue Royale was an exclusive men's club, not snooty enough for Saint-Loup's family, whose father had been  president of the Jockey Club, since Jews were occasionally admitted (see Charles Haas, far right).  From left to right: Comte de La Tour-Maubourg, Marquis de Lau, Comte de Ganay, Comte de Rochechouart, C. Vansittant, Marquis de Miramon, Baron Hottinguer (former owner of the painting), Marquis de Ganay, Gaston de Saint-Maurice, Prince de Polignac, Marquis de Gallifet et Charles Haas (standing on the step, not quite in... Haas was the main model for Charles Swann).

Within a Budding Grove (vol II pp 467-81)

p 467 | Monomotapa was a Kafir territory in SE Africa, thought to be mythological, but attested to by Portuguese & Dutch sources from the 16th century onward, and continuing as far northward as beyond the Zambezi. La Fontaine (1621-95) seems to have chosen it as an example of an exotic distant land.  [fn 1, re: The Two Friends (VIII, 11), p. 423, The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine, by Jean de La Fontaine, Norman R. Shapiro. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007} See also Wikipedia for Kingdom of Mutapa.

Alfred de Musset

p 475 | Alfred de Musset  (1810 – 57; Académicien): French dramatist, poet, novelist & lover of George Sand. L'espoir en Dieu was a poem published in La Revue des Deux Mondes in 1838.

p 476 | Mme Cornuel: Anne-Marie Bigot, dame Cornuel (1614 (?) - 94), French salonista, aphorist, and wit of the 17th century. She is credited with saying "No man is a hero to his valet."
| ... swallow-tail coat: The front is cut away, leaving just the tails in back. See this page and Wikipedia.

p 478 | ... pepla: variant of peplum (flounce or short, flared flap attached at the waist of a dress, blouse, coat, etc., and extending around the hips).
|... fandangle: variant of fandango (foolish act, nonsense).
|... calumniate: slander
|... rigmarole: foolish or incoherent rambling talk or nonsense; an involved, fussy, time-wasting procedure
 p 480 | ...consanguinity: blood relationship, or other close association or connection

Duke d'Aumale

| Duke d'Aumale: (Prince) Henri Louis d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale (1822–97), 5th son of Louis-Philippe, King of the French & Duc d'Orléans and Marie Amalie of Bourbon-Sicilies, was a leader for the Orleanist cause of a constitutional monarchy in France (Wiki).
| ...Princesse Murat/Queen of Naples: This was Caroline Bonaparte.

p 481| Victoria carriage: French carriage, named for Queen Victoria at least by 1844, and renowned for its elegance. It was first imported into England by the Prince of Wales in 1869, where it rapidly gained popularity. It was usually pulled by one or two horses. The victoria was a low, light, four-wheeled, doorless vehicle with a forward-facing seat for two persons covered with a folding top, or calash, and a removable, elevated coachman’s seat above the front axle. The graceful body curved down from the coachman’s seat to the floorboards, and up again like a gently sloping chair. The Grand Victoria had a rumble seat for two extra passengers.  (Brittanica)