undefined
Wittgenstein’s image of the
net is the one IM has spoken of in association with this book: (Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus 6.341). The net becomes a symbol of the way over-arching
concepts are used to give unity to contingent reality: but the net is merely a
way of measuring, of dividing reality into small enough pieces that they can be
assessed, in a purely arbitrary framework, for their belonging to either
‘black’ or ‘white’ colour. But the net is not the reality – it is a way of dividing
up reality. Under the net, is the real object. Hugo’s assertion that every
thing is different, that there are no patterns, that there should be no
classification, identifies him as somebody who does not acknowledge the net.
Prefatory
pages
p. 3
Dedication – To Raymond Queneau. Queneau was a French writer whom Iris Murdoch
admired enormously. Jake, the hero, also loves Queneau, according to Conradi,
(p. 33). Queneau is difficult to characterise, having been a surrealist but
later a very experimental writer with a liking for puns and verbal jokes. For
example, one of his books rewrote the same situation 99 different times
(Exercises in Style). His books are not difficult to read and are often very
funny. According to Conradi, (p. 50), “Murdoch noted that in writing the novel
she was copying Beckett and Queneau as hard as she could, but that it resembles
nothing by either of them”.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/quene.htm
p.5
– Dryden, The Secular Masque. Mentioning a chase, wars, lovers and a beast, we
might speculate after reading, to whom in the book each of these refers. Is Mr
Mars the beast? Is the chase the pursuit of Anna? And the lovers untrue? To
read the whole thing (a masque is a short play, presented for the entertainment
of court), see: http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem748.html
It
features the character Mars, amongst others. Malcolm Bradbury suggested in the
Critical Quarterly that the myth of Vulcan - betrayed by his wife Venus, with
the god of war, Mars - is “a kind of scaffolding” for this novel. IM denied
this was ever her intention, which A.S. Byatt chooses to take at face value (p.
9, DOF). However, as Priscilla Martin has pointed out, there were plenty of
occasions upon which IM seems to have embroidered such circumstances.
Chapter 1
Peter Conradi
has noted the unusual use of a male narratorial voice by a woman – “I know of
nothing quite like them,” he says on p. 35 of The Saint and the Artist.
p. 7 Strike - Britain’s
strike-prone reputation developed during the economic “golden age” of the
1950s. “I’m All Right Jack”, a 1959 Boulting brothers film with Peter Sellers,
took as its target militant trade unionism, and came after a record high point
of 8.4m working days had been lost
to industrial disputes in 1957. During the 1950s working days lost due to
strikes averaged 3.3m a year, rising to 3.6m in the 1960s.
p.7 Newhaven
Port. Jake is returning from France, though we never find out the reason for
his visit. He has cases full of French books, which implies either a big
spending spree or an extended visit, now drawn to an end.
p.7 Bottles
of cognac confiscated (1954) – customs restrictions were stricter in the
fifties than at virtually any other time. I am still researching the rules!
p. 9 Bookie –
a bookmaker, taking bets on sporting events. Sammy turns out to be rather more
than a simple bookie : see p.15 – he is a businessman these days.
p. 10 Earls
Court Road. In the 1950s, a rather grim, run-down area of tall Victorian houses
(see also the books of Patrick Hamilton, for example, for another 1950s picture
of Earls Court). The area turns up repeatedly in IM’s fiction, and is defined
as the edge of “necessary” London at the beginning of chapter 2. (See picture
gallery)
p. 10 Lyons’
– Lyons’ Corner Houses were tea shops, though they served meals also. There
were several in central London, and it seems likely Jake goes to the one in
Tottenham Court Rd – this is easiest from Charlotte St. You could get a hot
dinner in Lyons most of the time, and at some points in their history they were
24 hours. Jake again goes to a Lyons Corner House at the end of the book, this
time in Kensington. There is a wonderful history of the institution at:
http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/cornerhouses.htm
you can even
try visiting a teashop at http://www.kzwp.com/lyons2/visit3.htm
p. 12 “What
do you think I am, the Albert Memorial?” elaborate, gaudy gold-leaf memorial to
Albert, husband of Victoria, standing opposite the Royal Albert Hall.
