In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of this volume (the line count includes headings, but not rule lines). Often no note is made for material included in the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Biblical quotations and allusions are keyed to the King James Version; references to Shakespeare to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). For further biographical background, references to other studies, and more detailed notes, see Doris Grumbach, The Company She Kept (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967); Carol Gelderman, Mary McCarthy: A Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Carol Brightman, Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1992); and Frances Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000); as well as Conversations with Mary McCarthy, ed. Carol Gelderman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991) and Sherli Evens Goldman, Mary McCarthy: A Bibliography (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968).
14.11–12 a Ramos gin fizz] Cocktail that originated in New Orleans in the 1880s.
17.10–11 vie galante] French: “a liberated, adventurous life,” with connotations of sexual passion.
20.36–37 Louis Napoleon] Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1808–1873), president of the French Second Republic, 1848–52, and, as Napoléon III, ruler of the Second French Empire, 1852–70.
20.39–40 several Bedlingtons, a cairn, two Kerry blues] Three varieties of terrier.
25.2 the school of Boucher] François Boucher (1703–1770), French Rococo painter known for soft, extravagantly lush depictions of Eros.
29.15 Keith-time] The Keith Time or Keith Circuit, prominent and high-class circuit of vaudeville theaters owned by B. F. Keith (1846–1914).
31.32 Winchell’s column.] Snappily written, widely distributed, and occasionally cruel newspaper gossip column of Walter Winchell (1897–1972).
36.36 Starr Faithfull case] The suspicious death by drowning of Starr Faithfull (1906–1931), a beautiful “society girl,” also informs John O’Hara’s novel Butterfield 8 (1934).
41.40 faïence vase] A tin-glazed piece of earthenware.
42.4–5 defended himself . . . Hippolytus] Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, resisted the seductive advances of his stepmother, Phaedra.
42.40 Mickey Finn] A drink spiked with a drug in order to incapacitate the drinker.
44.10–11 Maillard’s or Schrafft’s] Maillard’s, a Manhattan restaurant that had made its original reputation with a clientele of upscale women; the Schrafft’s restaurants, which operated for decades in Manhattan, were described in a 2008 article in The New York Times: “The chain sought associations with the well-to-do, or at least comfortable, and the typical restaurant was a relaxed white-tablecloth retreat from the midday hustle of the city.”
44.27 Heian period] Period of Japanese history spanning 794 to 1185, named for the capital, Heian-kyo, what is now the city of Kyoto.
48.26 Japanese cloisonné enamels] Decorative art and jewelry made by filling with enamel small compartments that have been formed from metal filaments.
48.36 Franz Joseph] Emperor of Austria (1830–1916) who reigned from 1848 to 1916.
48.37 Pisanello medallions of the Este family] Pisanello (c. 1395–1455), Italian artist famed for making portrait medallions; the House of Este is a European noble family with branches in Italy, Austria, Britain and Germany.
48.38 prie-dieu] An item of furniture, with a resting-place for one’s knees and elbows, to be used while praying.
50.1 Hearst] William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951), American newspaper magnate; extravagant collector of art and antique furniture.
50.3 Romanoff collection] A portion of the Russian crown jewels were sold at auction by the Soviet government in 1927. Perhaps a reference to the American businessman Armand Hammer (1898–1990), who bought Romanov jewels in the USSR and sold them in New York City.
54.30 Vincent Sheean’s Personal History] Memoir by the American foreign correspondent (1899–1975), published in 1935 and praised by McCarthy in The Nation.
57.8–9 Hervey Allen or Arthur Brisbane or Westbrook Pegler] Allen, American historical novelist (1889–1949), author of Anthony Adverse (1933); Brisbane, American newspaper editor and columnist (1864–1936); and Pegler, American newspaper columnist (1894–1969) fiercely opposed to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.
58.35 White Rock] White Rock Beverages, a soft-drink company.
61.10–12 Landon . . . Roosevelt] In November 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide re-election over the Republican candidate, Kansas governor Alfred M. Landon (1887–1987).
61.16–17 CIO strikes . . . Lewis] John L. Lewis (1880–1969), aggressive president of the United Mine Workers, 1920–60, and president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 1935–40.
61.21 Norman Thomas!] Thomas (1884–1969) was Socialist Party candidate for president in six elections from 1928 to 1948.
61.37 Mr. Morgan’s war] Refers to the belief that American involvement in World War I was brought about by the banker J. P. Morgan Jr. (1867–1943) in order to protect and profit from his own financial interests, especially those in Britain.
62.38 Sherwood Anderson character] Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941), American novelist and short story writer best known for Winesburg, Ohio (1919), often dealt with characters whose yearnings were thwarted by their temperaments and small-town circumstances.
70.7–9 Chaucer, . . . wel at ese.”] Troilus and Criseyde, Book II, line 750.
79.5–6 Del Monte] Golf course at Pebble Beach, California, open since 1897.
80.25–26 the war in Spain] The Spanish Civil War (1936–39), between the Spanish Republicans and the right-wing Nationalists, which resulted in the demise of the Second Spanish Republic and a thirty-six-year-long fascist dictatorship by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Left-leaning and Communist literary intellectuals from the U.S. and Europe rallied passionately to the doomed cause of the Republic and eventually saw the conflict as a kind of small-scale preview of World War II, in which the forces of democracy and communism allied against fascism.
80.28–29 die for the Republicans at the Alcazar] The Alcázar, an ancient palace fortress in Toledo, was held by the Spanish Nationalists and unsuccessfully besieged from July to September 1936 by the opposing Republican forces. Their defeat provided Franco with a symbolic victory.
81.39–40 Longchamps or the Algonquin] Longchamps was a chain of smartly decorated Manhattan restaurants; the Algonquin Hotel, on West 44th St., was famous for its “Round Table” of writers, wits, and show-business personalities who regularly lunched there.
82.1 Marie Laurencin look] Laurencin (1885–1956) was a French avant-garde painter associated with the Cubist movement; known for a delicate pastel style.
82.4 Ponce de Leon] Spanish explorer (1460–1521) who, according to legend, searched in Florida for the Fountain of Youth.
82.6 Brussels carpet] Machine-made wool carpet with a heavy pile.
82.7–8 Marmon roadster] Car produced by the Marmon Motor Car Company, located in Indianapolis, which operated from 1902 to 1933. (McCarthy lost her virginity in a Marmon roadster in the fall of 1926.)
82.18–19 Hepplewhite chairs] Furniture in the style of George Hepplewhite (c. 1727–1786), British cabinetmaker whose chairs were known for their slender wooden arms and legs and shield-design backs.
84.27 tout comprendre, c’est tout aimer] French: To understand all is to love all. A less familiar variant of “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” (to understand all is to forgive all).
85.34–35 Marianna . . . Isabella’s name!] After being jilted by Angelo in Measure for Measure, Act IV, scene i, Mariana sleeps with him, knowing that in the dark he believes her to be Isabella.
91.33 Mennen’s] The Mennen Company, since the 1870s, had been the manufacturer of popular men’s toiletries.
93.19 monkscloth] Heavy, loosely woven cotton fabric often used in bedspreads.
93.20 Kunyoshi and Reginald Marsh] Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889–1953), Japanese-American painter and printmaker; Reginald Marsh (1898–1954), American painter known for his New York City subject matter.
93.20–21 George Grosz . . . Rivera] George Grosz (1893–1959), German artist famous for depictions of Berlin during the Weimar Republic; Diego Rivera (1886–1957), Mexican painter best known for his murals.
95.37 Archipenko and Harold Cash] Alexander Archipenko (1887–1964) and Harold Cash (1895–1977), American sculptors.
96.21 Moscow trials] Three show trials conducted in the USSR from August 1936 to March 1938. The defendants, who included many of Stalin’s political rivals from the 1920s, were falsely accused of espionage, treason, and plotting with the exiled Leon Trotsky.
97.4 George Arliss] English stage and film actor (1868–1946) who starred in The House of Rothschild, 1934 film about the European banking family who owned the Château Lafite Rothschild vineyard.
101.30 like Lady Chatterley] Constance Chatterley, the married, sexually frustrated heroine of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928); it is actually a gamekeeper with whom she has an affair.
101.34–35 La Pasionaria] Nickname of Dolores Ibárruri (1895–1989), Communist orator and supporter of the Spanish Second Republic, famous for her cry of “No Pasarán!” (“They shall not pass!”) directed against Franco’s forces during the 1936 Battle for Madrid.
102.3 Andres Nin] Spanish Communist (1892–1937) and a founder of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), who was killed by Stalinist agents of the NKVD, the Soviet state security organization, as the USSR asserted doctrinaire Communist control over the government of the Spanish Republic. The stories of Nin and the POUM are most famously recounted in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938). McCarthy was friends with Orwell’s widow, Sonia, for many years.
102.14 GPU] Officers of the State Political Directorate, an early Soviet secret-police organization, 1922–34.
102.24 the Dauphin, Bonnie Prince Charlie] Two royal lost causes: Louis XVII of France (1785–1795), the youngest son of the deposed Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, would have assumed the French crown in 1793; during the early nineteenth century a number of men challenged the idea that he had ever died and themselves claimed to be “the lost dauphin.” Charles Edward Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (1720–1788), was the Young Pretender to the British throne who led the unsuccessful Jacobite uprising in 1745.
102.24–25 Debs and now Trotsky] Two socialist lost causes: Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) was the Socialist Party of America’s candidate in five presidential elections. In her essay “My Confession” (1953) McCarthy recounts how Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), Soviet revolutionary eventually murdered by Stalin’s agents, became—almost accidentally—an object of her enduring political admiration.
105.19 The Tsar to Lenin] American documentary film (1937) about the Russian Revolution that was admiring of Trotsky and denounced by American Stalinists during the Moscow Trials. It was narrated by Max Eastman (1883–1969), who had edited the socialist magazine The New Masses (1913–18). In her Intellectual Memoirs (1992) McCarthy recalls being at a party with Eastman during her affair with the critic Philip Rahv. “This white-haired spellbinder, the son of preachers from Canandaigua, New York, was handsome, tall, all his life a fascinator of women. His film on the Russian Revolution, Tsar to Lenin, was just being shown. In sum, all I remember is what I would like to forget: having had a lot of drinks, sitting on Max Eastman’s lap; out of a corner of memory’s eye, I see Philip’s face. The next morning he was still very angry with me. I had an awful hangover and had to stay home from work for two whole days.”
108.9 Wesley Barry] Child actor (1907–1994) in American silent movies.
108.10 Our Gang comedies] Popular series of short movies featuring mischievous children, created by Hal Roach and produced from 1922 to 1944.
108.21 Bones] Short for “Skull and Bones,” elite secret society for Yale University undergraduates founded in 1832.
108.22–23 Foster and Ford and the Bonus Marchers and the Scottsboro Boys] William Z. Foster (1881–1961) was a labor organizer and Stalinist hardliner within the American Communist Party; James W. Ford (1893–1957), African American vice-presidential candidate of the American Communist Party in three elections; the Bonus March was a massive extended protest in Washington, D.C., in the Depression year of 1932, during which veterans of World War I demanded a bonus payment for their service; the Scottsboro Boys—African Americans charged with raping two white women and sentenced to death by an all-white jury in Alabama—were an important civil-rights cause of the 1930s.
