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6.20.2014

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

6.18.2014

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)
 

6.12.2014

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 humaineEugène 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




6.05.2014

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.

June 25, 2014 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.