p. 15 Number
11 bus: ran down the Earls Court Road – not a very imaginative story, then, on
Magdalene’s part. Liverpool Street to Fulham Broadway is the current route, but
this was not the case in the 1950s. When researching this site, I found a
wonderful website covering the history of London buses, which was extremely
useful, and if this is one of your niche interests (!…) go to:
http://www.busmap.org/
p. 16 Number
73 bus: no longer runs from Hammersmith Broadway into town.
p. 17
Charlotte Street. North-south road in “Fitzrovia”, area north of Oxford Street
above Soho. Always a rather ‘colourful’ area, with lots of restaurants and
bars. Area appears again in “The Black Prince”. The photo in the gallery is
from 1964: the Post Office Tower wa p. 21 Jake’s poetry – And Mr Oppenheim
Shall Inherit the Earth – what kind of poem is this intended
to be? Like one of those Octopus poets? One gains a wonderful impression of the
poem from the title… a rather anti-capitalist title. A hint of Oppenheimer, who
oversaw the Manhattan project, and read out the Bhagavad Gita at the final
test?
p. 23 Jake’s
shattered nerves – “never mind how I got them”. This is the only mention we
have of what Jake did previously, during the war, for example. “I’m not telling
you the whole story of my life”: in fact, we never really get to hear the story
of how he came to be in Paris with Anna, nor indeed why he speaks such
particularly good French. He is something over thirty in 1954, so presumably
must have been at least twenty when the war finished. This is the first hint of
the post-war flavour with which this book is subtlely tinged: the section of the
pub crawl brings home the damage the City sustained, which was still extremely
visible in 1954 – see photos below during pub crawl chapter. .
p. 24 ‘Kant
and Plato”: “Under the Net” is one of IM’s most explicitly philosophical
novels, and Dave Gellman is one of her professional philosophers. Both Kant and
Plato were intensely important philosophers in IM’s own thinking, and their
influence pervades the book. There are many references in the text to their
work, which I will try to highlight. There are also references to other
philosophers, for example to Hegel on the last page of chapter 1.
p. 24 Dave is
a “real dyed-in-the-wool Jew” who “fasts and believes that sin is
unredeemable”.
Dave is
shocked at story about the woman who broke the alabaster ointment.
Chapter 2
p. 26
“Contingent parts’ of London. The distinction between necessary and contingent
actions was one begun by St Thomas Aquinas – see http://members.aol.com/plweiss1/aquinas.htm
in the words
of the above site, “This Way [the Third Way] defines two types of objects in
the universe: contingent beings and necessary beings. A contingent being is an
object that can not exist without a necessary being causing its existence”.
Areas beyond Earls Court, in other words, cannot exist without London, causing
their existence. Sartre later developed the two ideas,
p. 26
Goldhawk Road mansion flats. IM often invents geography, so we don’t need to
find these flats in reality. And indeed, there are no mansion blocks for most
of the length of the Goldhawk Road, through Shepherd’s Bush. However, towards
the Chiswick end of the road, by the old Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, there are large mansion blocks.
These
photos are of the flats, and of the old hospital, also now converted into
flats:s constructed 1963 onwards.
p. 27 New
Independent Socialist Party – this seems to be an invention. In the 1950s,
there was a strong thread of support for the Communist party…
p. 27 ‘Dave
does extra-mural work for the university” – Dave teaches adults. The extramural
departments of the British universities were extremely active in the postwar
years.
p. 27
Critical Realists – according to the following website, critical realists
traverse a middle ground between realists and non-realists. Kant was a realist,
Feuerbach a non-realist.
http://www.faithnet.org.uk/AS%20Subjects/Philosophyofreligion/philosophyofreligionintroduction.htm
p. 27
Bradleians
An idealist
philosopher, and the leading British member of that school, F.H. Bradley was influential on his
more famous pupil, G.E. Moore.
http://radicalacademy.com/adiphilogicalpositivism3.htm
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2560
p. 27
Linguistic analysis (Dave’s speciality): the school dating from Wittgenstein,
which argued that practically all problems in philosophy were actually not
problems, but merely communication issues which could be resolved by accepting
their basis in linguistics. But, as a way of doing philosophy in the
Anglo-Saxon context, it was pioneered by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, who
were reacting against the Neo-Hegelianism of much contemporary philosophy. G.E,
Moore’s classic response was often “what do you mean by that?”- he privileged
the common sense description over the metaphysical.