108.24 Das Kapital] Karl Marx’s three-volume theoretical critique of capitalism, published from 1867 to 1894, edited and completed by Friedrich Engels.
110.20 out of Shef] The Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University.
110.39 Lovestoneites] Jay Lovestone (1897–1990) was general secretary of the American Communist Party from 1927 until 1929, when he was expelled from the party on Stalin’s orders. From 1929 to 1941 Lovestone led a dissident Communist group known by a variety of names, including Communist Party (Opposition).
111.2 a Farmer-Labor party] Democratic-Socialist political party that achieved long-term success in Minnesota beginning in 1918, and short-lived prominence as a national organization during the 1920s. In 1944 it merged with the Minnesota Democratic Party.
111.36–37 the Eli bulldog] Mascot of the Yale University football team.
113.6 Veblen] Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), American economic sociologist; author of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and inventor of the concept of “conspicuous consumption.”
113.17 Browder] Earl Russell Browder (1891–1973), general secretary of the U.S. Communist Party, 1930–45, and its 1936 and 1940 candidate for president.
113.22 Rainbow Room] Restaurant with revolving dance floor at the top of 30 Rockefeller Center.
113.30–31 Kautsky] Karl Johann Kautsky (1854–1938), German Marxist theoretician who denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks for their dictatorial repressions.
114.6 Jack Reed] John Reed (1887–1920), American journalist whose book Ten Days That Shook the World chronicled his witness of the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
115.33–35 the AAA, . . . the hundred White Guards] The Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) was an early New Deal measure regulating farm production; in 1937 President Roosevelt unsuccessfully attempted to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court, which had struck down portions of his New Deal program; Sergey Kirov (1886–1934), a Politburo member and head of the Soviet Communist Party in Leningrad, was assassinated, perhaps at the direction of Stalin; the White Guards, the military part of the White movement that had opposed the Bolshevik Revolution, continued to offer sporadic resistance to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.
117.8 Okhrana] The Russian secret police during the last decades of tsarist rule.
118.13–14 Dos Passos] The American novelist John Dos Passos (1896–1970) and his wife, Katy, were friends of Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy on Cape Cod. As a teenager in the late 1920s, McCarthy was very taken with Dos Passos’s The 42nd Parallel. In 1984, she recalled: “Like a Japanese flower dropped into a glass of water, my political person unfolded, magically, from Dos Passos, though he would have been saddened in later years to hear what his energy, enthusiasm, and sheer unwary talent had brought about.” By the end of his life Dos Passos had embraced conservatism and become a contributor to William F. Buckley’s National Review.
118.37 Consumer’s Union] Founded in 1936, Consumers Union was an advocacy group for American purchasers, and until 2012 the publisher of Consumer Reports.
120.12 the Hegelian thesis] The popular notion of dialectic, in which a thesis and its antithesis are resolved into a synthesis.
120.15 Young and Rubicam] Prominent advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York City.
125.3 Dubinsky? Sidney Hillman?] American labor leaders generally supportive of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. David Dubinsky (1892–1982), president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, 1932–66; Sidney Hillman (1887–1946), president of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Roosevelt’s reputedly telling the Democratic national chairman to “Clear it with Sidney,” when he prepared to drop Henry A. Wallace for Harry Truman as his vice-presidential running mate in 1944, became a byword for Hillman’s influence on the President.
128.12–13 “The coward dies . . . one.”] Ernest Hemingway’s rendition, in A Farewell to Arms (1929), of Julius Caesar, II.ii.32–33.
129.6 that Shef dance] See note 110.20.
134.25 Electra] In Greek mythology, Electra and her brother Orestes together plotted revenge for the murder of their father Agamemnon by their mother Clytemnestra and their stepfather Aegisthus.
135.21–22 R. W. Sears or Frank Woolworth] Richard Warren Sears (1863–1914), American chain store magnate and cofounder of Sears, Roebuck and Co.; Frank Winfield Woolworth (1852–1919), founder of the Woolworth five-and-dime stores.
136.33 Landon . . . Lemke . . . Browder] Presidential candidates in 1936. For Alfred M. Landon, see note 61.10–12. William Frederick Lemke (1878–1950) represented North Dakota in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1933–41, and in 1936 was the presidential candidate of the Union Party, whose major supporters included such extreme right-wing opponents of Roosevelt as Father Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest,” and Gerald L. K. Smith, who later founded the America First Party in 1943. For Earl Russell Browder, see note 113.17.
136.39 Norman Thomas] See note 61.21.
137.20 De Leon] Daniel De Leon (1852–1914), American socialist leader, labor organizer, and newspaper editor.
139.10 Romm and Piatakov and the GPU agent, Holtzman?] All three offered testimony damaging to Trotsky at the Moscow Trials and were subsequently executed.
141.5–6 Revere Beach] Large public beach several miles north of Boston.
141.37–38 the Hotel Bristol . . . landing field at Oslo] Sites of supposed anti-Stalinist conspiracy activities involving Trotsky.
142.23–24 Leibowitz . . . Scottsboro case] Samuel Leibowitz (1893–1978), a leading New York criminal defense attorney, was engaged by International Labor Defense, a Communist legal group, to represent the Scottsboro Boys when they were retried in Decatur, Alabama, in 1933 (see also note 108.22–23).
144.30 subjective correlative] A more personal version—involving, as Jim believes, one’s “own experience and psychology”—of T. S. Eliot’s famous idea of the “objective correlative,” stated in his essay “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919): “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”
145.37 Silone] Ignazio Silone (1900–1978), pseudonym of Secondo Tranquilli, Italian socialist writer and politician who stood in opposition to both Mussolini’s regime and Stalinism. His novels include Bread and Wine (1936).
146.32 silicosis sufferers] A congressional hearing in January and February 1936 found that 476 miners died as a result of silica poisoning (silicosis) at the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel construction project in West Virginia from 1930 to 1935.
146.38 Jumble Shop] Manhattan restaurant on Waverly Place.
150.29–30 his Socony or his Shell castle] Gas stations.
152.18 no Zetkin, no Luxemburg] Clara Zetkin (1857–1933), German Marxist and feminist; Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), Polish-German Marxist revolutionary.
156.19 Destiny] McCarthy’s fictional version of Fortune, Henry Luce’s sumptuous business magazine, for which her friend and Partisan Review colleague Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) worked in the early and mid-1930s.
160.12 pro-Willkie] Wendell Willkie (1892–1944), internationalist-minded business executive, became the dark horse Republican nominee for president in 1940. He lost to the incumbent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then running for his third term.
163.15–16 George S. Kaufman, Helen Hayes] Kaufman, witty American dramatist (1889–1961); Hayes, American actress (1900–1993), often called “The First Lady of the American Theatre,” but pronounced by McCarthy “our worst actress, famous as such in the profession.”
164.28 Myra Hess] English pianist (1890–1965).
166.29 The Last Days of Pompeii, A Cask of Amontillado] The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), historical novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton; “The Cask of Amontillado,” short story (1846) by Edgar Allan Poe.
166.30–31 the giant . . . under Aetna] In Greek mythology, Enceladus, one of the giants who battled the Olympian gods, is supposed to be buried beneath Mt. Etna; the tremors of the volcano were said to be caused by his rolling from side to side.
166.31 Matthew Arnold, Empedocles] The fifth-century B.C.E. Greek philosopher Empedocles, subject of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Empedocles on Etna,” is thought to have killed himself by jumping into the volcano.
166.31–32 And Karl Marx: “weighs like an Alp”] Karl Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852): “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of the living.”
168.22 Vincent Astor’s remodeled tenements] Vincent Astor (1891–1959), philanthropic heir to the Astor fortune, reversed the family tradition of slumlordism and contributed to the growth of affordable housing in New York City.
168.39–40 Maestius lacrimis Simonideis] Catullus’s poem 38, pleading with Cornificius, Roman author of a treatise on rhetoric, for some consoling verses “sadder than the tears of Simonideus” (referring to the Greek poet Simonides).
169.24 Swedish modern and Paul Klee] The clean lines of Swedish furniture enjoyed a reputation for progressive tastefulness in the 1930s; Paul Klee (1879–1940), Swiss-German modernist painter.
170.7–8 Bonwit Teller] High-end New York City department store, located during the 1930s and 1940s at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street.
171.20 Elsie Dinsmore] Upstanding heroine of a children’s book series by Martha Finley (1828–1909), published from 1867 to 1905.
171.25 Lizzie Borden and her ax] Though acquitted by a jury, Lizzie Borden (1869–1927) is widely believed to have murdered her father and stepmother inside their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1892. Over the years the case has inspired a ballet, an opera, and a famous piece of doggerel (“Lizzie Borden took an ax . . .”).
171.29 Cardinal Wiseman] Nicholas Wiseman (1802–1865), first archbishop of Westminster, 1850–65, author of the novel Fabiola (1854), a rejoinder to Charles Kingsley’s anti-Catholic Hypatia (1853).
173.15–17 the Sacred Heart, Veronica’s veil . . . Saint Cecilia] The Sacred Heart, the heart of Jesus, typically depicted with a flame and crown of thorns, and pierced by a lance; Veronica’s veil, an object of special devotion in the Roman Catholic Church. Jesus is thought to have left an image of himself on the veil with which Veronica mopped his face as he carried his cross to Calvary. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, thought to have been martyred in the second or third century C.E., sang to God “in her heart” while the musicians at her wedding played their instruments.
175.18 Know-Nothing pamphlets] The anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic Know-Nothing movement operated as the American Party in elections just prior to the Civil War.
176.15 moiré] Rippled silk.
177.5 Al Smith] Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944), Irish-Catholic governor of New York, 1919–20 and 1923–28, and Democratic candidate for president in 1928. He was defeated by Herbert Hoover.
178.6–7 Diane de Poitiers, Ninon, or Margaret of Navarre] Diane de Poitiers (1499–1566), influential, well-educated mistress of Henry II of France; Anne de Lenclos (1620–1705), known as Ninon de Lenclos, French wit, courtesan, and philosophical writer; Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549), wife of Henry II of Navarre and sister of France’s Francis I, was a poet, playwright, and patron of the arts.
178.9 The Queen’s Necklace] Romantic historical novel (1849–50) by Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), sympathetic to Marie Antoinette and based on a scandal in which she was implicated in a plot to cheat the crown jewelers.
180.17–18 Dead End Kid] Any of several young delinquent characters in American dramatist Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 play Dead End; in subsequent Hollywood movies the characters evolved into comic rascals.
185.7–8 “By their fruits ye shall know them,”] Cf. Matthew 7:20.
186.38 Brill] Abraham Arden Brill (1874–1948), Austrian American psychoanalyst who translated Freud into English and founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
187.4 “Physician, heal thyself.”] Proverb quoted in Luke 4:23.
187.12 the mark of Cain] Cf. Genesis 4:9–15.
