Pages

12.29.2013

And only 65 G's

The real first edition
And it's in Brooklyn!

12.05.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 522-537

p 527 | Meudon: sw suburb of Paris, with hills.
p 527 | Adam Frans van der Meulen, (Flemish painter, 1634-94)


p 527 | Fleurus: Belgian town; Nijmegen: town in eastern Netherlands.

p 000 | Isle of Swans (Île aux Cygnes): small artificial island in the Seine in Paris.

p 000 | Islands of Brittany




p 000 | Boulevard des Capucines (Capuchin convent); Rue du Bac (ferry at quai Voltaire)


p 533 | "... marble goddess who had been carved in the act of springing from her pedestal..." This is not that statue (its dates are later), but it could be.





p 537 | "...at the corner of a window, as in a Gallé glass, a vein of crusted snow...": Art Nouveau etched glass pieces.

11.29.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 498-522

p 502, 506 | Saint-André-des-Champs: Proust's fictional church near Combray, which throughout the novel comes to represent, through its Gothic sculptures of people, the essence of "Frenchness." He has related it to Francoise & Theodore. Here he sees Albertine's little peasant face.
p 503 | Mme. Blandais: minor character, wife of a LeMans notary Marcel meets on holiday at the Grand Hotel.
p 507 | A bergère is an enclosed upholstered French armchair with an upholstered back and armrests on upholstered frames.







p 507 | Yellow satin gown with black poppies... well, maybe something like this (but way nicer...)
p 508 | Schubert's Adieu (music);
"The song is not by Schubert, but by August Heinrich von Weyrauch. It was first published in 1824, to a text by Karl Friedrich Gottlob Wetzel. Schubert's name was first attached to the song in 1843. The author of the French text to which the song is now sung ("Voici l'instant supreme...") is thought to have been Edouard Belanger. (Reed, John. The Schubert Song Companion, page 12, via books.google.com).  (Note that the lines quoted are not part of these lyrics, as far as I can tell.)
p 514-15 | "Fabrice's aunt... Count Mosca": reference to characters in Stendahl's novel The Charterhouse of Parma.
p 517-18 | Book of EstherAhasuerus (later Xerxes) is given as the name of the King of Persia in the Book of Esther; Mordecai was there also.
p 520 | Théâtre-Français = Comédie-Française .
p 520 | Fernand Labori was the lawyer for Dreyfus & Zola.
p 521 | May be Elizabeth, Princess of Ligne.


10.25.2013

On Reading Proust

New York Review of Books has this article in the latest issue: On Reading Proust Stephen Breyer, interviewed by Ioanna Kohler
The following interview with Justice Stephen Breyer was conducted in French by Ioanna Kohler and was initially published in La Revue des Deux Mondes in Paris as part of a special issue entitled “Proust vu d’Amérique.” It appears here in translation.

Surprisingly good.

9.12.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 476-98

p 476 | Persian church in the mist...  flowers on the Ponte Vecchio
p 481 | ... collections of old quizzing glasses...
p 484 | Herculaneum (wiki), an ancient Roman town destroyed by volcano in 79 A.D.
p 485 | Fontainbleau golf club (a place, not a stick)
p 491 | In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. Tacitus (c. AD 56–117) was a senator & historian of the Roman Empire, who wrote concisely.
p 492 | Sir Henry Irving (English actor, 1838–1905) and Frédérick Lemaître  (French actor, 1800–76).
p 494 | Jade grapes








p 498 | Piazzetta: Doge's Palace and piazzetta, Venice, Italy, 1890s, showing 2 columns.-->  

 p 498 | Dome of the Salute: Santa Maria della Salute is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica in Venice.
Santa Maria della Salute


7.18.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 431-59

p 431 | Armand Fallières (President of the Republic 1906–13) 
p 444 | Paul Claudel (poet & diplomat, 1868–1955)
          |Aristide Briand (1862–1932) was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and was a co-laureate of the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.
by Fromentin
p 445 | Eugène Fromentin (1820-76), French writer & painter. <<-- font="">
p 445 | Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style.-->>
p 446 | Who was the new writer?
p 448-9 | Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (1817–1905) was the first monarch of Luxembourg from the House of Nassau-Weilburg.

p 459 | Dr. Paul Georges Dieulafoy



 


6.20.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 404-431

From George Painter's 2-volume biography of Proust, p. 330-31, (v.1, 1978 pb edition):

"Dr. Proust's dining-room was also an ideally situated strategic point for observing the natural history of doctors, and in particular the originals of Cottard, Du Boulbon, Dieulafoy and Professor E—. 