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gjmoses/LINANAL1.htm
p. 28 “Ought
brings you back to is in the end. Yes but what sort of is?” This statement
epitomizes the philosophy of Dave, with its concern with meaning and
interpretation of words.
p. 27 “in a
kettle of fish” an awkward state of affairs.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ket1.htm
p. 30 the
third Critique
refers to
Kant’s third Critique, the Critique of Judgement: the only work to be known
this way in philosophy.
p. 31 the
women in James and Conrad who are described as “guileless, profound, confident
and trustful”.
This is a
quote from Heart of Darkness: it is unclear whether trustful is the regularly
used form – this is an example of Conrad’s idiosyncratic English.
p. 31 Pegasus
and Chrysor
More
frequently spelt Chrysaor, this was Pegasus’s warrior brother – they were both
produced from Medusa’s blood when Perseus cut off her head, and Poseidon was
their father.
http://www.coldwater.k12.mi.us/lms/planetarium/myth/equuleus.html
p. 31 “High-heeled shoes shift
the organs in time”: seems to be an example of slightly urban mythology about
medical fact.
p. 31 To find
a person inexhaustible is the definition of love – quote from Dave. Is he
quoting anyone else?
p. 32
“British films were passing through a critical phase”. Animal pictures are
noted as being popular during this period.
p. 33 Anna’s
service flat off the Bayswater Road. A service flat was one with a porter/
doorman, something like an American concierge. The Bayswater Road runs along
the top of Hyde Park, and has many such serviced blocks.
p. 34
marriage as “An Idea of Reason” – this is a Kantian term, and is one of the
many hints that Jake has taken in more of Dave’s teaching than he might have
led us to believe.
p. 34 “Walked
to Shepherd’s Bush” – Jake departs Dave’s and makes his way along the Goldhawk
Road to Shepherd’s Bush Green, where he can catch the 88 bus. The 88 in those
days went from Turnham Green to behind the Tate Gallery.
p. 35 “Got
off at Oxford Circus” – whilst travelling on the bus, on Oxford Street, Jake
makes up his mind that he will pursue Anna. He goes into the tube station
because there will be phone books in the telephone booths there, so that he can
look her up. This is another example of a contingent decision in the book -
p. 35 ‘Fly at
random” like “one of Heisenberg’s
electrons”: Heisenberg
p. 36 Jake’s
description of Soho is as a place where there “is always someone…who knows what
one wants to discover; it’s just a matter of finding him.” Soho’s promise is
also often a subject of novels of the era – see for example Patrick Hamilton,
Colin MacInnes or Julian MacLaren Ross, who later featured as X.Trapnel in
“Dance to the Music of Time”, but Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene also spent
lots of time there during the decade.
Greek Street,
Brewer Street, Old Compton Street: Jake makes his way into Soho by walking down
Regent Street from Oxford Circus almost to Piccadilly Circus. He then turns
left into Brewer Street, running the full length of the main pub and nightclub
streets of Soho. Brewer runs into Old Compton, and then he turns left into
Greek Street, which also had a lot of pubs and restaurants at the time.
The Pillars
of Hercules is a pub – see:
http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/show.shtml/1484/Pillars_of_Hercules/Soho
p. 37 The
Riverside Theatre, Hammersmith Mall: see below, note to page 38.
p. 37 He runs
all the way to Leicester Square tube – whilst Tottenham Court Road might have
been closer, he knows that the trains run directly to Hammersmith from
Leicester Square.
p. 38 “The
Mall between the Doves…” (now called The Dove, but formerly known in the
plural) “…and the Black Lion” (on Black Lion Lane). Both pubs are 18th
century.
