In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [345]
The Duke felt no compunction in speaking thus of his wife’s ailments and his own to a dying man, for the former interested him more and therefore appeared to him more important. And so, after gently showing us out, it was simply from breeding and jollity that in a stentorian voice, as if addressing someone off-stage, he shouted from the gate to Swann, who was already in the courtyard: “You, now, don’t let yourself be alarmed by the nonsense of those damned doctors. They’re fools. You’re as sound as a bell. You’ll bury us all!”
NOTES · ADDENDA · SYNOPSIS
Notes
The French is s’ennuyer de, which can mean to miss, to suffer from the absence of.
Françoise says avoir d’argent instead of avoir de l’argent.
Ce n’est pas mon père: celebrated remark by the môme Crevette in Feydeau’s La Dame de chez Maxim’s. It became a popular all-purpose catch-phrase. John Mortimer translated it as “How’s your father?” in his adaptation of the Feydeau play for the National Theatre.
The French is plaindre, to pity, which used also to mean to deplore or regret. The sense here is that Mme Octave did not regret her expenditure on rich fare.
A somewhat inaccurate quotation from Pascal’s famous “memorial.”
The allusion is to the Romanian-born Comtesse Anna de Noailles (née Brancovan), friend and correspondent of Proust, who was an extravagant admirer of her verse.
Popular abbreviation of the newspaper l’Intransigeant.
The Academy in question is l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, one of the five (including the Académie Française) which comprise the Institut de France.
Jules Méline, Prime Minister for two years during the Dreyfus Case.
Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777), the best-known member of an illustrious family of botanists.
La barbe has the colloquial meaning “tedious” or “boring.”
Duc Decazes: minister and favourite of Louis XVIII.
Carmen Sylva was the pen-name of Elizabeth, Queen of Romania (1843-1916).
“Qu’importe le flacon pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse!”—the line is in fact by Alfred de Musset.
Le Syndicat was the term used by anti-semites to describe the secret power of the Jews.
Prince Henri d’Orléans, son of the Duc de Chartres, publicly embraced the notorious Esterhazy after he had given evidence at the Zola trial.
“Quand on parle du Saint-Loup!” is what the Duchess says. The French for “Talk of the devil” is “Quand on parle du loup.” The pun doesn’t work in English.
Paraphrase of a famous line from Molière’s Le Misanthrope: “Ah, qu’en termes galants ces choses-là sont mises!”
A word introduced by Pierre Loti from the Japanese musume, meaning girl or young woman.
There is a complicated pun here, impossible to convey in English. Françoise says: “Faut-il que j’éteinde?” instead of “éteigne.” Albertine’s “Teigne?” is not only a tentative correction of Françoise’s faulty subjunctive; it also suggests that she is an old shrew (a secondary meaning of teigne = tinea, moth).
i.e., Venice. For an elucidation of this passage, see “Place-names: the Name”: Swann’s Way pp. 554-59.
A Proustian joke here: Edouard Detaille was a mediocre academic painter known especially for his paintings of military life. Alexandre Ribot was a familiar middle-of-the-road political figure, twice Prime Minister under the Third Republic. Suzanne Reichenberg was for thirty years the principal ingénue at the Comédie-Française.
Ventre affamé—from the expression “Ventre affamé n’a pas d’oreilles,” meaning “Words are wasted on a starving man.”
A riverside