Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 22-28

p 22 | "Socrates was... ". Maybe. There was a teacher/student thing, an active/passive thing, a bisexual thing. Here's an overview.
p 23 | A Masonic Lodge, often termed a Private Lodge or Constituent Lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry.
p 25 | Sons of the Indre...":  i.e., natives of the département of the Indre, in central France.
p 26 | Union of the Left (Union des Gauches) was formed from a merger between two radical groups in 1885, another in 1899 in response to the Dreyfus Affair. {Sturrock, note 17}
p 26 | The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private music school, founded in 1894.
p 27 | Potin's : local grocery Proust would have known. In 1864 a shop was opened on the Boulevard Malesherbes.
p 28 | Saint-Simonianism: French political & social movement in the early 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). He was has been as a utopian socialist, the founder of sociology and a "prescient madman," who thought the growth of industrialization & scientific discovery would profoundly change society.
p 28 | Galatea: in mythology, a sea nymph who loved the shepherd Acis. The giant Polyphemus crushed him under a rock. 

Sodom and Gomorrah IV p 1-21

Sodom and Gomorrah (The Cities of the Plain)

p 1 | "...rose-pink campanile..." (bell tower; this one is Giotto's in Florence); coach-house = carriage house;  eyrie or aerie: large nest of a bird of prey, especially an eagle, typically built high in a tree or on a cliff.

p 2 | pollination

the chapel at Combray

 

 

 

 

 

 p 2 | Excellent essay on Count Robert de Montesquiou (above), who was a partial model for the Baron de Charlus...

p 7 | "... Beethoven's questioning phrases..." In Hammerklavier’s Adagio Sostenuto or the Sixteenth Quartet?

p 10 | Boer War (Second)

p 12 | Fanlight = window  transom

p 12 | pregnancy (of Nero) in the Golden Legend.

p 13 | Caliph of Baghdad dressed as a merchant 

p 14 | Gare d'Orléans; Orléans is about 83 miles ssw of Paris.

p 15 | Cathedral of Orléans

real penholder

stereoscope

 

 

 

 

 

p 15 | optical penholder  (stereoscope)

p 15 | ophthalmia = inflammation of the conjunctiva or the eyeball;

Centaur

p 15 | Diane  de Poitiers, mistress of King Henri II of France. Her Renaissance house in Orleans was destroyed in June 1940. {Sturrock, note 10}

p 16 | mantle in gules (heraldry); "I have three popes in my family": possibly an allusion to three Renaissance popes from the Medici family in Florence from whom Charlus is supposedly descended: Leo X, Clement VII, and Leo XI. {Sturrock, note 11}

p 18 | "... word dear to the ancient Greeks...";  Athena: the goddess who protects Ulysses in both the Iliad & the Odyssey. In Book XIII of the Odyssey, she finally reveals herself to him, having earlier appeared in the guise of an adolescent. {Sturrock, note 12}

nymph

p 19 | Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (the writing on the wall); prophetic words written on the wall by the fingers of a man's hand during King Belshazzar's fatal feast in Babylon. They were interpreted by the prophet Daniel to mean that Belshazzar's reign, and indeed his life, were over (see Daniel 5). {Sturrock, note 13}

p 20 | A nymph in Greek & Latin mythology is a minor female nature deity usually associated with a specific location or landform. Not goddesses, nymphs are seen as divine spirits who animate nature, often shown as beautiful, young nubile maidens who dance and sing. Ephebes are young adolescent men of (military) training age.

p 20 | Original sin and racial predestination.

p 21 | ... honour precarious, liberty provisional, ... position unstable, ... the poet one day feted in every drawing room & applauded in every theatre in London, and the next driven from every lodging... (Oscar Wilde?, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labor, 1895-97.)

p 21 | turning the mill like Samson....

p 21 | "two sexes shall die... " Vigny poem, Proust's meaning, timing, connection to Baudelaire are all discussed beginning on page 18 of Proust's Lesbianism by Elisabeth Ladenson; a line from Alfred de Vigny's poem "La Colere de Samson", where Samson becomes disillusioned with women following his betrayal by Delilah. {Sturrock, note 14}

The Guermantes Way III p 784-87

p 784 | "... I could scarcely see into our courtyard, but I caught a glimpse of several others, and this though of no practical use to me, diverted me for a time..."

p 785 | coach-house (converted now)

p 787 | coins of the Order of Malta (wiki); Order of St. John in Jerusalem ; Grand Masters of the Order; Knights of Cypress & Rhodes; Knights Templar.

p 787 | House of Lusignan, Kings of Cyprus

The Guermantes Way III p 779-84

p 779 | French nobility hierarchy etc. (Almanach de Gotha)
p 780 | Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, Duchesse de Longueville (1619-75); Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé 
p 780 | Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia (1828–1885); Franco-Prussian War of 1870
p 780 | Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour (1721-64)
p 780 | Egeria or Egeria (mythology) ?
p 781 | "... Types of mind are so varied..."