Hammersmith
Mall
Chiswick Mall
p. 38
Riverside Miming Theatre; The Riverside Theatre, Hammersmith Mall: there is
today a Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, which housed a large film studio,
“The Triumph Film Company”, when first built, and at the time this book was
written, was bought by the BBC to be its pioneer colour tv studio. http://www.theriversidestory.co.uk/
Whilst the
real-life studio is on the river, it is on the downstream side of Hammersmith
Bridge. Anna’s theatre however is in a house, on the Chiswick side of the
bridge. This is where William
Morris’s house is located, where he began his printing press, and that house indeed
has its back to the river. For an illustration see: http://www.morrissociety.org/Kelmscott_House.html
p. 38
Lazemnikov: I cannot find a famous Russian mime artist: the tradition was French.
See the history of mime at http://www.mime.info/history.html
Pierrot is an
important character in mime, which suggests a connection to the title of the
French book being translated. And Paris was the centre of world mime in the
post-war era, despite Ivan’s Russian name.
His “great
farce Marishka”. I wasn’t able to find any particular associations with this
Russian pet-name.
p. 40-1 in the mime, there is
a “huge burly central figure” – being mocked – this is the beginning of a set
of suggestions that Hugo can be seen as a Christ-like figure – Murdoch’s first
“saint”.
p. 42 Anna
“was plumper… There was about her a sort of wrecked look”. How long is it since
they saw each other last? Anna is six years older than Jake (p. 32), who is
himself “something over thirty”, (p. 23). Anna is therefore approaching forty.
She asks him (p. 43) “What have you been doing all these years?”, which
suggests that the separation has been substantial. He also says on that page
that she was right to say he looked “just the same”, because he does look
“much” as he did when he was 24. This possibly implies they met last when he
was twenty-four – a good ten years.
p. 48 Anna
saying her singing is corrupt. I don’t know whether there is a specific ethical
concern which IM refers to here.
p. 50 Alvis
car – Europe’s leading armoured car manufacturer, according to their current
website. http://www.alvis.plc.uk/
“Master of the King’s Highway” was their slogan, http://www.alvisoc.org/
You can look
at post-war cars at: (they stopped
producing in 1967) http://www.alvisoc.org/Site%20Files/Alvis%20Cars/Post-War/TA%2021.htm
p.50 Jake
looks towards Hammersmith Bridge.
p. 51 This
novel is full of locked doors, as Priscilla Martin has pointed out (in a class
I attended). The doors within the theatre, Sadie’s flat, Mr Mars’s cage, the
cold cure experiment, the hospital, the safe in Hugo’s flat. On p. 94 Jake says
that the theatre itself is “a gilded cage” which Hugo wants to use to catch
Anna. Jake and Hugo also become blocked into the Eternal City, at Bounty
Belfounder, in chapter 12.
p. 52 The set
of masks. Mournful slanting eyes, unnerving beauty, subtly curving mouths,
reminiscent of Indian Buddhas. The first appearance of Buddhist figures in IM,
though not the last.
p.
55 Sadie’s flat in Welbeck Street. Welbeck Street is in the smart, Edwardian,
mansion block, medical district of London, north of Wigmore Street.
p. 55 A char
– a rather old-fashioned word for someone employed to clean the house.
p. 56 Jake
goes to Sadie’s hairdressers, via Oxford St where he buys a tie. In fact, a
short walk: he goes south to Oxford Street, and then crosses directly into
north Mayfair.
p. 60 Hugo’s
family history. Hugo is the first German émigré in IM, (others include ** in
AFHD, who is rumoured also to be an arms-dealer, and ** in The Nice and the
Good). He is also the first Belfounder ( two bells have been made by founders
in “The Bell”).
p. 61 IM’s
attitude to fireworks.
p. 61 “It was
through the common cold that I first met Hugo”. The Fifties were a golden age
of optimism about science and medicine’s ability to find cures for diseases
ranging from cancer to colds.
p. 64 “Hugo
has often been called an idealist”. It is unclear who has called him this, and
whether they have been using the term in the general, conversational sense,
which implies someone rather unrealistic, with their head in the clouds, or in
the narrower philosophical sense. Hugo’s philosophical approach, as described
in the next few pages, resembles…
p. 65
Weltanschauung. German for our conceptual image of the world as it appears to
be, rather than how the actual conditions of physical existence are manifest.