"Dr.Eugène-Louis Doyen (1859-1916), a surgeon of sensationally original technique, with greying blond hair, astonished blue eyes and an athletic figure, was a model for many qualities of Cottard: his icy brutality, naivete, inspired tactlessness, fury when contradicted by a patient, and total, incurable ignorance in cultural and social matters. "With all her gifts," he flabbergasted Proust by announcing, "Mme Greffuhle hasn't managed to make her salon anything like as brilliant as Mme de Caillavet's!" Dr. Doyen regarded himself as Potain's* superior— "Potain's an old fool," he would say—an opinion shared by Mme Verdurin. The dates of his life fit those of Dr. Cottard, who is young in the 1880s and dies during the war.

"Professor Guyon, the urologist and teacher of Robert Proust, was a tall, thin man with white whiskers, from whose inexhaustible puns and cliches Proust collected a store of hints for Cottard; and Auguste Broca was another surgeon who, like Cottard, kept his students in fits of laughter with puns, chestnuts and oaths. As we have seen, Cottard, as a foundation-member of Mme Verdurin's “little nucleus” and an unfaithful husband, was Dr. Pozzi at Mme Aubernon's; his pince-nez and involuntary wink were those of Proust's professor, Albert Vandal; but his name was taken from Dr. Proust's fellow-student Cotard and Dr. [Jules] Cottet at Évian.


"The model for Dr. du Boulbon was the favourite physician of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, Dr. Le Reboulet; but a guest of Dr. Proust, the warty-faced Dr.Laboulbène, contributed to his name.

"Dr. Dieulafoy, with his 'charmingly supple figure and face too handsome in itself,’ who is sent for simply to certify the grandmother's last agony and, says the Narrator at the time of writing, ‘is now no longer with us’, was a real person, Professor Georges Dieulafoy (1839-1911). He was Princesse Mathilda's doctor and guest, and Proust's friend Gabriel Astruc took him, no doubt with some good reason, for an original of Cottard.
Dr. Brissaud
"Professor E—, who automatically quotes poetry before examining the Narrator's grandmother, is Dr. Edouard Brissaud, author of Hygiene for Asthmatics, 'our dear médecin malgré lui on whom one almost has to use physical force to get him to talk medicine,' wrote Proust after consulting him in 1905.**

"Another friend of the Proust family and guest of Mme Aubernon was Dr. Albert Robin, who told Proust: "I might be able to get rid of your asthma, but I wouldn't advise it; in your case it acts as an outlet, and saves you from having other diseases.”

* Pierre Potain (1825 - 1901) was a French cardiologist.

** Proust told Lucien Daudet in 1921 that there was 'something of Brissaud's type of doctor, more a sceptic and a clever talker than a clinician, in Du Boulbon'. But it was [Proust's] habit not only to create a single character from several originals, but to distribute elements of a single real person over several characters.


Modern-day neurologists are still discussing the model for Dr. Cottard here
Denis Abrams' take on this scene  and the following one
p 431 | Uraemia:  the illness accompanying kidney failure (renal failure).
p 440 | Ciborium: liturgical vessel   

5.09.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 366-409

p 371 | ...Voisenon or a Crébillon fils: 18th novelists of licentious fiction; flowers of Fantin-Latour ...