187.39–40 the Managerial Revolution, Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford] The “managerial revolution” was the subject of a 1941 book by James Burnham (1905–1987), a Trotskyist turned conservative, who saw managers replacing owners as the crucial players in American corporations. Brooks (1886–1963) was an American literary critic; Mumford (1895–1990), a historian, philosopher, and city planner.
188.23–24 Mesmer and then Cagliostro] Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), theorist of “animal magnetism,” from which hypnosis was claimed to derive; Alessandro Cagliostro was the alias of Giuseppe Balsamo (1743–1795), an adventurous figure of necromancy and the occultist involved in the affair of Marie Antoinette’s diamond necklace (see also note 178.9).
189.38 Sacred Heart] See note 173.15–17.
189.38–39 Saint Sebastian] Late third-century Christian martyr, executed by the Emperor Diocletian; often depicted as tied to a tree and shot with arrows.
192.19 false Florimel] A living waxen figure of the real and beautiful Florimell, created by a witch in Book 3 of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590–96), when the real Florimell refuses the advances of the witch’s son.
199.1–2 O di . . . pietate mea.] The final line of Catullus’s poem 76: O Gods, render this to me in return for my devotion.
204.19–20 Socony Automobile Guide] The Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony) was a precursor and component of today’s ExxonMobil.
204.27–28 the birthplace of Stephen A. Douglas.] Douglas (1813–1861), the “Little Giant” of antebellum American politics, represented Illinois in the House of Representatives, 1843–47, and in the Senate, 1847–61, and was Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in their legendary series of debates during 1858. He was born in Brandon, Vermont.
206.3 Prodigal Son’s brother] Cf. Luke 15:11–32.
208.1–2 the bishop’s candlesticks] An episode involving trust and generosity shown toward the thief Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862), later adapted into a popular stage play by the Scottish dramatist and actor Norman McKinnel (1870–1932).
208.19–20 a veteran of the Spanish war and of Vichy’s prisons] Antifascist sympathies would have made him a supporter of the Spanish Republic against the forces of Francisco Franco (see note 80.25–26) as well as an opponent of the collaborationist Vichy regime following the Nazi conquest of France.
208.31 Oneida, Brook Farm, and the phalansteries] Three nineteenth-century utopian enterprises: the Oneida Community, founded in upstate New York in 1848; Brook Farm, also begun in the 1840s, in Massachusetts, and the subject of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Blithedale Romance (1852); and phalansteries, socialist communes inspired by the ideas of François Marie Charles Fourier (1772–1837).
209.22 Tocqueville] Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), French political philosopher and author of Democracy in America (1835–40).
216.30–31 Lenin in 1917 . . . Petersburg—] Following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917, the German government allowed Lenin to return to Russia from Switzerland through Germany via train so that he might weaken or topple the new Provisional Government that had vowed to continue fighting the Germans in World War I.
217.11 Chinese Chippendale sideboard] The furniture designs of Thomas Chippendale (1718–1799) included Rococo, Gothic, and Chinese elements.
218.9 Carpathian mountains] European mountain range stretching from the Czech Republic through Romania.
218.15 faute de mieux] French: for lack of something better.
220.26–27 Cyrus and Xenophon . . . Othello] Cyrus the Younger, a Persian prince (424?–401 B.C.E.), was accompanied on his military campaigns by Xenophon (c. 431–352 B.C.E.), Greek philosopher and historian; during the first century B.C.E., Diviciacus of the Aedui was Julius Caesar’s Gallic ally in his conquest of Gaul; in Shakespeare’s Othello, the Duke (or Doge) of Venice, unusually free of racial prejudice, admired Othello and gave him the command of Venetian troops fighting the Turks in Cyprus.
222.15 Copernicus] Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) discovered that Earth revolves around the Sun. It had previously been believed that Earth was the center of the universe.
222.24 Versailles, Spain, Munich, Yalta] Four twentieth-century political failures: The Versailles treaty ending World War I failed to prevent the rise of Nazism and World War II; liberal and left-wing international support failed to save the Spanish Republic from its overthrow by Francisco Franco’s fascists; the appeasement of Hitler, in Munich in 1938 by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, did not succeed in stopping his aggression; the Yalta Conference (1945) of the Allied Powers allowed Stalin to exert his domination over what became the Soviet satellite nations in Eastern Europe.
222.35 Kautsky] See note 113.30–31.
224.28–29 redispreads] Ready-to-eat fillings and frostings for baked goods.
225.29 the School of Paris] Loose label for the variety of artists, French and otherwise, who worked in Paris during the early years of the twentieth century.
227.9 Amour propre] Self-respect; a sense of one’s worth.
227.25 “Over There.”] Patriotic song (1917) of World War I, words and music by George M. Cohan (1878–1942).
227.29 malentendu] French: misunderstanding.
227.36 enceinte] Pregnant.
228.21 Keystone comedy] Silent, slapstick films made by Mack Sennett (1880–1960); their most famous elements were “bathing beauties” and the bumbling Keystone Cops.
239.36 in camera] In private; Latin: “in a chamber.”
240.12 Aquinas] St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Scholastic philosopher and Dominican friar whose Summa Theologica (1266–73) set forth the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
241.12 Chassidic simpleton] Valuing sincerity above all, Hasidic Judaism emphasizes how a simple person can achieve holiness more readily than one who is learned but arrogant.
243.1 force majeure] An exceptional circumstance that can void a contract and release persons from its obligations.
244.9–10 emotions of Oedipus on hearing the shepherd’s tale] In Sophocles’s version of the Oedipus myth, Oedipus Rex, a shepherd who was once in the household of the murdered King Laius reveals that it was Oedipus himself who murdered Laius, his father, and then married his mother, Laius’s widow Jocasta.
244.36 From each according to his capacities] “From each according to his capacities, to each according to his needs” was an idea put forward by the French socialist Louis Blanc (1811–1882) and made more widely famous by Karl Marx.
250.25 élan vital] Henri Bergson’s term, used in Creative Evolution (1907), for the “vital force” that drives individual men to succeed and triumph.
254.22 a tone poem] An orchestral work attempting to evoke something nonmusical, like a painting or a written poem.
254.23 Lake minstrels] The Lake Poets of the Romantic era, principally Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey.
255.24 St. Joan] The canonized Joan of Arc (c. 1412–1431), Maid of Orléans, who was instrumental in France’s victory over England in the Hundred Years War.
255.34 Domine non sum dignus] Latin: Lord, I am not worthy, the beginning of the Catholic prayer for receiving the Eucharist.
256.11 Proudhon and Tolstoy] French political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), considered to be the father of anarchism; in What I Believe (1884) and other nonfiction works, Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) presented a social vision based on Christianity, nonviolence, and the end of private property.
260.14 Moses on the mountain of Nebo.] Cf. Deuteronomy 34, when just before his death, Moses is afforded a look at the Promised Land from this mountain in Jordan.
262.8–9 secret rearmament of Palestine] Probably a reference to the smuggling of weapons into Palestine by the Zionist Haganah and Irgun paramilitary organizations, in support of their military efforts against both British rule and Arab resistance to the formation of a Jewish state.
262.9 Henry Ford’s peace ship] In 1915, Ford sponsored a quixotic amateur peace mission to Europe on the Oscar II which he hoped would bring an end to World War I. The voyage failed in its goal of ending the fighting and the participants were subject to derision in the American press.
262.20 Archimedes and the airplane] The “principle of displacement,” discovered by the Greek mathematician and philosopher Archimedes (c. 287–212 B.C.E.), would contribute to the development of manned flight.
262.20 Dunkerque] In 1940, hundreds of thousands of British and French troops, surrounded by German forces, were evacuated from the French port of Dunkirk by all available boats that could come across the Channel from England.
264.13 Marshall Plan figures] American-financed recovery initiative named for George Marshall (1880–1959), U.S. secretary of state under President Truman, 1947–49. The plan helped to revive the economies of Western European nations following World War II and thus reduce their vulnerability to communism.
264.23 World Federalists] Adherents of the World Federalist Movement (WFM), founded in 1947 and dedicated to a stronger amalgamation of the world’s nations than that provided by the recently formed United Nations.
266.28 an Arrow Collar ad] Early twentieth-century advertisements featuring the Arrow Collar Man, wearer of stylish shirts and collars manufactured by Cluett Peabody & Company. The ads were beautifully illustrated by the artist J. C. Leyendecker (1874–1951).
269.17–18 Whistler’s Nocturne] Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket, oil painting (c. 1875) by American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903).
270.8 Carpathians] See note 218.9.
271.2 Fontainebleau] French commune outside Paris, most famous for the enormous château used as a residence by French monarchs from the twelfth through nineteenth centuries.
271.4 Lapérouse] Parisian restaurant established in 1766 on the Quai des Grands Augustins (6th arrondisement), which held three Michelin stars from 1933 to 1968.
277.3 Rhadamanthine] Exemplifying rigorous justice, after Rhadamanthus, mythological son of Zeus and Europa and one of the judges of the dead in the underworld, known for being especially inflexible in judgment.
279.25–26 English man of letters . . . between them] Lytton Strachey (1880–1932), homosexual biographer and member of the Bloomsbury set, is credited with a version of this remark in response to a military examiner’s question about how, as a pacifist during World War I, Strachey would deal with the attempted rape of his sister by a German soldier.
287.21 Brueghelesque] Adjective derived from the crowded, bustling genre paintings of both Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) and Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1638).
291.1 Atque inter silvas academi quaerere verum] From Horace’s Epistles, II.ii.45: “And seek for truth in the groves of academe.”
295.17–18 Joyce . . . Trieste] From 1905 to 1915, while he was writing Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (1882–1941) lived in Trieste, then part of Austria-Hungary; for part of that time he taught at the Berlitz School.
295.21–22 an ash-plant stick . . . Dedalus] In James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Stephen Dedalus carries an ashplant, or walking stick, which he uses as “casque and sword” and for dancing, drumming, and striking a chandelier.
295.22 Science and Society] Quarterly magazine, published since 1936, featuring Marxist scholarship.
296.6 Bennington-style] Located in Vermont, Bennington College, a women’s school until 1969, was known for its progressive outlook and bohemian manners.
296.24 “Bis, bis!”] Old Latin for “Again! Again!” or “Encore!”
296.25 consonantia] Latin: harmony or agreement.
296.33 Alexander Meiklejohn] Leading educational reformer; a dean of Brown University and president of Amherst College, Meiklejohn (1872–1964) was a strong proponent of the First Amendment and served on the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union.
298.37–38 the Wallace campaign] In 1948, as the candidate of the Progressive Party, former vice president Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965) led a left-wing challenge to President Harry S. Truman. His campaign was heavily influenced by Communists and fellow travelers, and he finished fourth in the presidential race, behind Truman; Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey; and Strom Thurmond, the segregationist candidate of the States’ Rights Democratic Party (“Dixiecrats”).