p. 69 “I was
but the more inclined to attribute a spiritual worth to Hugo in proportion as
it would never have crossed his mind to think of himself in such a light”. Hugo
is the first of IM’s “saints”, who typically lack any sort of worldly ambition
or, importantly, spiritual ambition.
p. 70 Tamarus
and Annadine. Tamarus is the name of one of the main sourcebooks for Gregorian
Chant. Annadine is a more regular girl’s name.
p. 72 “I
suffered continually at that time from a fear of losing the manuscript”:
despite Jake’s sense that writing this book is a sinful thing to have done (p.
70, “a secret sin”) he ascribed a great value to it. As he describes the
writing of the book, and we trust his account, we find it difficult to think of
this ms as other than rather sneaky and self-motivated. One of the questions
the book asks is whether this is actually the case: has Jake actually been
better than he thought?
p. 73 Hugo’s
film company is called Bounty Belfounder, and its symbol is the spires of City
churches. When the pub crawl in search of Hugo takes place later on, the famous
City church spires figure strongly on the landscape the drinkers pass through.
p. 73
suppressio veri – suggestio falsi. An English legal term – the suppression of
the truth is the suggestion of a falsehood. Sometimes translated as “is
tantamount to a lie”, though it doesn’t seem quite so strong.
p. 75-6
Jake’s break with Hugo. He sets this up so that we believe, with him, that in
all likelihood Hugo has seen the book. The phase with Hugo seems to have
directly preceded the company of Finn, who has “claimed” to be a cousin of
Jake’s (p.7). We can now guess that the chronology of the novel was, coldcure
experiment, meeting Hugo, association with Finn. In chapter 6, we add the
information (p. 93) “I had first met Anna before I had parted from Hugo, though
it was after this that I had come to know her well.”
Chelsea
Bridge from the King’s Road side (Battersea park is on the right hand bank in
this photo):
p.77 “I
bought a packet of cigarettes and went into a milk bar” –
p. 81 “Isn’t
she a turn up for the book?” I’ll quote Michael Quinion’s website It now means
exactly what you say, something surprising. The origin is in horse racing, where
the book was the record of bets laid on a race kept by—who
else—a bookmaker. So when a horse performed in a way that nobody expected, so
that most bets lost, it was something that benefited the book and
so the bookmaker. The classic example would be a rank outsider that won with
few bets on it, netting the bookmaker a nice windfall profit.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tur1.htm
p. 82 an ad
hominem look. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html From that site, “An Ad Hominem is a
general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the
basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the
claim or argument”.
p. 83-7 The
winning horses are Little Grange, Saint Cross, Hal Adair, and Peter of Alex. Is
there any symbolism? Peter of Alexandria was a Patriarch of Alexandria (300 -
311).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_of_Alexandria
p. 89 a cigarette from a
little S?vres casket on gilded feet: no gilded feet, but you get the general
idea!
http://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/htdocs/240202/lot_070b.htm
p. 90 the
section from “The Silencer”. Why that title? What sort of ideas are being
discussed?
p. 98 Dave
and Finn call Sadie “the Queen of Sheba”, but Jake has already seen Anna as “an
uneasy queen”, ruling over the theatre, on p. 94.
p. 100 “a
stream of irritating badinage”: badinage is banter,
prattle, chit=chat.
This chapter contains the
wonderful night-time City pub crawl. Though it is only six pages long, it
covers a good deal of geographical territory: see map.
p.
104 A Minton: one presumes IM means John Minton, though there are other artists
with this surname, He was a British ‘neo-romantic’: http://www.modernbritishartists.co.uk/minton_biog.htm
for a text biography; to see his self-portrait, http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp03107&rNo=0&role=art
p. 104 – “The
intense light of evening fell upon the spires and towers of St Bride to the
south, St James to the north, St Andrew to the west, and St Sepulchre, and St
Leonard Foster and St Mary-le-Bow to the east.”
St Bride – by
Wren. One of his tallest spires – 226 ft – gutted in 1940.