p 372 | Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845), German Romanticist, critic, philologist, and translator; Broglie (a commune in the Eure department in Haute-Normandie in northern France); Marshall Boniface de Castellane; Pierre-Antoine Lebrun (French poet, 1785–1873); Narcisse Achille, Comte de Salvandy ( French writer & politician, 1795–1856); Ximénès Doudan (French journalist, 1800-72); phaeton (carriage);Albertine, Duchesse de Broglie (Mme de Staël’s daughter, 1797-1838)

p 375 | ducal coronet;
p 385 | The statue of Zeus at Olympia by Phidias; 
p 388 |Jules Michelet (French historian, 1798–1874), who first used & defined the word "Renaissance." 
p 389 | Franz-Josef I (Emperor of Austria-Hungary, 1830–1916); Henri V (Comte de Chambord; Pretender to the French throne, 1820–83)
p 391 | Saint-Cyr: convent school near Versailles, founded by Madame de Maintenon in 1686 for young ladies from impoverished noble families. Several of Racine's works were performed there by the pupils.
p 393 |  Édouard Drumont (1844-1917), pamphleteer & journalist, who disseminated anti-Semitic & xenophobic ideas, leading a campaign against Dreyfus based on prejudicial arguments.
p 399 | Condé family in France
p 400 | rent boy: a boy or young man who has sex with other men for money 






From Treharne's footnotes:
p 402 | Droits de l'Homme (Rights of Man): this second league was founded in February 1898 and represented Dreyfusard intellectuals.
p 402 | Jean-Baptiste Billot (1828-1907) was minister of war from 1896 to 1898. 
p 402 | Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) came to the political forefront thanks to the Dreyfus Affair. Proust is being fanciful about Reinach's influence in these two cases.
p 405 | Fernand Widal (1862-1929), French doctor and bacteriologist
p 407 | The oracular serpent Python was killed by Apollo.
Charcot
p 408 | Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-93) was the founder of modern neurology.  Freud was his most famous pupil. 
p 409 |"People said... go out": an incomplete quotation from Mme de Sévigné's letter to the Comtess de Guitaut, June 3, 1693.

4.11.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 354-65

Leroy-Beaulieu
p 355 | Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (1842–1912) was a French publicist and historian, Academy member, who specialized in Russian history.
 

p 356 | Minerva:Roman goddess of wisdom, sponsor of arts, trade, and defense. She was born from the godhead of Jupiter with weapons. The Romans later equated her with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic; Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716): German mathematician & philosopher, with periwig; Marivaux (French playwright & novelist,1688–1763); Samuel Bernard (French financier, 1651–1739); the kobold is a sprite in Germanic mythology.
kobold

p 359 | Achille de Vaulabelle





 p361|frock-coat: a man's coat characterised by knee-length skirts all around the base, popular during the Victorian & Edwardian periods. The double-breasted style is sometimes called a Prince Albert. It is a fitted, long-sleeved coat with a center vent in back.

p 365 | Charlus was based primarily on poet Robert de Montesquieu.
Montesquieu
 

4.04.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 343-53

p 345 Louis, Comte de VERMANDOIS (1667–83). His elder sister was Marie Anne de Bourbon. Both were legitimized children of Louis XIV & his mistress Mlle Louise de la Vallière. There were half-sisters as well, but none are named Mme de Saint-Ferréol, who seems to be a created character.

p 347 | Franconian KnightsRhinegrave: A German count whose hereditary lands are in the Rheingau area north of the Rhine river; Electoral Palitinate; Martin Luther (German religious reformer, 1483–1546); Louis the German (son of Louis I; grandson of Charlemagne, 804?–76); Charron motor-cars; 

Charron Limited
photo:Stefan Didam - Schmallenberg
p 347-9| Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (Looks like members of the Académie are French, but there are also foreign associate members.... which is what the Prince wanted to be. 
p 349 | Order of St. Andrew
p 351 | Kurgarten = spa garden;  Théâtre du Gymnase

Théâtre du Gymnase

p 352 | A silent bar
p 353 | Yellow Book, a quarterly literary periodical published in London (1894-97), associated by color with illicit French novels.

3.28.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 328-43

p 328 | "The Learned Sisters" (in French, "les Doctes Soeurs," i.e., The Muses

p 329 | Rue Royal Club: This imposing group portrait commissioned from Tissot at the end of the Second Empire invites us to access the intimacy of the Circle of the Rue Royale, a male club founded in 1852. Painted in 1868. Charles Haas, one of the models for Swann, is on the far right. By the mid-1800s, maybe they were admitting "every Tom, Dick and Harry" as Bloch imagines, but not when this painting was done.