299.15–17 Dr. Fuchs . . . Mr. Hiss . . . Mr. Greenglass . . . Senator McCarthy] Klaus Fuchs (1911–1988), a physicist on the Manhattan Project and at Los Alamos convicted of giving atomic secrets to the USSR. Alger Hiss (1904–1996), convicted of perjury in 1950, is now generally believed to have been a Soviet spy, though at the height of the Cold War he was a sympathetic figure to many American liberals, who often championed his innocence and believed that he had been hounded in the House of Representatives investigation propelled by Congressman Richard Nixon. David Greenglass (1922–2014) participated in the Manhattan Project and was convicted of stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union. His testimony against his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, helped lead to her execution. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1908–1957) pursued Communists in American government in a series of investigations that eventually, because of his reckless tactics and disregard for civil liberties, led to his censure by the Senate in 1954.
299.25 the Stockholm Peace Petition] The Stockholm Appeal, a call for banning all nuclear weapons, was issued in 1950 by the World Peace Council, an international body that conformed entirely to the dictates of the Soviet Communist Party.
300.9 Swedish glögg and pfeffernuesse] A spicy, hot wine punch; small, spicy cookies.
301.7 A.A.U.P. Grievance Committee] A body within the American Association of University Professors that deals with faculty complaints.
301.33 the law of the talion] An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; see Exodus 21:24 and Matthew 5:38.
304.22 Windy MacPherson] Windy McPherson’s Son (1916), novel by Sherwood Anderson.
308.19–20 Baal-worshipers] Phoenicians who, according to the Hebrew Bible, venerated the fertility god of that name.
310.40 Whitehead] Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), English philosopher and co-author, with Bertrand Russell, of Principia Mathematica (1910–13).
311.1 Vico’s cyclical theory] The cyclical theory of history propounded by the Italian political philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), which influenced James Joyce in the writing of Finnegans Wake.
311.2 the veto] In Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion 1900–2000, Eugene Thomas Long discusses “a breakdown of the close relationship between philosophy and theology that had characterized much western thinking in the early part of the century.” He mentions how H. J. Paton, in his 1949–50 Gifford Lectures, “challenges . . . a theological and a philosophical veto of all natural knowledge of God. The theological veto is associated in particular with Karl Barth, and the so-called positivists of revelation, and the philosophical veto is associated in particular with A. J. Ayer and the logical positivists.”
311.18 orgones?] The energetic life forces imagined by the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957).
313.40 Nabs] Informal name for snack cracker sandwiches, generally containing cheese or peanut butter, manufactured by Nabisco and other companies.
316.4 “ ‘Springes to catch woodcocks’ ”] In Hamlet, I.iii.115, Polonius uses the phrase to indicate how he views Hamlet’s attempt to trap his daughter, Ophelia.
317.31–32 the Cadet party in the Duma] The liberal Constitutional Democratic Party, which was active in the Russian legislative assembly (Duma) in the decade before the Bolshevik Revolution; its members were called Kadets.
317.32–33 Cocteau and Diaghileff] Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), French writer and film director; Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929), founder of the Ballets Russes in 1909.
318.25 narodnika] Narodniks, members of Russian populist movement founded by aristocrats and intellectuals in the 1860s.
318.37 Gestalt] School of German psychological thought that emphasized the “unified wholes” constructed by the mind.
318.38 Four Quartets boy] A devotee, presumably, of T. S. Eliot’s volume of philosophical and religious poetry published in 1943.
319.8 Kropotkin] Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), Russian anarchist philosopher.
319.24 Russian kïssel] A jellied fruit dessert.
330.15 bornée] French: restricted or narrow-minded.
332.8 Yalta period] At the February 1945 Yalta Conference, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin planned the postwar configuration of Central and Eastern Europe.
332.12 Daily Worker] Chief publication of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) from 1924 until 1958. The daily paper was later replaced by more occasional publications.
332.26–27 the Bridges Defense Committee, . . . the Trenton Six] Harry Bridges (1901–1990), head of the International Longshoremen’s Association, was prosecuted for lying about his membership in the Communist Party; the Hollywood Ten were a group of screenwriters and directors cited for contempt of Congress in 1947 after they refused to answer questions about their Communist affiliations; the Trenton Six were African American defendants sentenced to death in 1948 by an all-white jury for the murder of a white New Jersey shopkeeper.
332.38–39 a Budenz or a Miss Bentley] Louis Budenz (1891–1972), a former editor of the Daily Worker, and Elizabeth Bentley (1908–1963), a key member of a Soviet espionage network, both broke with the American Communist Party in 1945 and became paid informants for the FBI and friendly witnesses before Cold War–era congressional committees investigating Communist activity in America. Bentley was, along with McCarthy, one of the most famous Vassar graduates of her generation.
333.2 Ite missa est] Latin words announcing the conclusion of the Catholic Mass: “Go, you are sent forth.”
335.8–9 Bennington . . . St. John’s] For Bennington, see note 296.6. Students at St. John’s College, in Annapolis, Maryland, focus on the “Great Books” of Western culture.
335.13 Aquinas and Dewey] For Thomas Aquinas, see note 240.12. He is here made the exemplar of traditional, faith-based education, in contrast to the progressive approach favored by the American philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952).
335.15 Antioch . . . Black Mountain] Progressive colleges in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Black Mountain, North Carolina; the latter institution operated from 1933 to 1957 and is lastingly famous for the school of experimental poets associated with it.
340.12–13 dragon’s teeth sown in the Theban meadow.] Cadmus, the mythological king of Thebes, is supposed to have planted the teeth of a dragon he’d slain, from which grew a race of warriors.
340.14 Cadmean alphabet] The Phoenician alphabet, thought to have been introduced to Greece by the legendary figure Cadmus in about 2000 B.C.E.
341.20 Mercersburg controversy] Mid-nineteenth-century dispute over Calvinist theology and the nature of the Eucharist among Protestants of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster synod.
341.22–23 Geneva and Heidelberg, . . . Augsburg] Factional centers during the Protestant Reformation and the battles between Calvinism and Lutheranism.
342.8 nihil humani a me alienum] Latin: “Nothing human is alien to me,” from Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormenter) by Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer, known as Terence (c. 186–c. 159 B.C.E.).
343.2 Dewey, Pestalozzi, and Montessori] Three educational reformers: the American John Dewey (1859–1952), the Swiss Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), and the Italian Maria Montessori (1870–1952).
346.29 Maccabeean movement] Successful second-century B.C.E. Jewish rebellion against the Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire, of which Judea was at that time a province.
347.13 Stendhal and Benjamin Constant] Stendhal, pseudonym of French novelist Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842), author of The Red and the Black (1830); Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (1767–1830), author of the novel Adolphe (1816), was a French political philosopher born in Switzerland and descended from French Huguenots.
347.15 Manon] L’Histoire de Manon Lescaut (History of Manon Lescaut, 1731), novel by French author Abbé Prévost (1697–1763) and the basis for operas by Puccini and Massenet.
347.24–25 Flowering Judas] The first short-story collection (1930) published by Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980).
350.7 lotos-land] Greek mythological island whose inhabitants eat the tranquilizing lotus plant; visited by Odysseus and his men in Book IX of The Odyssey.
352.3 bierstube, lieder] German beer hall; German art songs from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
352.32 Amiel] Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881), Swiss poet, philosopher, and diarist.
352.37 Maurice Dekobra] Pseudonym of the French mystery writer Maurice Tessier (1885–1973).
354.21 M. de Vogüé] Either Charles-Jean Melchior de Vogüé (1829–1916), French diplomat and archaeologist, or his nephew Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé, author of The Russian Novel (1886).
361.20 eidos] The cultural content and expression of a particular group.
361.21 Lazarus to their Dives] Parable in Luke 16 about the beggar (Lazarus) and the rich man (Dives).
364.30 Ajaccio] Capital of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica.
365.26 Maurice Baring’s] Maurice Baring (1874–1945), British novelist, dramatist, poet, and travel writer.
367.1 Hobbesian Miranda] Self-interest was the prime human motivator for the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679); in The Tempest, V.i.183–84, Miranda cries “O brave new world / That has such people in’t!”
370.17 a New Woman] An emerging feminist; term first used by Sarah Grand in the North American Review in 1894.
370.18 the femme savante school] A learned woman; the term has had a satirical aspect ever since Molière used it in the title of his 1672 comedy Les Femmes Savantes.
370.27 English Ovals] An English oval-shaped cigarette that had a sophisticated aura, produced by Philip Morris beginning in 1854.
371.28 Palladian façade] The classically regular appearance of an exterior created by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580).
373.26 drunken Alcibiades and simple Agathon] Alcibiades (c. 450–404 B.C.E.), Athenian military hero and statesman who drunkenly orates about Socrates in Plato’s Symposium (c. 385–370 B.C.E.); the occasion is an entertainment given by the Athenian dramatist Agathon (c. 448–c. 400 B.C.E.).
377.30–31 Dumas fils] Alexandre Dumas (1824–1895), French novelist and playwright; author of La Dame aux Camélias (Camille, 1848).
379.30 Lydgate] John Lydgate (c. 1370–c. 1450), prolific English poet and Benedictine monk, whose works include The Fall of Princes (1430–38).
381.10 Rorschach] Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922), Swiss psychoanalyst who developed the famous inkblot personality test.
381.14 the Kenyon] The Kenyon Review, published at Kenyon College in Ohio and edited from 1939 to 1959 by New Critic and poet John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974).
381.24 Petrus Borel] Joseph-Pierre Borel, known as Petrus Borel, French Romantic poète maudit (1809–1859).
382.18 Leopardi] Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837); Italian philosopher and poet.
383.10 Schweikism] The thwarting of authority and the shirking of duty exemplified by the title character in the satirical novel The Good Soldier Schweik (1921–23, unfinished) by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923).
384.10 Maintenon] Françoise d’Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon (1635–1719), the secret second wife of Louis XIV of France, accused by her enemies of having too great an influence on the king.
388.5 FEPC] Fair Employment Practices Committee, established in 1941 to enforce President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 banning discrimination by race and religion in employment in defense industries doing business with the U.S. government. Funding for the committee ended in 1946, and attempts to create a permanent FEPC were blocked by southern Democrats in Congress in 1949.
388.20 la boxe] French: boxing.
395.2 Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave] From Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem Marmion (1513), Canto VI, XVII.
396.19–20 all around Robin Hood’s barn] All the land around Sherwood Forest; an idiom for “the long way around” or “all over the place.”
396.21 a Dutch uncle] A blunt giver of sometimes unwelcome advice.
399.27 Diotima] The likely fictional female philosopher of nonsexual love in Plato’s Symposium (c. 385–370 B.C.E.) and the source for Socrates’s thinking on the subject.
401.37 l’acte gratuit] French: an unmotivated, impulsive action. Phrase coined by André Gide in Les Caves du Vatican (1914).
401.40 canaille] French: the rabble or the mob.
402.16 précieuse] French: an affected and pretentious woman.
402.25 faute de mieux] French: for want of something better.
403.17–18 Sulla or Diocletian] Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (138–78 B.C.E.), brutal Roman general and dictator; Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, known as Diocletian (245–313 C.E.), Roman emperor, 284–305, known both for his reforms and for terrible persecutions of Christians.
403.26 Niebuhr and Barth] Protestant theologians Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) and Karl Barth (1886–1968).