"As I scarcely ever go out, I read a great deal. I have had sent me the works of Baudelaire, which have made me furious. Baudelaire was crazy! He died in a hospital, after having written some verses which attracted the good opinion of Victor Hugo, and which possessed no other merit than that of being immoral. Now they are making him out to be a man of genius, who was misunderstood!" [Title: Letters to an Unknown; Author: Prosper Mérimée)

p 783 | "how many quarterings one has..." In heraldry, a method of joining several coats of arms together in one shield.

p 783 | Joseph de Cléron, Comte d'Haussonville (1809–84), French politician & historian; his wife, Louise d'Haussonville.
p 783 | Mme Delessert (Mérimée's mistress)
p 784 | Elie Charles de Tallyrand, Prince of Chalais (b. 1809)

 

The Guermantes Way III p 735-41

Sabran

Tallien

p 735 | Choiseul & Mme de Praslin; Lucinge / Duc de Berry
p 735 | Mme Tallien (also here) and Mme de Sabran

p 735 | "The Prince d’Agrigente having asked why Prince Von had said, in speaking of the Duc d’Aumale   [Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale (1822–97) was a son of Louis-Philippe], ‘my uncle,’ M. de Guermantes had replied: “Because his mother’s brother, the Duke of Wurttemberg [Duke Alexander of Württemberg (1804–81)], married a daughter of Louis-Philippe [Princess Marie of Orléans (1813–1839), who was a daughter of Louis-Philippe].” 

Memling

Carpaccio

p 735 | ... reliquary painted by Carpaccio or Memling 

p 735-36 | ... [German] castle called Fantaisie...

p 736 | Balzac's La Comédie humaine; Eugène de Rastignac; Laurence de Cinq-Sygne

p 736 | Romanesque architecture

p 737 | A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. Milling existed in hunter-gatherer communities, and was important to the development of agriculture. The materials are often foodstuffs, esp. grain. Non-food substances needed in a fine, powdered form, such as building materials, may be processed by a miller; A poem by Jean de La Fontaine: The Miller, His Son And The Ass.

p 738 | Inverted commas: Quotation marks or inverted commas (also called quotes or speech marks) are punctuation marks surrounding a quotation, direct speech, or a literal title or name. They can also be used to show a different meaning of a word/phrase other than the one typically associated with it & are often used to express irony.

p 739 | verb. sap., Latin, abbreviation for verbum sapienti sat est ("a word is enough to the wise;" Proust wrote: "à demi-mot...").

p 741 | Chouan rising: A Royalist uprising in 12 French départements against the French Revolution, the First French Republic, and even under the Empire. It played out in 3 phases, from 1794 until 1800.

The ultimate reference book: The Almanach de Gotha, here at Wikipedia

Albertine is out of sequence for us

but I found this piece in the current issue of The London Review of Books. A meditation on authors and characters and the connection, real or imagined, between them, specifically, Marcel, Albertine, Proust, Alfred, Albert, Mallarmé.

 ** SPOILER ALERT **  Significant plot points are revealed beginning at #45

Ah, I see. It's to be a book. Of poetry.

Publication Date: June 25, 2014 | ISBN-10: 0811223175

Anne Carson's take on Albertine, Marcel Proust's famous love interest
The Albertine Workout contains fifty-nine paragraphs, with appendices, summarizing Anne Carson’s research on Albertine, the principal love interest of Marcel in Proust’s Á la recherche du temps perdu.