p 330 |  Devil's Island:  French penal colony off the coast of South America.
p 330 |  From Traharne:  "Caudine Forks ... company": this alludes to a conference in September 1898, presided over by the newspaper editor Gerault-Richard, in which the Socialists were to discuss the Dreyfus Affair and at which Jaurès was to speak. The Caudine Forks were the narrow pass where the Roman army was trapped by the Samnites in 321 B.C. and made to pass under the yoke.
p 330 | Praetorian Guard, Latin Cohors Praetoria, household troops of the Roman emperors. Here, I think, Norpois means to refer to a private army.
Pike medieval weapon consisting of a spearhead attached to a long pole or pikestaff; superseded by the bayonet.
p 331 | the Spree: German / Czech river which also runs through Berlin
p 331 | ultima ratio: The last resort. Short for the metaphor "The Last Resort of Kings and Common Men" referring to the act of declaring war; used in the names the French sniper rifle PGM Ultima Ratio. Louis XIV of France had Ultima Ratio Regum ("last argument of kings") cast on the cannons of his armies; motto of the 1st Battalion 11th Marines.
p 332 | Col. Émile Driant (1855–1916) was a French nationalist writer, politician, and army officer.
p 332 | Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) was a French statesman who led the nation to victory in WWI. On 1/13/1898, Clemenceau, as owner/editor of the Paris daily L'Aurore, published Émile Zola's "J'accuse" on the front page. He decided to run the controversial article, which became a famous part of the Dreyfus Affair, in the form of an open letter to the President, Félix Faure.
p 334 | Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type (Biol). In social science, atavism is a cultural tendency, e.g., people in the modern era reverting to the ways of thinking & acting of a former time. The word atavism is derived from the Latin atavus. An atavus is a great-great-great-grandfather or, more generally, an ancestor. In this case, the duc is dropping his modern political position & adopting one associated more with an older (titled) relative (anti-Dreyfusard).
p 334 | Japhetics: the descendants of Japheth, the third son of Noah and father of the white race (i.e., Europeans). So this may be an ethnic slur, which could have caused Bloch's surprised response.
p 335 | As editor, M. Judet maintained a conservative, Nationalist position in this newspaper. Zola later sued him, with the result shown in this headline from the New York Times:  
Zola's Defamers Convicted; French Novelist Wins His Suit Against Le Petit Journal -- Crowd Cheers His Enemies. PARIS, Aug. 3. -- The libel action of M. Emile Zola against Le Petit Journal has resulted in a fine of 2,000f. upon M. Judet, the editor, and of 500f. upon each of his two assistants. The three were mulcted in 5,000f. each as damages. 
p 337 | Vicomte Raymond de Borelli's (1827-1906) play in verse Alain Chartier (1889) shocked some theater-goers.
p 338 | Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906), French critic. Taught at the École Normale Supérieure & was director of the Revue des deux mondes.
p 338 | surah: soft twilled silk
p 340 | suzerainty: A relation between states in which a subservient nation has its own government, but is unable to take international action independent of the superior state.
p 342 | pun in French: "parle de Saint-Loup" and "parle de loup" ("speak of the devil")

3.21.2013

The Guermantes Way: III p 319-28

p 320 | Cercle Artistique et Littéraire de la Rue Volney. One of the largest clubs in Paris. Wide membership but members must be voted in. Concerts & dramatic soirées were held there, often written by the members. From Dictionary of Paris by Charles Dickens, Jr., 1862.
p 320 | Traharne notes: Émile Ollivier (1825-1913), minister of justice under Napoleon III, a somewhat discredited figure after his support for war in 1870.
p 325 | Paty de Clam: in charge of the first Dreyfus inquiry, and one of the witnesses in the Zola trial.
p 326 | Cavaignac & Cuignet: Godefroy Cavaignac (1853-1905), war minister in 1898, continued to see Dreyfus as guilty and to oppose retrial, even after Cuignet, who was attached to his department in the War Ministry, had communicated Henry's forgery to him and Henry had been found guilty.
p 326 | Joseph Reinach (1856-1921) was a fervent supporter of rettrial and author of a monumental study of the Dreyfus Affair.
p 326 | in petto: "deep down": inter pocula: "in his cups", i.e., to a close circle of friends.
p 327 | Prince Henri d'Orléans: great-grandson of Louis-Philippe who publicly congratulated Esterhazy after his acquittal in February 1898.
p 327 | The Duc de Chartres was father of the Prince d'Orléans.
p 328 | Princesse Clémentine d'Orléans, daughter of Louis-Philippe and mother to Ferdinand de Bulgarie.

3.14.2013

The Guermantes Way: III p 308-19

p 308 | Émile Augier 1820 – 89) was a French dramatist the 13th member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française, 31 March 1857. However the line "Qu'importe le cflacon pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse!" was written by Romantic poet Alfred de Musset, not Augier.
p 308 |  Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 – 1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement. His play Les Sept Princesses  (The Seven Princesses) was published in 1891.  In one act, it concentrates essentially on decor and atmosphere rather than on action.  
p 308 | Joséphin Péladan (1858- 1918) was a French novelist.   He established the Salon de la Rose + Croix for painters, writers, and musicians sharing his artistic ideals, the Symbolists in particular. Treharne notes"Sar Péladan": the French Decadent writer Joseph Péladan (1858-1918), novelist, essayist, and author of "occultist" dramas. He claimed to be a Rosicrucian magus (Sar). 
p 311 | graminivorous: feeding on grass; herbivorous
p 312 | Maria Dorothea of Austria (1867–1932) was a member of the Hungarian line of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and an Archduchess of Austria and Princess of Bohemia, Hungary, and Tuscany by birth. Through her marriage to Philippe, Duke of Orléans, she was also the Duchess of Orléans.
p 313 | Dulcinea:  the name Don Quixote gives to the (blissfully unaware) woman he has made himself The Champion of, for whom he is willing to risk his life. In the Spanish of the time, Dulcinea means something akin to an overly elegant "sweetness." To refer to one's "Dulcinea" is to refer to the object of one's hopeless devotion and idealized love. 
p 313 | Dreyfusard = Dreyfus was framed (Marcel, Zola, writers, artists, Jews);
             anti-Dreyfusard = Dreyfus was guilty (govt, nobility & military).
 p 315 | Treharne notesthe Zola trial: Zola was brought to trial in 1898, after the publication of his famous letter to the president of the Republic, published in L'Aurore of January 13 of the same year and entitled "J'accuse," proclaiming the innocence of Dreyfus after Esterhazy's acquittal. 
p 315 | Treharne notes: Miribel (1831-93) had been chief of staff of the French army.  Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry, an ardent anti-Dreyfusard, forged a crucial incriminating document against Dreyfus. This was exposed in 1898, and he was imprisoned. He committed suicide the day after his imprisonment.
p 315 | Georges Picquart (1854–1914) was a French army officer. As chief of the army's intelligence section in 1896, Picquart discovered that the memo used to convict Dreyfus had been the work of Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. Though warned to conceal his discovery, Picquart persisted & continued his investigation. He was hindered & sabotaged by subordinate officers, notably Major Henry. As a consequence, Picquart was relieved of duty with the Bureau. After the Zola trial, Picquart was himself accused of forging the note that had convinced him of Esterhazy's guilt. He was then arrested for forgery & was awaiting court martial while the French Supreme Court was reviewing the Dreyfus case. After a second court-martial, Picquart resigned from the army, but the exoneration of  Dreyfus in 1906 also absolved Picquart, who was, by an act of the Chamber of Deputies, promoted to brigadier-general. He later entered Georges Clemenceau's first cabinet as Minister of War (1906-09). 
p 315 | Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. 
p 316 | Moira : one of the three Fates who controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death.
p 318 | Treharne notes: "Patrie Française": an anti-Dreyfus league founded in 1898 by various literary figures, soon joined by a great many academics, opposed to a retrial. 
p 319 | Treharne notes: the "Syndicate": during the Dreyfus Affair, French anti-Semites chose to imagine that the country was the victim of a conspiracy led by a Jewish "Syndicate."  

2.23.2013

My Favorite Marcel

Everyone's talking about this picture again, now asserting that it shows Marcel was the first to play air guitar. Well, why not? He loved music, he loved the girl standing on the chair (Jeanne Pouquet, one of his models for Gilberte Swann) even though she was affianced to his friend Gaston Arman de Caillavet.  Others are Gabrielle Schwartz, Gabriel Trarieux, the Daireaux and the Dancognée girls.