404.4–5 Leibnitzian worlds] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), German rationalist philosopher, considered to be the originator of symbolic logic, believed that the divinely ordained universe was “the best of all possible worlds.”
404.24–25 the doors slamming in the Doll’s House.] Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House (1879), at the end of which its heroine, Nora, walks out on her husband and her children.
405.7 coup de foudre] Literally, a thunderbolt; used figuratively to mean love at first sight.
410.13 amici curiae] Friends of the court, not a party to the litigation at hand but allowed to offer advice or information.
410.18 Wanamaker’s] Philadelphia’s first department store, with later branches in New York, London, and Paris.
410.24 William Penn and the Indians] Penn (1644–1718), the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, concluded treaties and maintained amicable relations with the state’s American Indians.
411.4 grand right and left] Square dance move.
414.11 the Declaration] The American Declaration of Independence (1776) asserts that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness] it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.”
414.39 the nigger in the woodpile.] Familiar nineteenth-century American phrase, now obviously objectionable, indicating an important hidden fact.
415.8 the Book] Finnegans Wake (1939).
420.37 Blue Cross] Provider of health insurance and hospital care founded in 1929.
423.36–37 Noah in his nakedness and commit the sin of Ham] In Genesis 9, Noah is seen drunk and naked in his tent by his son Ham, who then reports the occurrence to his brothers.
425.22–24 “ ‘Oh, what care I . . . new-wedded lord?’ ”] From the traditional Scottish ballad “The Raggle Taggle Gypsies.”
426.32 bien élevé] French: well-bred, i.e., well-mannered.
426.40 Intourist guide] An assigned guide and ideological minder from the official Soviet tourist agency, who would make sure that travelers to the Soviet Union saw only what the government wished them to see.
427.6 pourri] French: decayed; rotten.
427.7–8 stink, like the estimable Father Zossima] The devout dying prelate in Book Six of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880) whose followers expect that a miracle will occur upon his death; instead his body decomposes rapidly, which some of the monks interpret as proof that Zossima was a false teacher.
430.9 “Mulligan’s Ball.”] “The Famous Mulligan Ball,” humorous song by Frank L. Stanton (1857–1927), poet and newspaper columnist from the American South.
430.12 Nora Joyce] Nora Barnacle Joyce (1884–1951), the put-upon wife of James Joyce, who shared his long self-exile on the European continent. Their daughter, Lucia (1907–1982), was diagnosed in 1936 with schizophrenia.
431.13 “Sans doute,”] French: Without a doubt.
432.34–35 femme du monde . . . femme de trente ans in the style of Maupassant.”] French: woman of the world; woman of thirty years. La Femme de Trente Ans (1829–42) by Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), not Maupassant, concerns the sexually unhappy marriage of its protagonist, Julie, who is thirty when she turns to adultery to escape her marriage; thirty was seen as the age when a woman’s vital forces were at their peak.
433.1–2 one of the veils of Salome.] Salome’s seductive dance before Herod Antipas is mentioned or depicted, with or without veils, in the book of Matthew, a story by Gustave Flaubert, a play by Oscar Wilde, and an opera by Richard Strauss.
433.30 Périgord] Area of southwestern France well-known for foie gras.
438.21 La Tour] Georges de La Tour (1593–1652), French religious painter famous for his beautiful depictions of candlelight.
441.19–20 A Portrait of the Artist—] James Joyce’s first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
443.12–13 “Jésus-Christ, c’était un fou qui se croyait Jésus-Christ.”] Proverbial phrase: Jesus Christ, it was a madman who believed Jesus Christ.
443.16–17 the dark night of the soul.] Condition described in poem by Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591), Spanish mystic and saint.
443.19 Thomas à Kempises] Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471), German-born Dutch priest, author of the devotional book The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418–27).
443.36 Noli me tangere.] “Touch me not” or “Don’t interfere with me.” In John 20:17, the resurrected Jesus tells Mary Magdalene: “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.”
448.31 Warren Austin] Warren Robinson Austin (1877–1962), Republican senator from Vermont (1931–46) and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1947–53).
448.32 creator of Li’l Abner] Cartoonist Al Capp, born Alfred Gerald Caplin (1909–1979), drew “Li’l Abner,” a satirical comic strip set in the southern town of Dogpatch, from the 1930s through much of the 1970s. Notably liberal during the time of McCarthy’s novel, Capp later moved to the political right.
448.34 Amiel] See note 352.32.
449.2 Pinkerton men] Employees of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the private security company founded in the 1850s by Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884).
449.31 Saroyan] William Saroyan (1908–1981), Armenian American memoirist, fiction writer, and playwright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940 for The Time of Your Life. In her Theatre Chronicles, McCarthy writes: “Saroyan is genuine, Saroyan is not mechanical, Saroyan is the real thing; he tells you this over and over again in the prefaces to his two plays. It is true. If you compare him with his contemporaries, Odets and Steinbeck, the purity of his work is blinding. Puerile and arrogant and sentimental as he may be, he is never cheap.”
449.32 Leavis and the Cambridge school] F. R. Leavis (1895–1978), severe, influential British literary critic at the University of Cambridge; author of New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) and The Great Tradition (1948).
450.5 réclames] French: publicity-attracting.
450.19 Verlaine and Rimbaud.] French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) went to prison for shooting and wounding Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), the fiercely rebellious poet with whom he had a love affair in the 1870s.
452.1 Morris Hirshfield’s women] Morris Hirshfield (1872–1946), Polish-born American artist who began painting in his sixties after life as a factory worker. His paintings frequently featured women with long, lush tresses.
452.7 Furioso] Prestigious literary magazine cofounded at Yale in the late 1930s by undergraduates Reed Whittemore (1919–2012) and James Jesus Angleton (1917–1987), later a legendary CIA spy, whose sister Carmen was a close friend of McCarthy’s from the mid-1940s on.
452.15 Grandma Moses] Nickname of Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961), popular American primitive painter.
452.16 Partisan Review] Intellectual magazine founded in the 1930s and edited for many years by Philip Rahv and William Phillips. Home for many years to McCarthy’s “Theater Chronicle” as well as her essays and stories.
452.20 poet-Pygmalion . . . Galatea] Galatea is the name given since the eighteenth century to the ivory statue that came to life after being carved by Pygmalion, the Cypriot sculptor in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 C.E.), who fell in love with it.
455.2 au pied de la lettre] French: literally.
455.16 the “thirteenth floor,” “Gospodin Mulcahy,” and so on.] Office and residential buildings often superstitiously refused to designate a thirteenth floor, skipping in their numeration from the twelfth to the fourteenth; “Gospodin” is a Russian honorific on the order of “Sir.”
455.38 skunk-cabbages] Eastern North American plant that thrives in wetlands and has a bad smell.
456.35–36 Dr. Williams, W. H. Auden, Cummings, Yvor Winters] William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), W. H. Auden (1907–1973), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), and Yvor Winters (1900–1968) were all prominent poets of the period.
456.38 Mr. Robert Hillyer] American poet (1895–1961) who strenuously criticized the award of the Bollingen Prize to Ezra Pound in 1949.
457.33 Apollinaire] Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), avant-garde French poet and critic who influenced the development of both Cubism and Surrealism.
460.25 Lycidas] Milton’s 1637 elegy for his friend Edward King.
460.27 Ransom . . . Tate] For John Crowe Ransom, see note 381.14. Allen Tate (1899–1979), poet and critic associated with both the New Critics and, along with Ransom, the Southern Fugitive school of poets.
460.35 Epigones] The sons of the Argive heroes of the first Theban War, who are the subjects of Aeschylus’s play (see note 460.38).
460.37 Epicycloids] Curves traced on the circumference of a circle by rolling it on the outside of a second circle.
460.38 Adrastus] Greek mythological king of Argos, one of the “Seven Against Thebes” in Aeschylus’s play of that name (467 B.C.E.).
462.10 Roman holiday] A sadistic public exhibition in which the spectators are delighted by witnessing the suffering and humiliation of others.
462.25–26 the Skull and Bones society] See note 108.21.
466.2–3 the followers of Ulysses . . . Circe’s spell.] Cf. Book X of The Odyssey, in which Ulysses’ men are turned into swine on the island of Aeaea.
466.32 “Inouï!”] French: unheard of; unbelievable.
472.34 dégagé] French: at ease; unconcerned.
473.30 bed of nights] Bed at night, archaic.
477.18 Cecil Beaton] British photographer (1904–1980) as well as costume and stage designer. His author portrait of McCarthy appeared on the dust jacket of A Charmed Life.
478.18 the Christian Brothers’] Brand name of ports, sherries, and brandy produced by Heaven Hill Distilleries in Kentucky.
478.20 the Pullman company] American manufacturer and operator of railroad sleeping cars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
480.24 the Mantuan] An epithet for Virgil, born near the northern Italian city of Mantua in 70 B.C.E.
480.35–36 Hermann Broch and The Death of Virgil.] Broch (1886–1951) was an Austrian writer whose novel appeared in 1945.
481.9–11 the Prince-of-Peace eclogue . . . Dido’s speech] The fourth of Virgil’s ten Eclogues, written about 40 B.C.E., seems to foretell the coming of Christ; in Book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid, Dido, wretched with passion for the departing Aeneas, gives an emotional speech before killing herself.
481.26 Robespierre] Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), vengefully radical figure of the French Revolution.
481.30 Calliope] In Greek mythology, the muse of epic poetry and eloquence.
482.27–28 Empson . . . pastoral mode.] William Empson (1906–1984), an English literary critic whose works include Some Versions of Pastoral (1935).
483.9 Janeite] Fervent fan and advocate of the works of Jane Austen.
483.31 Lucretius] Roman philosopher and poet (c. 99–55 B.C.E.); author of De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things).
484.28–29 Democritus and the atom] Greek philosopher (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.E.) who posited that matter was made up of a variety of particles too small to be seen.
486.30 the Imagist movement] Early twentieth-century poetic movement that emphasized precision of language and description over abstract pronouncement and emotional rhetoric, famously exemplified in Ezra Pound’s brief poem “In a Station of the Metro.”
487.6 The Outcasts of Poker Flat] American short story published in 1869 by Bret Harte (1836–1902) about the misadventures of a group of moral reprobates exiled from a California town.
488.31–32 the old John Reed Club] Network of clubs for Marxist intellectuals operating from 1929 to 1935 and controlled by the U.S. Communist Party from 1930, named for John Reed (see note 114.6). The original Partisan Review, founded in 1934, came out of the John Reed Club of New York. The publication was reconstituted as an anti-Stalinist journal in 1937, prior to McCarthy’s long association with it.
488.32 Party name] During the 1930s, protective aliases were frequently used by members of the American Communist Party.
490.2 frays with the Bridges union] See note 332.26–27.
490.3 the strike at Ohrbach’s] Workers struck at the Klein’s and Ohrbach’s department stores in New York’s Union Square in late 1934 and early 1935, using disruptive tactics that included the release of white mice inside one of the stores and having children enter another with balloons saying “Don’t Buy At Ohrbach’s!” McCarthy’s friend, novelist James T. Farrell, was among those who participated in a “Writers’ Day” of picketing.