St James –
St Andrew
Holborn – by Wren, his largest City church, and gutted 1941.
St Sepulchre
– a post-Fire church rebuilding of the 1660s, but not by Wren.
St Leonard
Foster – St Leonard Foster was destroyed by the Great Fire and was not rebuilt.
IM seems to be suggesting it still has a place on the city skyline, which makes
the effect far more dreamlike.
St Mary-le-Bow
– the most distant church from the group, only the brick walls and the steeple
survived bombing. However the steeple is some 224ft, so makes a dramatic
landmark. (depicted below, this photo from 1953 shows how little rebuilding had
yet to be done. You can see clearly the empty walls of the church).
p. 108 “I was in the YCL
once..” – the Young Communist League?
P.112 – “And
meanwhile, what about the Dialectic?” – Jake and Lefty’s (Jake’s at least
presumably by now rather drunken) conversation …
p.113 bien
renseigné: well-informed.
p.113 the General Post Office: this building, just north of St Pauls, opened in 1929. For some gorgeous plates of exterior and interior: http://www.motco.com/index-london/SeriesSearchPlatesFulla.asp?mode=query&title=General+Post+Office%2C+St+Martins+le+Grand%2C+%26amp%3Bc%2E&keyword=1771&x=11&y=11
p.114 “Great
Tom is Cast” – a round. Tom is the name of the biggest bell in Christchurch,
Oxford. In this tune, he is struck last. This site will even play the tune, so
it can get stuck in your head too (it even does the bit in the round…): http://www-personal.umich.edu/~msmiller/rcatch59.html
p.114 “Then I
realized that we were in which had once been the nave of St Leonard Foster.” –
This church had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London.
p.117 “Across
a moonswept open space… where many a melancholy noticeboard tells in the ruins
of the City where churches and where public houses once stood..” – it is
difficult to appreciate how much wartime damage this area of London sustained;
far more than other areas, percentage-wise. The photos I’ve included mostly
date from 1953, showing that even eight years after the end of the war,
rebuilding was not being done on any huge scale.
p.120 “the vanishing bells of
St Mary…’: of the churches listed here, St Leonard, as mentioned above, and St
John Zachary, were not rebuilt after the Great Fire, so their bells are truly
vanished.
p. 121 St
Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe – A Wren rebuilding, gutted 1940.
p.122 “the
next thing that I remember is that we were in Covent Garden Market drinking
coffee”: a photo of the market in 1970:
p. 136 – the Wallace
Collection.
http://www.wallacecollection.org/
for
the building see the bottom of http://www.wallacecollection.org/c/h/history_collection.htm
The
“cynical grin” of the Hals Cavalier: http://www.wallacecollection.org/c/w_a/p_w_d/d_f/p/p084.htm
p.137 “the universal provider of information
to which I had applied before..” I think IM must mean the phone book, to which
Jake has already turned twice during the course of the novel.
p. 138 – ‘it was possible that
although, like the Walrus, I had got all I could..” the Walrus and the
Carpenter
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html
p. 139 “As he puts it himself,
divil a one would know that it was other than the spring breeze had touched
their things” – gives a brief glimpse, one of the few in the book, of Finn’s
accent and idiomatic Irish way of speaking.
p. 140 – “and don’t be acting
the maggot with it,” Don’t be annoying, behaving foolishly. Irish slang. http://www.loughman.dna.ie/general/4mymofo.html
p. 141 –‘ “Did you ever see Red
Godfrey’s Revenge?”…I
had been a fan of Mars for years.” What is a translator and intellectual doing
watching quite so many dog movies?
p. 143-151 – the moving of Mr
Mars – IM on engineering ‘stunts’. When it finally unlocks so easily – I think
this motif occurs elsewhere in IM – where someone goes to an immense amount of
trouble to do something which turns out to have been incredibly simply fixed.
p. 152 the Queen Elizabeth and
the Liberté
http://uncommonjourneys.com/pages/qe/qeservice.htm
http://uncommonjourneys.com/pages/liberte/liberte2.htm
p.156 “The
Bounty Belfounder studio is situated…” the suburb indicated here is along the
Old Kent Road – which means somewhere between Walworth and `South Bermondsey /
New Cross, where the road becomes known as New Cross Road.