The Guermantes Way III p 730-34

p 730 | Danish port of Elsinore in Hamlet
p 731 | Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, French writer, 1619-92. 
p 731 | Rohan=House of Rohan (French aristocratic family)
p 731 | Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot, known as the chevalier de Rohan and the comte de Chabot (1683-1760), was a French nobleman most notable for an altercation with Voltaire. 
p 731 | House of Guéméné.
p 731 | The phrase “natural son” in a will meant an acknowledged child of the testator who had been born out of wedlock. 
p 731 | ?? Aimé, duc de Clermont-Tonnerre (1779-1865) was a French general and statesman. (Unmarried?)
p 732 | Belvédère =in architecture, a terraced pavilion; Jean Casimir-Périer (1847-1907) was the 5th President of the Third Republic; Croix du Grand-Veneur was an historical crossroads on the path of Joan of Arc.

p 732 | Xenophon (c.430–354 BC) was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, and student of Socrates. He went with the Ten Thousand, an army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger, who wanted to seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II. 
p 732 | Epicurus (341–270 BC), an ancient Greek philosopher, founder of Epicureanism. 
p 732 | Duchy of Uzès
p 733 | Roman poets
p 734 | François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641–91) was the French Secretary of State for War for much of the reign of Louis XIV. Louvois and his father, Michel le Tellier, would increase the French Army to 400k soldiers, which would fight 4 wars between 1667 and 1713. Commonly referred to as Louvois, he fathered three daughters.

The Guermantes Way III p 722-30

p 722 |General Louis Botha (S. African statesman, 1862-1919).
p 723 | Edward VII (1841–1910) was King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death. Before ascending the throne, he had been the Prince of Wales. Alexandra of Denmark (1844–1925) was his Queen consort.
p 724 | ... "Prince of Bulgaria..." Ferdinand I (1861–1948),born Ferdinand Maximilian Karl Leopold Maria of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, was the ruler of Bulgaria from 1887 to 1918, first as knyaz (prince regnant, 1887–1908) and later as tsar (1908–1918). He was also an author, botanist, entomologist & philatelist
p 725 | Saint Louis: Louis IX (1214–70), known as Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 until his death. An 8th-generation descendant of Hugh Capet, he was a member of the House of Capet, son of Louis VIII & Blanche of Castile. He is the only canonized king of France. 

"Louis' wisdom and fairness in administering justice was well-known in Europe. In summer, he would often go from church to a nearby park where he sat beneath an oak tree with several courtiers. "Is there anyone here who has a case to settle?" he would ask, and whoever did could come and speak with him freely. When faced with a problem between a rich person & a poor person, Louis always listened a little more carefully to the poor person. The rich, he said, had plenty of people ready to listen to them."

p 725 | Boaz: a major figure in The Book of Ruth in the Bible.

p 726 | Widow's weeds: Black clothes worn by a widow in mourning. Early 18th cent. (earlier as mourning weeds): weeds (obsolete in the general sense garments) is from Old English, waed(e), of Germanic origin.

p 727 | Republican: Republicanism is the ideology of governing a society or state as a republic, where the head of state is a representative of the people who hold popular sovereignty rather than the people being subjects of the head of state. The head of state is typically appointed by means other than heredity, often through elections.
p 727 | Prosody: the rhythm and pattern of sounds of poetry & language.
p 727 | Ducs de La Rochefoucauld and Ducs de Doudeauville.
p 728 | Duc de Montmorency
p 728 | Santrailles (Xaintrailles), Jean Poton de (French Marshal, 1390?–1461), was one of the chief lieutenants of Joan of Arc. He served as master of the royal stables, as royal bailiff in Berry & as seneschal of Limousin. In 1454 he was appointed a Marshal of France and was a leading figure on the French side in the Hundred Years War

p 730 | Catherine de Clèves (1548-1633) was, by marriage, Duchess of Guise from 1570 to 1588. She was Countess of Eu in her own right from 1564, and the widow of Antoine de Croy, Prince de Porcien. 
.

The Guermantes Way III p 716-21

p 716-17 | Philip III (1245–1285), called the Bold (French: le Hardi), was a Capetian King of France who reigned from 1270 to 1285.
Louis VI (1081-1137), called the Fat (French: le Gros), was King of the Franks from 1108 until his death.

p 717 | Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences) is a French learned society, one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The académie was founded in 1795, suppressed in 1803, and reestablished in 1832 through the appeal of Guizot to King Louis Philippe. Its annual meeting is held in December.

p 717 | Kaiser (Emperor) Wilhelm II or William II (1859–1941) was the last German Emperor & King of Prussia from 1888 to 1918. Eldest grandson of Queen Victoria, related to many monarchs and princes of Europe, notably first cousins King George V of the U.K., founder of the House of Windsor, Marie of Romania, Queen consort of Romania and the Czarina Alix of Hesse, consort of his second cousin Tsar Nicholas II of the House of Romanov, the last ruler of the Russian Empire before the Russian Revolution of 1917 which deposed the monarchy.

