p.9,M. Darlu: Alphonse Darlu (1849–1921) was Proust’s philosophy teacher at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris.
p.10,The poets say that Apollo… Emerson: A misquotation from ‘History’ (Essays: First Series, 1841) by Transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82).
p.17,The flesh is sad, alas… Stéphane Mallarmé: The first words of the poem ‘Brise marine’ (‘Sea Breeze’, 1865) by the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–98).
p.19,The din of his youthful days… Mme de Sévigné: From a letter by Madame de Sévigné (1626–96) to her daughter, dated 24th January 1689.
p.26,Tomorrow… Macbeth: Macbeth, Act v, Sc. 5, 19–28.
p.29,Now cracks… Hamlet: Hamlet, Act v, Sc. 2, 359–60.
p.34,The Imitation of Christ, I, 7: A devotional handbook usually attributed to the German theologian Thomas à Kempis (c.1380–1471). The quotation from The Imitation of Christ in the following epigraph is from Book II, Chapter 7.
p.46,As crabs, goats… Emerson: From ‘History’ (see previous note).
p.50,Cires perdues: “Lost wax castings” (French).
p.53,Le Gaulois: A literary and political journal which ran from 1868 to 1929.
p.54,Your soul is… a deep dark forest: The expression is proverbial in Russia and has been used by several writers, but could not be traced in the works of Tolstoy.
p.55,Bouillet: Marie-Nicolas Bouillet (1798–1865), a French historian who wrote, among other things, a Dictionnaire universel d’histoire et de géographie (1842); the other works mentioned (such as the Almanach de Gotha) were all guides to aristocratic society.
p.56,Lamartine… Wagner: Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869), French poet and statesman; Richard Wagner (1813–83), German opera composer.
p.57,Verlaine: Paul Verlaine (1844–96), French symbolist poet.
p.64,Franck and d’Indy… Palestrina: César Franck (1822–90) and Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931) were French composers; Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525–94) was a prolific Italian composer of church music.
p.64,Whistler… Bouguereau: James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) was an American painter known for his subtle tones and his belief in “art for art’s sake”, whereas William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) was a popular, traditionalist French genre painter.
p.65,Pantaloon, Scaramouche or Pasquariello: Famous characters of Italian commedia dell’arte, along with Harlequin, mentioned later.
p.71,Society: “The opinions ascribed here to the two celebrated characters from Flaubert are, of course, in no way those of the author.” (proust’s note) In Flaubert’s last unfinished novel, published in 1881, the eponymous heroes Bouvard and Pécuchet come into some money and retire to the countryside, where they devote themselves, in a series of grimly farcical episodes, to cultivating the arts and sciences of their age: in doing so they run through most of the clichéd opinions their society has to offer. Proust here mimics Flaubert both stylistically and thematically.
p.72,Leconte de Lisle: Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (1818–94) was a poet of the Parnassian movement.
p.72,Loti: Pierre Loti (1850–1923) was a prolific French novelist who specialized in detailed descriptions of exotic destinations.
p.72,André Laurie: One of the pseudonyms of Paschal Grousset (1844–1909), the author of adventure and science-fiction novels.
p.72,Henri de Régnier: Henri de Régnier (1864–1936) was a symbolist poet and novelist.
p.72,Maeterlinck: Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) was a Belgian symbolist poet and playwright.
p.73,Revue des Deux Mondes: An influential cultural review founded in Paris in 1929.
p.73,Lemaître: Jules Lemaître (1853–1914) was a literary critic and dramatist.
p.73,France… Bourget: Anatole France (1844–1924) was the great French man of letters of his day, and the author of the preface to Pleasures and Days. Paul Bourget (1852–1935) was a French critic and realist novelist.
p.76,Revocation… Massacre of St Bartholomew: The Edict of Nantes of 1598 gave civil rights to the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) and ended the French Wars of Religion, but it was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. The 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris was a series of assassinations directed against the Huguenots during the French Wars of Religion.
p.78,Domino noir: An 1837 comic opera by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) and Eugène Scribe (1791–1861).
p.78,Berlin bawler… nicknamed him: Wagner was actually born in Leipzig, and was subsequently associated more with the cities of Dresden and Bayreuth than with Berlin.
p.78,Colonne… Lamoureux: Charles Lamoureux (1834–99) was a conductor who founded the “Concerts Lamoureux”; Édouard Colonne (1838–1910) was also a conductor who promoted the work of Berlioz and Wagner.
p.78,Parsifal: Wagner’s last completed opera, first staged in 1882. The Valkyrie (1870), Lohengrin (1850), Tannhäuser (1845) and Rienzi (1842), mentioned in the next paragraph, are also operas by Wagner.
p.79,Gounod… Erik Satie: Charles Gounod (1818–93) was a French composer, most famous for his Ave Maria (1853) and his opera Faust (1859). Erik Satie (1866–1925) was a French avant-garde composer and pianist.
p.79,Saint-Saëns… Massenet: Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Jules Massenet (1842–1912) was a popular composer, most famous now for his opera Manon (1884).