This great photograph is the only one I've seen of Proust enjoying a moment of true levity, sporting a sly, mischievous smile. Readers of his novels know that in addition to being a sickly recluse, he was also an extremely amusing & intelligent man -- the kind you'd want at your dinner parties & salons, despite his overcoat -- with his writing filled with biting humor & slashing satire. (You just have to find it!)

2.20.2013

The Guermantes Way: III p 298-303

p 299 | Charles Victor Cherbuliez (1829 – 99) was a French novelist and author. He was the 11th member elected to occupy seat 3 of the Académie française in 1881. Some paintings of radishes... none by Elstir Hebert's Virgin and Child (1872) and Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (see -->>)
p 302 | Pierre Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1843 - 1916) was a French economist. Several works have made their mark beyond the borders of his own country. Among these may be mentioned his Recherches économiques, historiques et statistiques sur les guerres contemporaines, a series of studies published between 1863 and 1869, in which he calculated the loss of men and capital caused by the great European conflicts. He also founded in 1873 the Économiste français. Leading representative in France of orthodox political economy, and most pronounced opponent of protectionist and collectivist doctrines. 
French Academy of Sciences
p 302-3  Fare da se : Ces mots italiens signifient faire par soi-même, se tirer seul d'affaire. Ils sont entrés dans un proverbe national fort cher aux Italien : L'italia farà da se, l'Italie se tirera d'affaire elle-même.  Take care of one’s own affairs; help one’s self alone.
p 303 | obsta principiis: Latin. Withstand beginnings; resist the first approaches or encroachments. Latin Proverb: resist the beginnings, nip in the bud.
          | arcades ambo:  both Arcadians : two persons of like occupations or tastes; also : two rascals.  Latin  
          | Marcel’s father (the real Adrien Proust) was elected to the Academy of Medicine & contributed to the creation of the Intl Ofc of Hygiene, the forerunner of the World Health Organization. See this newspaper article.
          | ("Kind of amusing..". (?) still not sure...) Drolatic:   "The great familiarity I had with the late François Rabelais (dear Reader), has moved and even compelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the drolatic dreams of the very excellent… The 120 woodcuts that make up the volume of Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel appeared without almost any text in 1565. But the short and somewhat babbling preface by the printer…

2.13.2013

Enough time to read all these new Proust books?

The Collected Poems : A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text by Marcel Proust, Harold Augenbraum
On Sale Date: March 26, 2013: ISBN 9780143106906, 0143106902
Paperback $25.00 US / $26.50 Can.   384 pages
For the centennial of Swann's Way : the most complete volume of Proust's poetry ever assembled, in a gorgeous deluxe edition.  As a young man, Proust wrote both poetry and prose. Even after he embarked on his masterful In Search of Lost Time at the age of thirty-eight, he never stopped writing poetry. His verse is often playful, filled with affection and satire, and is peppered with witty barbs at friends and people in his social circle of aristocrats, writers, musicians, and courtesans.
Few of the poems collected here have ever been published in book form or translated into English until now. In this dual-language edition of new translations, Augenbraum has brought together nineteen renowned poets and poetry translators to bring Proust's exuberant verse back to life.
HAROLD AUGENBRAUM is the executive director of the National Book Foundation and founder of the Proust Society of America, and he has previously translated José Rizal and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca for Penguin Classics. He lives in New York City.
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Marcel Proust : A Life, with a New Preface by the Author by William C. Carter
On Sale : March 11, 2013  ISBN: 9780300191790, 0300191790
Paperback $30.00 US 1000 pages 47 b/w illus.  Reissued with a new preface to commemorate the first publication of à la recherche du temps perdu one hundred years ago, this biography portrays in abundant detail the extraordinary life and times of one of the greatest literary voices of the twentieth century.