Women Regents...

p 717 | Franz Hals the Elder (c. 1582–1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter born in the Southern Netherlands (present-day Belgium)

p 718 | View of Delft by Vermeer: "Despite the unusualness of this exterior scene within Vermeer's production, it has, for many modern viewers, come to stand for Vermeer himself. When Marcel Proust needed an image for artistic perfection he chose the patch of yellow that, in Vermeer's curious vision, wedges a splendid sun-drenched roof between shaded walls. How could the View of Delft become an epitome of artistry in western culture? Some answers to this question tell us more about the novel and self-aware character of Vermeer's art, which is so central to the continuing appeal of his interior painting."

p 719 | Pinchbeck is a form of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, mixed in proportions so that it closely resembles gold in appearance.... over the years it came to mean a cheap and tawdry imitation of gold.

p 719 | Don John of Austria (1547–78) was an illegitimate son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. He became a military leader in the service of his half-brother, Philip of Spain and is best known for his naval victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 against the Ottoman Empire.

by Titian, c 1534

p 719 | Isabella d'Este (1474–1539) was Marchesa of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts & a leader of fashion, whose innovative style of dressing was copied by women throughout Italy and at the French court. Author Matteo Bandello described her as having been "supreme among women", while diplomat Niccolò da Correggio went further, hailing her as "The First Lady of the world." She served as the regent of Mantua during the absence of her husband, Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua and during the minority of her son, Federico, Duke of Mantua. In 1500 she met King Louis XII of France in Milan on a diplomatic mission to persuade him not to send his troops against Mantua. She was a prolific letter-writer, with a lifelong correspondence with her sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga. Lucrezia Borgia was another sister-in-law; she later became the mistress of Isabella's husband.

p 720 | Andrea Mantegna (Italian painter, c. 1430–1506).
p 720 | Georges Lafenestre (1837–1919): Curator at the Louvre; professor of art history; art critic; poet.
p 720 | Aloes: a genus containing over 500 species of flowering succulent plants.  Manchineel is a tree reaching up to 15 meters high with a grayish bark, shiny green leaves and spikes of small greenish flowers. Its fruits, similar in appearance to an apple, are greenish when ripe. The current name manzanilla de la muerte means "little apple of death," since manchineel is one of the most poisonous trees in the world.
p 720 | Voltaire: (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778), French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile writer, with works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters & more than 2,000 books & pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

The Mérope, a work of his ripest years, was intended as a perfect revival of Greek tragedy. The passionate love of a mother, who, in dread of losing her only treasure, and threatened with cruel oppression, still supports her trials with heroic constancy, and at last triumphs over them. How much he has borrowed from Maffei, and changed has been already pointed out.

Alzire appeared on the stage in 1736 to great acclaim. Alzire is set in Lima, Peru, at the time of the Spanish conquest. Don Gusman, a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and just; he had tried to soften the cruelty of his countrymen, and his last wish was to see his son carry on his work. Unfortunately, the son's temperament was the opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical and  harsh. In vain, Don Alvarez reminds his son that the true Christian returns good for evil, and as a result tragedy ensues.

p 720 |  enfeoff - put in possession of land in exchange for a pledge of service, in feudal society; "He enfeoffed his son-in-law with a large estate in Scotland."  1. (Law) property law to invest (a person) with possession of a freehold estate in land.  2. (in feudal society) to take (someone) into vassalage by giving a fee or fief in return for certain services.
p 721 | Grand Duke of Hesse: could be Louis IV? His brother would have been Aynard de Marsantes, father of Robert de Saint-Loup.
p 721 | Princesse de Sagan ? Proust was friends with Radziwill & Castellane, so using their names here may have been an in joke.

The Guermantes Way III p 710-

p 711 | Joseph Fouché, 1st Duke of Otranto,  (French statesman & Minister of Police under Napoleon & Louis XVIII, 1759-1820).
p 711 | Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier, 1755-1824), known as "the Desired" (le Désiré), monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France & Navarre 1814-24, except for 100 days in 1815.  His brother was Louis XVI (1754-93), King of France & Navarre from 1774 until 1791, after which he was King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before his deposition & execution during the French Revolution. 

p 711 | >> Princess Caroline Murat (1782-1839) was Caroline Bonaparte (sister of Napoleon I), who also was a Queen of Naples. But not the same Queen of Naples as Maria Carolina (1752-1815), sister of Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI.