A rivalry, a quartet, a church? on the first page? That's odd, no? she asked. And Marcel Proust said "Yes! My lovely little phrase- she is famous now?!'
Now what would MP be up to, calling Swann’s lover Odette? Ode – some kind of poem-ish form. But diminished. a diminutive ode. An Odette. So basically a phrase. But a little one. A little ode.
I’m not saying there isn’t a little phrase in a piece of music written by M. Vinteuil and played… Continue reading “Isn’t a little phrase an Ode-ette?”
Tante Leonie’s the domestic ‘lioness’ looking out from her room ‘tower’ over the village square of Combray and observing the comings and goings.
To my mind, she’s the beast. Akin to the Lion of St. Mark overlooking the square in Venice, she’s the one who facilitates the dipping of the Madeleine in tea that sets everything moving. Young Marcel dips the biscuit in tea… Continue reading “Tante Léonie is a beast”
Meet Le cygne de Cambrai: Francois Fenelon. He’s a French archbishop from the late 1600’s who somehow took on the sobriquet The Swan of Cambrai. And could possibly, just possibly, have served as inspiration for the Swann of Combray front and center in Swann’s Way.
It could be nothing more than that. Just a simple borrowing of… Continue reading “Ceci n’est pas un Swann de Combray”
He repeated to himself: “Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof, little patch of yellow wall.”
What is it about the death of Bergotte, poor Bergotte, that makes me love him so much? Yes, it’s his indigestion, and his silly little mantra about the patch of yellow wall. in Vermeer’s View of Delft. Continue reading “Silly Bergotte and his little patch of yellow wall”
Okay, a word about all the church stuff. Archbishops, saints, churches, resurrection.
I’m not proselytizing here. I’m talking in a fictional sense. And I think the same could be said for Continue reading “Saint Marcel, author of the book”
My son sometimes says something I’ve done is cringe, and I mean no harm to Illiers when I say this (though I hate when he says it to me!) but I do find it a bit that. Of course the town’s the real deal, and yes I’ve been there and it’s charming, but a name… Continue reading “Illiers-Combray lolol”
I didn’t know that a mask like this one was called a ‘loup.’
It took me a while to figure this out. I thought at first that this word Loup had something to do with my shepherds (the Moors on the Torre Del’Orologgio)- i.e. something about a wolf in Continue reading “The masked Saint: Saint Loup”