William C. Carter, professor emeritus of French at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the author of Proust in Love and a new, fully annotated edition of Proust's classic Swann's Way.
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Great Short Stories from "Pleasures of Days"/ Grandes Nouvelles de les plaisirs et les jours : Early Short Stories of Marcel Proust: A Dual-Language Book by Marcel Proust, Edward H Ousselin
August 21, 2013 :: ISBN 9780486497020, 048649702X
Paperback $16.95 US / $23.00 Can. 320 pages
Selections from the satirical, moving short stories and sketches featured in Proust's first published work. Telling reflections of the lives, loves, manners, and motivations of salon society in fin-de-siècle Paris.
These short stories and sketches are derived from a stunning volume of philosophical reflections, brief narratives, and prose poems from Proust's first published work. Set amid the salon society of fin-de-siècle Paris, the tales offer satirical and moving depictions of a fascinating cast of characters. Includes the original French with English translation on facing pages.
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Mirages and Mad Beliefs : Proust the Skeptic by Christopher Prendergast
On sale: May 26, 2013 ISBN 9780691155203, 0691155208
Hardback $45.00 US / £30.95 UK 248 pages
Marcel Proust was long the object of a cult in which the main point of reading his great novel In Search of Lost Time was to find, with its narrator, a redemptive epiphany in a pastry and a cup of lime-blossom tea. We now live in less confident times, in ways that place great strain on the assumptions and beliefs that made those earlier readings possible. This has led to a new manner of reading Proust, against the grain. In Mirages and Mad Beliefs, Christopher Prendergast argues the case differently, with the grain, on the basis that Proust himself was prey to self-doubt and found numerous, if indirect, ways of letting us know. Prendergast traces in detail the locations and forms of a quietly nondogmatic yet insistently skeptical voice that questions the redemptive aesthetic the novel is so often taken to celebrate, bringing the reader to wonder whether that aesthetic is but another instance of the mirage or the mad belief that, in other guises, figures prominently in In Search of Lost Time. In tracing the modalities of this self-pressuring voice, Prendergast ranges far and wide, across a multiplicity of ideas, themes, sources, and stylistic registers in Proust's literary thought and writing practice, attentive at every point to inflections of detail, in a sustained account of Proust the skeptic for the contemporary reader.

Christopher Prendergast is professor emeritus of French at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of King's College and the British Academy. He is the general editor of the Penguin translation of "In Search of Lost Time".
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Proust and the Visual by Nathalie Aubert
On sale: April 26, 2013  ISBN 9780708325483, 0708325483
Hardback  $140.00 US 288 pages
This edited collection considers the role of the visual in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and how it contributes to the novel's sense of modernity. The first few essays examine the philosophical implications of Proust's quest for truth, taking up analyses of the thing, the body, and the relation between the seer and the visible. The essays in the second section concentrate on the way meaning emerges from the description of experience, as well as the cultural environment in which it is inscribed through the workings and reworkings of certain images and textures. The final essays explore how Proust's unique approach to the visual has become in recent years the inspiration for other visual practices: film, sculpture, painting, and dance.
Nathalie Aubert is professor of French literature at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
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Murder Chez Proust : A Mystery by Estelle Monbrun
On Sale: July 2013  : ISBN 9781611458121, 1611458129
Paperback $14.95 US  Fiction / Mystery & Detective  240 pages
A clever, sharp satirical mystery.  When Adeline Bertrand-Verdon, the haughty, conniving president of the Proust Association, is murdered, Inspector Jean-Pierre Foucheroux is called on to lead the investigation. Soon Inspector Foucheroux is overwhelmed by a seemingly endless list of suspects: from her assistant to her colleagues, her fiancé to her lover, almost everyone Adeline knew had motive to kill her. Meanwhile, Gisele Dambert, the beautiful assistant with the royal blue eyes and more than a hint of mystery, is on her own search for the lost Proust notes that would allow her to finally enter the glittering world of the literary elite.

This clever, satirical novel presents a dazzling array of sharp, unscrupulous professors and scholars in the image-obsessed world of academia. An assortment of suspects-the professor who plagiarizes his students' work, the manipulative director-bring intrigue and drama to the novel. Suspense and withering commentary on the morally questionable intellectual elite combine to form a clever mix of whodunit and satire.