491.22–23 north-northwest . . . handsaw] In Hamlet, II.ii.378–79, the prince tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
492.2 A Tygre’s Heart Wrapt in a Player’s Hyde] Famous put-down of the young William Shakespeare as an “upstart crow” by playwright Robert Greene (1558–1592).
492.9 the Mermaid Tavern] London tavern not far from St. Paul’s Cathedral where Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and other seventeenth-century literary men—including, some say, Shakespeare—met on the first Friday of the month.
492.35 John Brown’s Body] Blank-verse epic (1928) about the American abolitionist John Brown by the poet Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943).
493.35 Mephistopheles] Devil of German legend who figures in the temptation of Faust, most famously in Christopher Marlowe’s 1604 play Doctor Faustus.
495.21–23 hock and soda-water, . . . Byron] “Hock” is German white wine; “hock and soda-water” is the cure for a hangover that Byron recommends in the second canto of Don Juan (1821).
495.24 locus classicus] Passage routinely cited in order to explain whatever point is at issue.
503.21 Mount Nebo] See note 260.14.
505.31 A.A.U.P.] See note 301.7.
507.4–5 ‘A Cretan says, all Cretans are liars.’] The “liar paradox” attributed to Epimenides of Knossos, sixth century B.C.E.
511.33–34 appealing for clemency . . . Portia] The well-known speech on “the quality of mercy” in The Merchant of Venice, IV.i.184–205.
513.24–25 the field of Mars] In palmistry, the center of the palm.
515.17 The Wild Duck] Ibsen’s drama of wayward idealism, first performed in 1885.
519.19 W.C.T.U.] The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in Ohio in 1874.
520.15 the seacoast of Bohemia] The seacoast ascribed to landlocked Bohemia in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, a geographical impossibility that Ben Jonson made fun of in 1619 in conversations recorded by William Drummond. McCarthy, who played Leontes in a Vassar production of The Winter’s Tale, is referring to New Leeds’s artistic or “bohemian” qualities.
536.18 Moselle bottles] Mostly white wines made along the Moselle River in Germany.
537.37 the Modern Library Zarathustra] Popular American edition of Nietzsche’s philosophical novel, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–91).
538.26 Friedrich Barbarossa] Frederick I (c. 1123–1190), Holy Roman Emperor from 1152 to 1190.
551.4 Piranesi or Callot] Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), Italian artist and architect, and Jacques Callot (c. 1592–1635), French painter.
554.8 a Metropolitan] A member of the Metropolitan Club, private social club in New York City founded in 1891 by J. P. Morgan.
555.16–17 Whitehead and Russell and Sullivan] For Whitehead, see note 310.40. English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949), American psychiatrist known for his theory of interpersonal relationships.
555.24 that notion in Dostoevski] In Notes from Underground (1864), Dostoevsky, skeptical of the sufficiency of scientific explanations, wrote, “The formula ‘two plus two equals five’ is not without its attractions.”
555.39 Kierkegaard] Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Danish theologian and philosopher who declared that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
558.6–7 Dali, . . . Max Ernst, . . . Reginald Marsh] Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (1904–1989); Max Ernst, German Dadaist painter (1891–1976); and Reginald Marsh, American social realist painter (1898–1954).
558.8–9 Braque and Juan Gris and Mondrian] French Cubist painter Georges Braque (1882–1963); Juan Gris, pseudonym of Spanish Cubist painter and sculptor José V. González (1887–1927); and Dutch “neoplastic” painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944).
558.25 Blake] William Blake (1757–1827), visionary English poet and painter.
558.28–29 ‘There’s my last Duchess . . . alive.’] Slight variant of the first line of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue, “My Last Duchess” (1842).
559.3 Salon of the Refusés] Art exhibition in Paris in 1863, ordered to be held by Napoleon III after considerable public agitation, so that works rejected by the official Paris Salon, including Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, might be displayed.
559.4 Whistler? Ruskin] American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) sued English art and cultural critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) for slander in 1878 for Ruskin’s criticisms of Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (c. 1875); he won the suit and was awarded one farthing in damages.
559.18 that fellow who was a doctor in New Jersey.] William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), New Jersey medical doctor whose epic poem Paterson (1946–58) took up five volumes.
564.6 Bérénice] French playwright Jean Racine’s 1670 tragedy.
568.8 chevalier à la rose] French: knight of the rose; also the youthful lover in Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier (1911).
571.40 Bernhardt] The actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) wrote and starred in The Confession in 1888; it received only one performance.
576.7–8 Abraham entertaining the angels, unawares.] In Genesis 18:2, Abraham is visited by three men he doesn’t know to be angels. And Hebrews 13:2 warns: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
577.10 Goering] Hermann Göring (1893–1946), the heavy-set Nazi leader and war criminal, commanded the German air force, 1935–45, and was Hitler’s designated successor from December 1934 until April 1945.
579.5 Roundhead] Nickname for parliamentary antagonists of King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–51), derived from the close Puritan haircut.
579.9 Vincent de Paul] French Catholic priest and later saint (1581–1660) known for his devotion to the poor.
582.13 weighed . . . and found wanting.] Cf. Daniel 5:27.
583.30 Bluebeard] Figure of French folklore; a serial murderer of his own wives.
585.19–20 Pollock or DeKooning] Abstract Expressionist painters Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) and Willem de Kooning (1904–1997).
596.5 a posse rather than an esse] Latin: a possibility rather than an actuality.
601.33–34 ‘He hath a daily beauty . . . ugly.’] Iago’s comment on Cassio, Othello, V.i.19–20.
603.13 lily cups] Reusable menstrual device that can be employed instead of a tampon.
603.38–39 ‘Let your light so shine . . . men.’] Matthew 5:16.
606.20 Behold the handmaiden of the Lord—] Mary’s words to the angel Gabriel, accepting her role in the Incarnation of Christ (Luke 1:38).
607.7 S.P.C.C.] Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
609.28 the rich young man in the Bible] In Mark 10:17–31, Jesus tells a wealthy young man: “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.” In the same episode he tells his disciples: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
610.5 Bosch] Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516), Dutch painter famous for teeming and often horrific scenes.
616.16 a bottle of Imperial] Probably a bottle of Imperial American Whiskey, a cheap whiskey produced in Bardstown, Kentucky.
624.7 Noli me tangere.] See note 443.36.
625.30 Sanka] Decaffeinated instant coffee, available in the U.S. since about 1910.
634.34–35 Masefield’s English translation] The English poet John Masefield (1878–1967) published translations of Racine’s Esther and Bérénice in 1922.
641.6–7 “Never apologize, never explain,”] One variation of an adage sometimes credited to Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893), Oxford classical scholar and translator.
642.5 that awful creature in Madame Bovary.] The moneylender Lheureux, who ruins Charles and Emma Bovary in Flaubert’s 1856 novel.
643.2–3 “Titus reginam Beronicen, . . . invitus invitam.”] In his preface to Bérénice, Racine quotes Suetonius: “Titus, who loved Berenice passionately, and who even, as was believed, had promised to marry her, sent her away from Rome, against his will and against hers, in the first days of his reign.” (See also note 564.6.)
644.18 locus classicus] See note 495.24.
644.30 Corneille] Pierre Corneille (1606–1684), French tragic dramatist and author of Le Cid (c. 1636). See also note 653.1.
646.24 A ficelle.] Something slight and inconsequential; literally, a piece of string.
646.24–25 ‘Marion pleure, . . . marie,’] The “Marion” lyric—which was not coined by Voltaire—translates as “Marion wept, Marion cried, Marion wanted to be a bride.” From an old French song; applied to Racine’s Bérénice by French writer Claude Chapelle (1626–1686), a friend of Racine’s.
647.10 détestaient les rois.] French: hated the kings.
648.10–13 “Oui, madame, et je dois . . . l’univers.”] From Act V, Scene 6:
Yes, Madam, and I have even less to say.
I am ready for your sake to throw away the empire,
Follow you and go, so happy with my chains,
And sigh with you at the end of the universe.
648.14 the Duke of Windsor] The title of Edward VIII (1894–1972) following his abdication of the British throne, in 1936, in order to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson.
648.23–26 “Vous même rougiriez . . . l’amour.”] From Act V, Scene 6:
You would yourself blush at my loose conduct
You would regret to have walking in your train,
An unworthy emperor, without empire, without power,
Base spectacle to men of the weakness of love.
650.6–7 that French schoolmaster . . . Alsace-Lorraine.] “Monsieur Hamel,” the protagonist of a short story, “The Last Class,” by Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897). Set in 1872 after the Germans have conquered Alsace-Lorraine, the story shows a schoolmaster who must stop teaching because henceforth all instruction in the region will have to be conducted in German.
651.16–20 “Mais voulez-vous . . . l’outrage.”] From Act IV, Scene 2:
But do you want to be seen in such extreme disorder?
Madame, resign yourself and get in control:
Let me fix these slipped veils,
And these loose hairs that hide your eyes;
Let me repair the outrage of your tears.
651.25 “Laisse, laisse, . . . ouvrage.”] From Act IV, Scene 2:
Let it be, Let it be, [Phénice], he’ll see his work.
651.30–33 “Sur Titus et sur moi, . . . l’univers.”] From Act V, Scene 7:
Set your course on Titus and on me.
I love him, I flee it; Titus loves me; it leaves me.
Bear away from me your sighs and your chains.
Farewell. The three of us serve as an example to the world.
652.12–13 the influence of Port Royal on Racine] Racine attended the Jansenist religious school Petites écoles de Port-Royal, which operated from 1637 to 1660 and included among its teachers Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). See also note 564.6.
652.19–20 Jansenist] The doctrines of Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), whose severe Catholic theology, judged to be heretical, posited a form of predestination that discounted the role of free will and good works in obtaining salvation.
652.36 He wrote a Bérénice too] Corneille’s Tite et Bérénice (1670) premiered in Paris eight days after Racine’s Bérénice, which would turn out to be more popular. The rivalry between the two playwrights was sharp.
653.1 Cinna or the Cid.] Tragedies by Corneille first performed, respectively, in 1643 and 1637.
653.1–2 ‘Je suis maître . . . l’être.’] From Cinna, V.iii.34–35: “I am master of myself, as of the universe. I am, and I wish to be so.”
653.9–10 ‘Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée,’] From Racine’s Phèdre, I, Scene 3.iii.161: “Venus fixed completely on her prey.”
657.35–36 ‘I have done the state some service and they know’t.’] Part of Othello’s speech, delivered just before he stabs himself, in V.ii.339.
658.33 Jones’s interpretation] A Freudian analysis of Hamlet, developed over decades by the British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones (1879–1958) and published fully in Hamlet and Oedipus (1949).
659.9–10 as Kant saw] In The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Kant asks: “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?”
660.18 Antigone] Sophocles’s tragedy (c. 440 B.C.E.) about Antigone’s determination to bury her brother, the rebel Polyneices, against the dictates of Creon, the king of Thebes.
660.20–21 Saint Joan or Don Juan in Hell] Plays by George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first performed in 1923 and 1915. Don Juan in Hell was originally Act III of Man and Superman (1905).