p. 157
“Already I had attracted the attention of the Cerberi...” unusual plural of
Cerberus, the dog that guarded the underworld.
p. 157 “The
film was about the conspiracy of Catiline,” Orestilla as a woman with a heart
of gold and moderate reformist principles..
p. 162 Jake
finally sees Hugo again – in a setting fitting for the anticipation he clearly
feels. Hugo doesn’t seem quite so in accord. The setting is of ancient Rome,
but might equally well evoke classical philosophy.
p. 168 the
fall of Rome – Conradi makes the point that this is the first episode of many
in IM connected to the theme of iconoclasm, “the destruction of images,
pictures and states of mind” (p. 39). To this I would also add manuscripts – a
number of pieces of people’s work of that kind also seem to get destroyed.
Conradi also draws a direct link between the destruction of Rome and the
wartime bomb damage to London which is such a feature of earlier chapters.
p. 173 – “it was hours later,
or so it seemed to my feet..” at ten to eight, (p. 154) Jake had decided to set
off from Hammersmith, taking a taxi and then a bus. He doesn’t get back to
Waterloo again on foot till after midnight, but he has had to walk a long way
–4 miles or so. ‘I had the impression that I had had an extremely long day…” –
well in fact it has been exactly that, beginning with the pub crawl the night
before, the swim, the breakfast in Covent Garden, the visit to the theatre, the
ride in the removal lorry, the sleep in Hyde Park, the trip to Sadie’s, the
decision to break into Sammy’s, and the evening spent at the film studio. Jake
spends another night al fresco, but luckily it is summer. Moved on at 6am by
the police, he ends up in Charlotte Street, borrows a pound, and gets back to
the Goldhawk Road.
p. 179 – chantage –
blackmail (French).
p. 185 –
“also, she had not had her curtains wrenched out of the wall” – Morgan also
wrenches the curtains down, in AFHD.
p. 186 – a “déréglement de
tous les sens”
– unsettling of the senses (French).
p. 188 a
casus belli (Latin). An act or event used to justify going to war, or which
provokes war.
p. 189 Alors,
Paris, qu’est-ce que tu dis, toi? Paris, dis-moi ce que j’aime. “Hey, Paris,
what are you saying? Paris, tell me what I love.” (French).
p. 190 the
Prix Goncourt is a real and very prestigious literary prize in France. Unlike
the lucrative Booker prize, the winner gets a nominal $10, so capitalizing on
sales is perhaps more justifiable:
http://www.literature-awards.com/prix_goncourt.htm
p. 190
British and French literary moeurs. Practices, usages.
p. 200 Madge
was “lancée” – tends to mean “had built up speed’ : in this context, and with
the mention of the parabolic course she would describe, perhaps “off on one”?
(French).
p.202 “It was
the one thing needful”: "But one thing is needful."—Luke 10:42.Jesus
is telling Martha that though she is careful, she is troubled about too many
different things. However, what the one thing was, in Jesus’s mind, is
much-debated. Love? Attention? Knowledge (of Jesus)?
p. 202 “the flâneurs
were flaning,” Jake switches into a lot
more French when in France: it is a simple, lovely reminder of his former life
here, about which we learn hardly anything.
p. 205 – ex
officio romantic: (Latin).
p. 206 “I
didn’t care for the role of valet de sentiment which Madge
had prepared for me,” A valet is also a knave in cards – so the knave of hearts
is evoked here. (French).
p. 206, “As
for the Prix Goncourt itself, je m’en fîchais,” – something
like – I couldn’t have cared less. (French).
p. 207, a
“boîte” – a nightclub. (French).
p. 208 “I
bought a tartine..” strictly speaking, a slice of bread.
(French).
p. 208 the
fontaine des Médicis – picture http://www.paris-views.com/html/HTML2049.htm?0,1,Title,2049
Acis and
Galateea, described in the text, are at http://www.paris-views.com/html/HTML2052.htm?0,1,Title,2052
The story is
another love triangle along the Mars, Venus and Vulcan lines: The nymph Galatea
loves the shepherd Acis, who returns her affection. Both are counselled in
their love by the shepherd Damon. The monster Polyphemus is jealous and
threatens Acis, while Coridon, another shepherd, advises him against violence.