Estelle Monbrun, nom de plume of Elyane Dezon-Jones, is a well-known French author and distinguished Proust scholar. Monbrun has published extensively in both France and in the United States and has taught French at Barnard College and at Washington University in Saint Louis. Monbrun splits her time between Paris, France, and Sarasota, Florida.
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Marcel Proust by Adam Watt
On Sale: May 15, 2013  ISBN 9781780230948, 178023094X
Paperback $16.95 US  224 pages  30 halftones
In this concise biography, Adam Watt explores the life of a writer whose every experience was stored, dissected, and redeployed within a vast fictional work.  After considering Proust's earlier years of personal and aesthetic experiment, Watt provides an engaging account of two intertwined processes taking place against the vibrant backdrop of Belle Époque Paris and World War I: the progress of In Search of Lost Time and the simultaneous decline of its author. He demonstrates how Proust's own periods of ill health and isolation reflected his narrator's thoughts on desire, love, and loss, as well as his contemplation of beauty, memory, aging, and the possibility of happiness. Drawing on the author's immense correspondence, the accounts of his contemporaries, and the insights of recent scholarship, Marcel Proust offers a rewarding new portrait of the novelist once described as "the most complicated man in Paris."

Adam Watt is associate professor of French at the University of Exeter and a member of the Equipe Proust at the ITEM/ENS, Paris, France. He is the author of Reading in Proust's "A la recherche" and The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust.
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Marcel Proust : The Ark and the Dove by Patricia Mante-Proust, Mireille Naturel, Josephine Bacon
On Sale: April 1, 2013  ISBN 9783283012182, 3283012180
Hardback  $65.00 US / $71.95 Can.   192 pages
Through the exclusive documents that Patricia Mante-Proust inherited, she revisits her rich family history in images and anecdotes.
This first publication of a collection of original Proustian treasures includes numerous documents from the family's collection in the National Archives and items found in the drawers of Aunt Léonie's famous house in Illiers-Combray, as well as correspondence, rare and unpublished manuscripts, and memories rediscovered in the places that Proust frequented and loved. Its purpose is to celebrate a life and an era that, through the magic of an inimitable style, will live for eternity. For a long time I used to go to bed early is probably one of the most famous quotations from French literature, the very first words of an epic structure compared by its author to a cathedral. In the case of Remembrance of Things Past it is impossible to distinguish between the author and the work. No writer has ever pushed introspection and remembrance to such a level. Through his prodigious quest for the flavor of the little madeleine cake, he has acquired an almost mystical aura for generations of readers throughout the world. Proust has often been described as feverish, excessively shy, a recluse in his cork-lined room; yet, between visions and real-life experiences, who was Marcel Proust in reality? Could the famous Questionnaire that he compiled and answered and that bears his name shed any light on this enigma?
"This is an accessible volume of memorable pictures, words, and other odds and ends." - Publishers Weekly

Patricia Mante-Proust is the great-grand-niece of the writer and the keeper of his estate. Mireille Naturel is the general secretary of The Society of Friends of Marcel Proust. She is the author of Proust and Flaubert: the Secret of Writing and Proust and the Literary Act: Receiving and Creating, the editor of How Proust is Received Abroad and Correspondence and Manuscripts, and she produced the critical edition of Swann in Love for Flammarion.

2.07.2013

The Guermantes Way III p 271-298

p 274 |  So what is a Duke, specifically in France?
p 275 |  At-home days
p 276 | The excellent writer G---"...  ; could this be Gide?
p 277 | Adolphe Thiers (French historian, President of the Republic 1797–1877): Prosper    MÉRIMÉE (French novelist, 1803–70); Émile Augier (playwright, 1820­–89): 
p 286 | Vicomte de Borelli, (society poet, late 19th century); Gustave Schlumberger (historian, 1844–1929);  Vicomte Georges d'Avenel (historian & economist, 1855–1939); Pierre Loti (novelist, 1850–1923);  Edmond Rostand  (playwright, 1868–1918, author of Cyrano de Bergerac); Paul Deschanel (French president, 1855–1922); Antonio Pisanello (Italian painter & medallist, c. 1380–1456); Jan Van Huysum (Dutch flower painter, 1682-1749) "... meticulous, dead herbals."

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mayflowers
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p 291 | Hera: Greek goddess, Queen of the Olympians
p 294 | Temperature in Mme de V's rooms:  22 C. = 71 F. & 25 C=77 F.
            | Antenor Greek mythological counselor to Priam in the Trojan war; Alpheus = in Greek mythology a river (the modern Alfeios River) & river-god.