671.6–7 invitus, invitam] Latin: against his will; against her will. See also note 643.2–3.
679.28–29 ‘Twenty-one apparitions . . . coathanger.’] In his poem “The Apparitions” (1938), William Butler Yeats actually mentions fifteen apparitions, not twenty-one.
687.31 S.P.C.C.] See note 607.7.
713.1–2 Vronsky and Anna] Adulterous lovers in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1875–77).
713.2–3 “Vil spectacle . . . l’amour.”] In Racine’s Bérénice, Act V, Scene 6, Titus speaks to Berenice of the “Base spectacle to men of all love’s weakness.”
719.34–35 ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’] Common misquotation of Alexander Pope’s line (“A little learning is a dangerous thing”) in An Essay on Criticism (1711).
721.5–6 “Behave so that thy maxim could be a universal law.”] The categorical imperative that Kant proposed in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).
727.16–18 “Father, let this cup . . . understands me?”] Christ’s words in Matthew 26:39; the last words (“All may be well”) of Claudius’s “O, my offense is rank” soliloquy in Hamlet, III.iii.72; quotation from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
755.1 “Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,”] From Horace, Odes, I.22: “The good man innocent of sin.”
759.16–17 Persephone’s hand . . . pomegranate seed] In Greek mythology, after her abduction by Hades, Persephone was tricked into eating pomegranate seeds, and because she had eaten food in the underworld, she was thereafter required to spend a portion of every year with Hades.
762.33 stereopticon] Nineteenth-century slide projector that merged two images into one, creating an illusion of three-dimensionality.
767.5 Victory garden] Americans, like their allies abroad, were encouraged to support the effort to win World War II by growing as many of their own vegetables as possible. In New York City, both Rockefeller Plaza and Riverside Park were turned into Victory gardens.
767.20–21 Bonwit Teller, Mark Cross] For Bonwit Teller, see note 170.7–8. Mark Cross, a high-end leather goods retailer founded in 1854, had its principal store in Manhattan. From 1934 to 1955 the firm was run by Gerald Murphy, famous for being F. Scott Fitzgerald’s friend.
778.29 a via vitae] Latin: the road of life; in John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
786.13 Redon] Odilon Redon (1840–1916), French Symbolist painter.
789.6 sanforized] The Sanforization process, which was patented in 1930 by Sanford Lockwood Cluett, preshrinks cotton fabric so that it does not continue to shrink after washings by the purchaser.
789.28 Bellevue] America’s oldest public hospital, founded in 1736 and located on First Avenue in New York City, famous for its treatment of psychiatric cases.
795.23 Norman Corwin] Corwin (1910–2011) was a producer and writer of radio dramas and other programming from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.
795.24–25 Red Network] Radio network of the National Broadcast Company, founded in 1926 and after 1943 operating as NBC Radio.
799.34 table-d’hôte] French: fixed-price meal at a restaurant.
804.6–7 Benedetto Croce] Croce (1866–1952), an Italian philosopher and writer on aesthetics.
805.25 Qui passe?] French: Who goes there?
807.6 Gold Flake] Brand of Indian cigarettes sold in Great Britain for much of the twentieth century.
807.18–19 the Duke of Windsor talking in a cockney accent] Edward, Duke of Windsor (for whom, see note 648.14), sometimes spoke with traces of both American and Cockney accents, the result of exposure to them as well as affectation.
807.32 the Faubourg St. Germain] Parisian district in the 7th arrondissement; the residence of socially prominent and noble families.
807.36 Petit Trianon] Eighteenth-century château on the grounds of Versailles, the favored retreat of Marie Antoinette, where she affected a rustic simplicity.
808.1–2 Mme Pompadour’s bedroom at the Frick museum] A room at the Frick Collection in New York City contains eight gauzy paintings full of nymphs and cherubs that were once believed to have been commissioned by Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), mistress of Louis XV. They are now attributed to the studio of her favorite painter, François Boucher (1703–1770).
808.2–3 the Sforzas . . . Castello] Dynastic Milanese family, owners of the castle (Castello Sforzesco) constructed by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, during the fifteenth century. It was rebuilt as a museum after damage during the Allied aerial bombardment of Milan in World War II.
808.3–4 at Stra . . . Pisani.] Stra is a Venetian town; it contains the Villa Pisani located on the Brenta River canal.
808.7 Mme Verdurin] Social climber in Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time (1913–27).
808.37 Dr.-Livingstone-I-presume] Greeting said to have been uttered by the journalist Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) when he discovered, near Africa’s Lake Tanganyika, the long-lost explorer and medical missionary, David Livingstone (1813–1873).
809.1–2 to invert Wordsworth . . . poetical] In the Biographia Literaria (1817), while discussing his collaboration with Wordsworth on the Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge writes: “it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”
809.17 Domodossola] Piedmontese town near the Italian-Swiss border.
809.29–30 “Qu’est-ce que se passe?”] French: What’s happening?
809.30–32 “Rien . . . C’est des amis qui rencontrent des amis.”] “Nothing . . . it’s some friends meeting friends.”
810.3 “Ite, missa est”] See note 333.2.
810.24 “Togliatti!”] Palmiro Togliatti (1893–1964), general secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 to 1964 and Italy’s minister of justice, 1945–46.
810.39 The Possessed] Novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in Russian in 1871–72; translated into English in 1916.
811.7–8 Peace Conference . . . Molotov.] Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), Soviet foreign minister, 1939–49 and 1953–56, represented the U.S.S.R. at the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, during which treaties ending World War II were negotiated between the Allies and Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.
811.19 Parigi, Pace] Italian: Paris, Peace.
812.1 Puvis de Chavannes] French painter and muralist (1824–1898).
812.20–21 très mignon . . . gentil . . . joli garçon] French: very cute; nice; pretty boy.
815.3 the famous Galleria] Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milanese shopping mall open since 1877.
817.7 the Liberators] American B-24 Liberator bombers attacked targets in Milan several times from March to October 1944. The damage to the Sforza castle, however, was done by British night raids in August 1943.
817.14 Filippo Lippi Madonna] Likely Madonna of Humility (1430) by the Italian painter Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406–1469).
817.30 Baedeker] Popular travel guides published in Germany by Karl Baedeker beginning in 1827.
819.16–17 Saltimbocca] Italian dish made of veal and prosciutto as well as sage or basil. Literally, Italian for “jumps in the mouth.”
819.23 “The Prisoner of Chillon”] Narrative poem written by Byron in 1816 about the imprisonment of a monk, François Bonivard.
820.15 Narcissa] Female form of Narcissus, the beautiful young figure of Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection.
821.19 campos and the trattorias] Italian: playing fields and casual restaurants.
822.4 mercerias] Notions sold in a haberdashery.
822.29 cotolette] Breaded veal cutlets.
823.1 Franklin Simon] New York City department store that operated from 1902 to 1979.
823.34 vin du pays] French: local wine.
824.32 letto matrimoniale] Italian: double bed.
824.36 orange sticks] Small toiletry tool for cleaning nails and pushing cuticles back.
825.7 Caro] Italian: dear.
825.12–13 Piazza San Marco, to Harry’s Bar] Piazza San Marco, Venice’s main square and the location of St. Mark’s church. Harry’s Bar is a popular tourist bar and restaurant located on the Calle Vallaresso since 1931.
825.18 oubliette] Literally a “forgotten chamber”; a hidden dungeon that can be entered only from a hatchway in its ceiling.
826.26–27 the Palladian front of San Giorgio] The Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) designed the Venetian church of San Giorgio Maggiore, built between 1566 and 1610.
828.23 Inglesi’s] Italian: English people’s.
829.24–25 a Fuller Brush man] From 1906 until 1985, products of the Fuller Brush Company were sold entirely by door-to-door salespeople.
836.29 non-Detecto scales] Throughout the twentieth century the Detecto Scale Company, founded in New York in 1900, dominated the manufacture and sale of scales for butchers, bakers, doctors, and private homes.
840.24 Augustus John] Post-Impressionist Welsh painter (1878–1961) best known for his portraits and his flamboyant romantic life.
840.26 a point du départ] French: point of departure.
843.27 invidia] Italian: jealousy or envy.
843.27–29 “Cast a cold eye . . . pass by”] Epitaph of W. B. Yeats; the last three lines of his poem “Under Ben Bulben” (1939).
845.8–9 en brosse] Short crew or buzz cut that leaves the individual hairs standing up as bristles.
851.1–2 the guns at Camp Edwards] U.S. military training base, established in 1931 on Cape Cod. During World War II it served as a training ground for anti-aircraft troops.
852.10 “Die Lorelei.”] Popular song (1837) by German composer Friedrich Silcher (1789–1860), which set to music Heinrich Heine’s (1797–1856) well-known 1824 poem.
852.12–13 “My mother sells snow to the snowbirds”] Lyric from bawdy song “How the Money Rolls In,” a version of which is included in Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag (1927). Sung to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.”
852.21–27 Die schönste . . . Kamme] Heinrich Heine, Die Lorelei (1822). Translation from Poems of Heinrich Heine: Three Hundred and Twenty-Five Poems, trans. Louis Untermeyer (1917):
And on one peak, half-dreaming
She sits, enthroned and fair;
Like a goddess, dazzling and gleaming,
She combs her golden hair.
With a gold comb she is combing . . .
865.11 Maecenas] From Gaius Cilnius Maecenas (68–8 B.C.E.), a political advisor to the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, who was renowned for his patronage of the arts.
865.39 “ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”] Latin: Who watches the watchers? From Juvenal’s Satire 6.
867.21 Noxzema] Skin cream originally developed for sunburn and eczema (the cream was originally called “no-eczema”) invented by Francis J. Townsend in the late nineteenth century and first sold commercially in 1914.
867.38 Stekel] Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940), Austrian psychoanalyst and student of Freud’s.
868.1 Ferenczi] Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933), Hungarian psychoanalyst who proposed that during analysis sessions the psychoanalyst be more actively engaged and verbally responsive than Freud had recommended.
874.34 Silex] Coffeepot made from Pyrex, Corning’s ovenproof glass.
876.16 homo faber] Latin: man the maker.
880.35–36 “Ausable Chasm,” “Howe Caverns,” “Desert of Maine”] Three popular natural tourist attractions in the northeastern United States: a gorge sometimes called the “Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks”; a cave in upstate New York visited by vacationers since the 1840s; and a stretch of silt left by a glacier, near Freeport, Maine.
894.9 the Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, and Il Giorno.] Italian daily newspapers, the first and third from Milan, and the second from Turin.
897.39 “i francesi,”] Italian: The French.
898.24 “Une petite station balnéaire,”] French: A small seaside resort.
898.26 “Plage modeste,”] A small beach.
898.38 “en panne.”] Out of order.
899.8–12 “Venga, venga!” . . . Con Romeo?”] Italian: Come, come! . . . Wait! . . . French: Jean, where is Jean? Where is the mattress? . . . Italian: Where is your hat? Where is Michel? Where is Mark? They are already on the way? With Romeo?