Polyphemus, however, crushes Acis with a massive stone, whereupon Galatea,
half- divine, uses her powers to turn him into a fountain.A full account of the
myth at http://www.online-mythology.com/acis_galatea/
which suggests some parallels between Polyphemus and Hugo, ( a gentle, clumsy
giant tamed by love).
p. 208 “a gentle refutation of Berkeley”
p. 208 “huge
rain-marked, weather-stained, pigeon-splattered, dark-green Polyphemus,” in this photo, you can see more clearly
the figure looming over the lovers - http://www.senat.fr/visite/fontaine/
p. 209 St
Eustache, “a forest” of pillars, the best picture I can find on the net of this
interior, is at http://www.arnaudfrichphoto.com/e_orgue_saint-eustache_1.htm
- any better suggestions gratefully received.
p. 211
“passing Diderot, where he sits amid the acacia trees,” http://www.paris-views.com/html/HTML3106.htm?0,1,Title,3106
p. 215-220 –
Jake has already pursued Hugo, one of his two objects of desire, through
London, unsuccessfully; now he pursues Anna, the other, through Paris. What do
these twin searches mean?
p. 216 “As I
saw Anna turning towards the gardens, my heart leapt up, as the heart of Aeneas
must have done when he saw Dido making for the cave.”
p. 221 the
Hospital – white walls. There is a picture of the hospital that was actually in
the Goldhawk rd at a most extraordinary site - http://www.strab.net/050.jpg it’s number is 050044.
p. 223 “Dave
had seen me like this before” – Jake’s condition seems to the reader rather
desperate and extreme, and yet he makes this comment almost casually. Might
Dave have also looked after Jake when he was first suffering from his shattered
nerves?
p. 226 “I
fixed my eyes upon the sky above the Shepherd’s Bush Empire,” –
http://www.shepherds-bush-empire.co.uk/empire/venue_info/index.cfm
Pictures of
1950s hospitals
p. 233 “the
editor was calling on the optimates” a conservative political faction in
ancient Rome – has come to be shorthand for the aristocracy or nobility.
p. 255 “the
impossibility of Hugo’s loving Sadie loomed over me inexpressibly”
p. 256 “He
was still very pale, and as he looked up at me anxiously from underneath the
bandage, his face wrinked and intent, he looked like Rembrandt.” After looking at many different
paintings, …
http://www.mystudios.com/rembrandt/rembrandt-paintings-1669.html
I think this
one is the closest to anxious and intent:
http://www.mystudios.com/rembrandt/rembrandt-scenes-apostle-paul.html
p.258 ‘ “I’m going to become a watchmaker” ‘: Hugo’s watch-making skills appear in another IM novel, when in The Philosopher’s Pupil, Hugo is said to have died and left his watches to Jake.
p. 264 “I
sprang through it like Nijinsky” : may be the ballet dancer, but on the other
hand, there is a betting theme in this book, and Nijinsky was also a famous
race horse. http://www.hackwriters.com/Champhorse.htm
p.266 – Jake has followed Hugo down Campden Hill Road from Holland Park Avenue. He has therefore begun walking down the hill to Kensington. It is now that he visits Lyons’ for the second time in the book: see page 10.
Chapter 20
p. 275 Jake’s reflections on the bus
p. 283 “Like a sea wave curling over me came Anna’s voice… the words came slowly, gilded by her utterance. They turned over in the air slowly and then fell; and the splendour of the husky gold filled the shop, transforming the cats into leopards and Mrs Tinckham into an aged Circe.”
Circe is the enchantress from the Odyssey: she was best-known, according to one website, for her ability to turn men into animals with the wave of her wand. Does that mean the cats are men Mrs Tinckham has transformed? See
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/circe.html
http://www.loggia.com/myth/circe.html
Further
reading for Under the Net:
Go to library and look up in
big bibliography.
