Proust etc.

Peter Stephenson · 27 Jul 1999, 08:32 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Subject: Re: (urth) Proust etc.
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 10:32:24 +0200
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"Alice Turner" wrote:
> One small correction: frangipane means powdered
> or ground almonds, often mixed with fine sugar. Akin to marzipane, but dr=
y.

OK, I didn't look that up.  I may have got confused with the older english
for marzipan, marchpane, which is no more like the french than the modern
word, but different enough to confuse me, which tends to be quite easy.

> Etamine can be a fine sieve in cooking, but also refers to gauzy feminine
> garments, either chemises or gowns (think Josephine in those transparent
> Empire frocks). My guess is that it here refers to the finely woven
> altar-cloth (I have Proust in English right up there on the shelf, but I'm
> not going to look unless you tell me exactly where this is).

Aha, this sounds more in the right direction; Cassells didn't have this
either.  For orientation, we are in the `Combray' part of Swann's Way (this
edition goes straight into Combray, there's no separate `Ouverture',
i.e. the first sentences of Combray is `Longtemps, je me suis couch'e de
bonne heure'), which lasts from about page 90 (after a long introduction)
to about page 300, where Swann in Love starts --- the Guermantes Way
business is right before that, and the stuff I quoted lies between pages
217 and 281 (as I gave them).  The English may well have a resum'e too, I
think mine did.

> Nymphaea (nim-FEE-a) A genus of hardy and tropical water-lilies belonging=
 to
> the Water-lily Family

Maybe I should have paid more attention to what these were doing in the
Vivonne, then, but I switched off in exhaustion after `nenuphar'.

corncrake

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