900.33 a Tintoretto “Last Judgement,”] Tintoretto, born Jacopo Robusti (c. 1518–1594), Italian Mannerist painter whose oil painting Last Judgment (c. 1560–62) is in the Madonna dell’Orto church in Venice.
901.12–13 Castelnuovo, where Dante had stayed] Dante Alighieri visited Castelnuovo Magra in Liguria in 1306.
902.16 “Qu’est-ce qu’il dit, maman?”] French: What is he saying, mama?
902.37 Ecoute, Arturo. Figure-toi.”] Listen, Arturo. Just imagine.
902.38–39 “Mais c’est vrai, maman! . . . Catherine?”] But it is true, mama! . . . It is true, mama . . . It is true, isn’t it, Catherine?
903.3 “Tais-toi, François!”] Shut up, François!
903.5 Filles des Obscurs Intellectuels de Gauche.] A whimsical mock organization: Daughters of Obscure Left-Wing Intellectuals.
903.6 “C’est dégoutant,”] It’s disgusting.
903.15 “Mais c’est merveilleux!”] But it’s wonderful!
903.20 “Et les juifs, et les juifs, papa!”] And the Jews, and the Jews, papa!
903.26–27 “Pauvre papa, . . . je le suis!”] Poor papa, . . . You’re not Jewish; but I am!
903.28–29 “Modeste station . . . les juifs.”] A small seaside resort, much frequented by Jews.
904.4 “Il cherche le nez,”] He looks for the nose.
904.6–7 “Vous avez tort, . . . les juifs.] You are wrong, my boy. I like the Jews.
904.39–40 Sartre or Françoise Sagan] Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), French existentialist philosopher and man of letters; Sagan, pseudonym of Françoise Quoirez (1935–2004), French novelist whose first book, Bonjour Tristesse (1954), made her a youthful phenomenon.
905.6 “Vous n’aimez pas la nourriture italienne,”] You don’t like Italian food.
905.8–10 “Mais non, . . . français.”] But no, . . . Steak et frites is quite French.
905.27–29 “Lo spiaggione, . . . Parla dello spiaggione.”] Italian: The big beach . . . He says the big beach.
905.29–30 “La grande plage, grand-papa, . . . J’ai compris,”] French: The big beach, grandfather. . . . Yes, my child. I understood.
905.32–33 “Quelle horreur! . . . Arturo?] How awful! Ruined, eh, Arturo?
905.35 “J’ai raison, eh?”] I’m right, eh?
907.3 “Mais c’est tout à fait différent!”] But it’s quite different!
908.29 “Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”] What’s happening?
908.31–32 “C’est les Allemands, . . . Porto Quaglia.”] It’s the Germans, Elisabeth! . . . They’re at Sarzana. They have discovered Porto Quaglia.
908.35 “Cosa, signora? Cosa?”] Italian: What, ma’am? What?
908.36 “I tedeschi, Anna, . . . Son arrivati qui.”] Germans, Anna. . . . They have arrived here.
908.38–39 “Dove? Dove sono, . . . albergo?”] Where? Where are they, professor? . . . At a hotel?
908.39–909.1 “Non è vero, Anna. Almeno è un po’ esagerato.”] It’s not true, Anna. At least it’s a little exaggerated.
910.4–5 A Ste.-Geneviève at the gates of Paris] Patron saint of Paris (c. 422–c. 500), whose call to prayer was believed to have saved the city from Attila the Hun in 451 C.E.
910.16 “Ils ont leurs espions!”] French: They have their spies!
910.33 a Panzer division] An armored division in the German army.
910.40 “ein kleines Fischerdorf.”] German: a small fishing village.
911.1 “Ja, ja, wunderschön!”] Yes, yes, beautiful!
911.6 “Zimmer und Frühstück,” “Lebensmittel”] Bed and Breakfast. Groceries.
911.15–16 “Écoute, Hélène, . . . à Sarzana.”] French: Listen, Hélène. Frank just met two individuals at Sarzana.
911.21 “Tu vois?”] You see?
911.22 “Franchement, je les déteste,”] Frankly, I hate them.
911.27–29 “Soyez sérieux, Mike, . . . touriste moyen.] Be serious, Mike. You know better. We’re talking about the average tourist.
911.31–33 Là il y a l’histoire, . . . à nous.”] There is history, monuments! History, monuments belong to all the world. . . . But Porto Quaglia belongs to us.
912.13–14 “Aide-moi, Arturo. . . . le plan légal.”] Help me, Arturo. . . . He’s right, Hélène. On the legal plan.
912.21 the execution of Caryl Chessman.] Chessman (1921–1960), the “Red Light Bandit,” was convicted of robbery, kidnapping, and rape in 1948 and eventually put to death by the State of California in the gas chamber at San Quentin. (At the time, kidnapping with bodily harm was a capital offense in California.) Chessman studied law and wrote four books while on Death Row, and his case prompted an outcry over capital punishment.
912.28 Harry’s Bar] See note 825.12–13.
913.9 “Ma fille . . . Calme-toi.”] My daughter . . . Calm down.
913.30 “J’ai trop bu à déjeuner,”] I drank too much at lunch.
913.39 “Tu l’as fait exprès, Maurice,”] You did it on purpose, Maurice.
914.6 “Peut-être,”] Possibly.
914.10–13 “Maman a parfaitement raison! . . . comme ça.”] Mama is perfectly right. It’s him, I’m sure of it, who denounced Porto Quaglia to the Germans. He turned pale, like this.
914.27 “Je ne crois pas,”] I don’t believe it.
914.28 “La Voix de la Raison a parlé,”] The Voice of Reason has spoken.
914.30 “Mais en tout cas ce n’est pas une injure,”] But in any case, this isn’t an insult.
914.36 “Mais il n’était pas pro-allemand,”] But he was not pro-German.
915.5–6 “C’est plutôt un juif . . . papa!”] Rather he is a German Jew who became English. . . . But you’re crazy, papa!
915.7 “Favole!”] Italian: Fables!
915.15–16 “Ce n’est pas à cause de mon père,”] French: This is not because of my father.
915.33–34 the Lorelei, Brigitte Bardot] Seductive siren or mermaid who lives upon a rock (also called the Lorelei) above the Rhine; see also note 852.10. Brigitte Bardot (b. 1934), French actress who was a voluptuous film star of the 1950s and 1960s.
916.33–34 Marlowe and the School of Night] Circle of Elizabethan writers inclined toward atheism, thought to include Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Sir Walter Raleigh (1554–1618), and George Chapman (c. 1559–1634).
917.18–23 “Le Bâton de Jacob . . . O’Hare?”] Jacob’s Rod and The Three Kings is the same constellation, isn’t it, Monsieur O’Hare?
917.28 “l’alfiere.”] Italian: the standard-bearer.
919.4–5 Chinotto] Italian orange carbonated soft drink.
919.22 the too too solid flesh] Cf. Hamlet, I.ii.129.
919.33 “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”] German: Do you speak German?
919.40–920.4 “Francobolli, per favore, . . . Per la Germania? . . . Deutschland?”] Italian: Stamps, please. . . . For Germany? . . . German: Germany?
920.11 “Après dix ans c’est un peu fort,”] French: After ten years it is a bit much.
920.13–14 “Comme c’est beau! . . . quanti tedeschi.”] How beautiful it is! . . . Italian: For them, now we’re all Germans.
920.27 “Mais qu’est-ce que tu as, ma petite?”] French: But what’s wrong, my little one?
920.36 Stendhal] See note 347.13.
921.1–3 “Mais c’est inouï! . . . se cacher!”] But it’s unheard of! . . . That my father cannot go out in public because of these Germans! It is they who should have to hide.
921.8 Covermark] Concealer makeup for blemishes and birthmarks patented in 1932.
921.30–32 “No, Paulo, . . . All’altra spiaggia.”] Italian: No, Paula, not Rocca Bianca. . . . There are too many people. The other beach.
922.15–16 Garibaldi mustaches] Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), a central figure in the history of Italian unification, wore a full beard and robust mustache.
924.7–8 Arturo pense la même chose.”] French: Arturo thinks the same thing.
924.24 “C’est-à-dire le marbre,”] That is to say, the marble.
925.36 Millet] French painter Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), perhaps best known for realistic rural scenes such as The Sower and The Angelus.
926.14 “Il justifie le capitalisme,”] He justifies capitalism.
926.16–19 “Il justifie le progrès, . . . Moi non,”] He justifies progress. . . . And you are against progress? . . . But naturally. . . . Me also. . . . Not me.
926.20–21 “Regarde-moi ça, . . . Allemands.”] Look at that, papa! . . . My children have become conservative, thanks to the Germans.
926.33 “Viens, mon fils, . . . C’est l’heure.”] Come, my son. It’s time.
926.37 “Regarde, mon fils,”] Look, my son.
927.1–3 “Elles sont belles, . . . Pourquoi?”] They are beautiful, these mountains? . . . Yes. . . . Why?
927.5–8 “Parce que le marbre . . . pas le progrès.”] Because the marble looks like snow. . . . It’s all a trick. It’s false snow. And it doesn’t justify progress.
927.13–14 “Elles sont loin, les carrières.”] They are far, the quarries.
927.18–19 “Visitate le cave di marmo,”] Italian: Visit the marble quarries.
927.37 “Bien sûr,”] French: Of course.
928.15 “Ça suffit, papa!”] That’s enough, papa!
929.3–4 “Mais tu t’es . . . Sûrement.”] But you are wrong, Maurice. Surely.
931.7 “On peut visiter, maman?”] Can we visit, mama?
931.15 “Qu’est-ce que tu es venu chercher ici, papa?”] What did you come to look for here, papa?
931.17–18 “Rien, . . . Une petite distraction.”] Nothing. . . . A small distraction.
931.27 “Très laid,”] Very ugly.
931.29–30 “François a eu raison. . . . la vraie neige.”] François was right. It is fake snow. Like in the theater. We like it because we like the true snow.
931.37–38 “C’est moi, tu le sais, qui l’a faussée.”] It’s me, you know, who is fake.
932.8 “Ce qui est vrai, Hélène, c’est le travail.”] What is true, Hélène, is the work.
932.12 “J’aime les vacances. Je déteste le travail,”] I love vacations. I hate work.
932.16 “Et comment c’était, dans la carrière?”] And how was it, in the quarry?
932.19 “C’est pas joli,”] It’s not pretty.
932.33–34 “ ‘Ah, comme elles sont belles, . . . Nature!’ ”] ‘Ah, how beautiful they are, the marble mountains!’ ‘I love Nature!’
932.38–39 “Surtout les âmes sensibles.”] Especially sensitive souls.
933.2 “Je ne sais pas,”] I don’t know.
933.4–5 “les vacances payées.”] Paid vacations.
933.17–18 “Il faut avoir une réponse, Hélène. . . . de savoir.”] You must have an answer, Helene. This is an important issue. The whole world has a right to know.
933.22–23 “Un château en Espagne?”] A castle in Spain?
933.25–26 “Bon, donc. Au travail.”] Well, then. To work.
933.30 “Oui, c’était beau,”] Yes, it was beautiful.