p.79,Gaston Lemaire… Chausson with Chaminade: Jean Eugène Gaston Lemaire (1854–1928), Ernest Chausson (1855–99) and Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) were French composers.
p.79,Charles Lévadé… Mme de Girardin: Charles-Gaston Lévadé (1869–1948) was a French composer; Delphine de Girardin (1804–55) was a poet and writer of essays, sketches and plays.
p.80,Reynaldo Hahn: Reynaldo Hahn (1874–1947), a Venezuelan-born French composer and music critic, was a close friend and lover of Proust.
p.80,Jacques Normand… Vicomte de Borelli: Jacques Normand (1848–1931) was a playwright and Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907) was a Nobel Prize-winning poet. The Vicomte Emmanuel Raymond de Borelli (1837–1906) was the captain of a French Foreign Legion company that fought during the Siege of Tuyên Quang in Vietnam in 1885, a battle which inspired him to write a famous poem to his men.
p.81,Monsieur Delafosse: Léon Delafosse (1874–1951), a pianist and composer.
p.82,Ariadne… were abandoned: This is another quotation from Phèdre by Racine, spoken by its lovelorn protagonist Phaedra.
p.92,Dem Vogel… hold gewachsen: “The beak of the bird who sang today has become lovely” (German), from Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (1888), Act ii, Sc. 3, 42–43.
p.94,there are sensations… than infinity: From the prose poem ‘The Artist’s Confiteor’ (1862) by Charles Baudelaire (1821–67).
p.94,αὐτόθ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀϊόνος… Theocritus, The Cyclops: From the Idylls xi, 14–16, by Theocritus (d.c.250 bc).
p.99,Portraits of Painters and Musicians: Most of these painters and musicians are well known: the presence of the “Golden Age” figures of Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91) and Paulus Potter (1625–54) among the former attests to Proust’s love of Dutch landscape painting. Jean Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) was a French rococo painter. Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) was a German opera composer.
p.101,young Richmond: Probably a reference to James Stewart, 1st Duke of Richmond (1612–55), the subject of a 1637 portrait by Van Dyck.
p.102,Cnidus: An ancient settlement now in modern-day Turkey.
p.102,Armida’s gardens: The enchanted gardens of Armida, a sorceress in Jerusalem Delivered (1581) by Torquato Tasso (1544–95), the eponymous protagonist of Gluck’s 1777 opera.
p.102,Admetus, Iphigenia… Alcestis too: Greek mythological figures that have all featured as characters in various operas by G
luck.
p.104,Cherubino, Don Giovanni: Characters from Mozart’s operas The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787) respectively.
p.104,Queen of the Night: A character from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute (1791).
p.105,Through the oblivion… melancholy scent: From Henri de Régnier’s Sites (1887) viii, 6–8.
p.111,And the crazed wind… like an old flag: From ‘Damned Women’, ll. 99–100, in The Flowers of Evil (1857).
p.114,I think of all… found again: From ‘The Swan’, ll. 45–46, in The Flowers of Evil (1857).
p.119,But, Fundanius… Horace: From Horace’s Satires, ii, 8, 18–19.
p.119,Maurice Barrès: Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) was a novelist and nationalist politician.
p.121,the victories of the Prince de Buivres in Dahomey: Dahomey was the name of an African kingdom (present-day Benin), which the French fought and conquered from 1890 to 1894.
p.125,Heredia: José-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905) was a Cuban-born French poet.
p.128,So the poet’s… Emerson: From Emerson’s ‘The Poet’ (1844).
p.129,A canal… M. de la Motte-Aigron: From the Letters, vol. 1 (1624) of Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654). Jacques de la Motte-Aigron (d.1644) was a friend of Balzac who also wrote a preface to the Letters.
p.130,after so many others have done so: “And particularly after MM. Maurice Barrès, Henri de Régnier and Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac.” (proust’s note)
p.132,the bird of Juno… with the very eyes of Argus: In Greek mythology, Argus was a giant with many eyes who was instructed by the goddess Hera (Juno) to watch over a white heifer (actually the nymph Io); when he failed to so, Hera became angry and his eyes were transferred to the peacock’s feathers.
p.132,captive Andromache… herds of Admetus: After her husband Hector got killed by Achilles during the Trojan War, Andromache was enslaved and kept as a concubine by Achilles’s son Neoptolemus. After provoking the ire of Zeus, Apollo was sent to Admetus, the king of Thessaly, to be a shepherd to his flocks.
p.133,For music is so sweet… within the heart: A quotation from Victor Hugo’s (1802–85) Romantic play Hernani (1830), Act v, Sc. 3.
p.136,MM. Halévy and Meilhac: The playwrights Jacques François Fromental Élie Halévy (1799–1862) and Henri Meilhac (1831–97), perhaps best known now as the librettists of Bizet’s Carmen.
p.136,Cythera: One of the Greek Ionian Islands. In Greek mythology, it was regarded as the island of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
p.149,L’Invitée by M. de Curel: An 1893 play by François de Curel (1854–1928).
p.156,Your tears flowed… Anatole France: From Anatole France’s 1876 dramatic poem The Corinthian Nuptials, Part i, Sc. 3.
p.162,They say that Death… more good than evil: From Book 8, Chapter 1 of History of France (see earlier note).
p.173,Réveillon: A chateau 90 km east of Paris which belonged to Madelaine Lemaire (see earlier note).
p.178,Give us good things… Plato: The quotation is from Plato’s (possibly spurious) Alcibiades 2, 143a.
p.183,Tonkin: Tonkin (or Tongking), the area corresponding to southern Vietnam, was a French protectorate from 1884.
p.184,Our acts our angels are… Beaumont and Fletcher: From the epilogue to the play The Honest Man’s Fortune (1647), which was probably written by Nathan Field (1587–1620), John Fletcher (1579–1625) and Philip Massinger (1583–1640), without Fletcher’s frequent collaborator Francis Beaumont (1584–1616).
p.185,Oh lovely little hands that will close my eyes: From Verlaine’s Sagesse (Wisdom) i, 18, 16.
p.190,The soul may be trusted… Emerson: From ‘Love’ (Essays: First Series, 1841).
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1.James Hanley, Boy
2.D.H. Lawrence, The First Women in Love
3.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
4.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5.Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
6.Anton Chekhov, Sakhalin Island
7.Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Sonnets
8.Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation
9.Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
10.Jane Austen, Emma
11.Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
12.D.H. Lawrence, The Second Lady Chatterley’s Lover
13.Jonathan Swift, The Benefit of Farting Explained
14.Anonymous, Dirty Limericks
15.Henry Miller, The World of Sex
16.Jeremias Gotthelf, The Black Spider
17.Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray
18.Erasmus, Praise of Folly
19.Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy
20.Cecco Angiolieri, Sonnets
21.Fyodor Dostoevsky, Humiliated and Insulted
22.Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
23.Theodor Storm, Immensee
24.Ugo Foscolo, Sepulchres
25.Boileau, Art of Poetry
26.Georg Kaiser, Plays Vol. 1
27.Émile Zola, Ladies’ Delight
28.D.H. Lawrence, Selected Letters
29.Alexander Pope, The Art of Sinking in Poetry
30.E.T.A. Hoffmann, The King’s Bride
31.Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
32.Prosper Mérimée, A Slight Misunderstanding
33.Giacomo Leopardi, Canti
34.Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron
35.Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, The Jew’s Beech
36.Stendhal, Life of Rossini
37.Eduard Mörike, Mozart’s Journey to Prague
38.Jane Austen, Love and Friendship
39.Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
40.Ivan Bunin, Dark Avenues
41.Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
42.Sadeq Hedayat, Three Drops of Blood
43.Alexander Trocchi, Young Adam
44.Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying
45.Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
46.Sadeq Hedayat, The Blind Owl
47.Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy
48.Marguerite Duras, Moderato Cantabile
49.Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus
50.Alain Robbe-Grillet, In the Labyrinth
51.Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
52.Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
53.Ivan Bunin, The Village
54.Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur
55.Franz Kafka, Dearest Father
56.Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
57.Ambrose Bierce, The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter
58.Fyodor Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
59.Bram Stoker, Dracula
60.Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
61.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities
62.Marguerite Duras, The Sailor from Gibraltar
63.Robert Graves, Lars Porsena
64.Napoleon Bonaparte, Aphorisms and Thoughts
65.Joseph von Eichendorff, Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing
66.Adelbert von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihl
67.Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, The Three-Cornered Hat
68.Jane Austen, Persuasion
69.Dante Alighieri, Rime
70.Anton Chekhov, The Woman in the Case and Other Stories
71.Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve
72.Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
73.Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
74.Gottfried Keller, A Village Romeo and Juliet
75.Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style
76.Georg Büchner, Lenz
77.Giovanni Boccaccio, Life of Dante
78.Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
79.E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixirs
80.Claude Simon, The Flanders Road
81.Raymond Queneau, The Flight of Icarus
82.Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
83.Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of our Time
84.Henry Miller, Black Spring
85.Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man
86.D.H. Lawrence, Paul Morel
87.Mikhail Bulgakov, The Life of Monsieur de Molière
88.Leo Tolstoy, Three Novellas
89.Stendhal, Travels in the South of France
90.Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
91.Alain Robbe-Grillet, Erasers
92.Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Fosca
93.D.H. Lawrence, The Fox
94.Borys Conrad, My Father Joseph Conrad
95.James De Mille, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
96.Émile Zola, Dead Men Tell No Tales
97.Alexander Pushkin, Ruslan and Lyudmila
98.Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
99.James Hanley, The Closed Harbour
100.Thomas De Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
101.Jonathan Swift, The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders
102.Petronius, Satyricon
103.Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on Credit
104.Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
105.W.B. Yeats, Selected Poems
106.Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double
107.Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
108.Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
109.Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
110.Guido Cavalcanti, Complete Poems
111.Charles Dickens, Hard Times
112.Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, Hashish, Wine, Opium
113.Charles Dickens, Haunted House
114.Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children