Nora, The Ape-Woman
Page 21
12 This is not what actually happens at the end of Ouha; it is not clear whether the text is merely simplifying in the interests of brevity, or whether the shocking conclusion of the novel is being censored from the account.
13 In an era when contraception was awkward and unmentionable, it was rumored that many women of high status but loose morals employed hysterectomies as a means of solving the problem.
14 At this point the author refers the reader to Homo-Deus, le satyre invisible. As with Ouha, however, his brief synopsis of the earlier novel leaves out the actual conclusion, which seems to have been completely erased from the “history” assumed by the present novel, along with two of the characters featured therein.
15 Clemenceau (1918). Geoffroy—whose name was more usually spelled Geffroy—had previously written for Clemenceau’s newspaper La Justice, and Clemenceau appointed him as director of the Gobelins tapestry factory in 1908.
16 The name of this fictitious order might be derived from a story by Jean Richepin, “Le Saint-Pleur,” published in the illustrated supplement of Le Figaro in 1891.
17 Jeanne d’Arc had already been canonized, in 1920, three days after Marie Alacoque.
18 This must, of course, have been written before the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. On the other hand, some people might contend that it happened anyway.
19 Anatole France lived, toward the end of his life, at no. 5 Villa Saïd, at one end of the Avenue Foch. The Rue Spontini, where Nora supposedly lives, is at the other end, within easy walking distance
20 In contemplating the origin of this strange name, it is useful to bear in mind that Alexandre Dumas had set a famous precedent of employing collaborators to do his background research for him and provide rough drafts for him to embellish, to whom he referred as his literary “negroes.” Jacquot is the name conventionally given in France to parrots, in much the same spirit as they are called Polly in England. Champsaur dictated all his later works to a series of amanuenses, but Anatole France, although he did employ a secretary to assist him in his later years, still preferred to use a pen when composing.
21 Neither of the actual surviving Châteaux de La Martinière is anywhere near Villefranche; Ernest Paris has probably given that name to his holiday home in the south of France in honor of the famous polymath Antoine-Augustin Bruzen de La Martinière 91683-1746), compiler of the Grand Dictionnaire Géographique et Critique (10 vols, 1726-39).
22 This is the only reference in Nora to Huguette de Virmile, whom Marc Vanel married at the end of Homo-Deus: Le Satyre invisible, and who would be much younger than thirty-five in 1928 if the two texts were consistent.
23 The quotation, here translated literally (the standard English version is differently phrased), is from the French Bible’s version of Luke 7:47. It goes on: “because He loves you a great deal.” Jesus is speaking to the female sinner who washes his feet with her hair.
24 The timing of this introduction, in which three days seem to be entangled, has become somewhat confused by this point, as well as inconsistent with the implications previous chapter. The text also seems confused with regard to who has already met whom, probably as a result of its episodes having been composed out of the order in which they appear in the text.
25 Célimène is one of the principal characters in Molière’s Le Misanthrope—an incorrigible flirt who talks about everyone maliciously behind their backs.
26 “Consul the Man Chimp” was actually a series of chimpanzees, all with the same stage name, exhibited around the world by the American animal trainer Frank Bostock between 1896 and 1910, including a stint at the Folies Bergère.
27 Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos of Crete, was cursed by Poseidon, and thus caused to lust after a white bull; as a result of the consummation of her passion, she gave birth to the Minotaur. Champsaur had never seen an actual orang-utan, and was thus unaware that their reproductive apparatus is by no means taurean in its dimensions.
28 Champsaur could not have been aware in 1929 of the fact that Edgar Wallace would write the script that eventually became the basis for the movie King Kong in 1931, but he had probably seen the silent movies based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan books, which might have helped to prompt him to write Ouha.
29 This notion, first popularized by Camille Flammarion in the classic Lumen (1872), had already been the subject of a speculative novel written in English, Around a Distant Star (1904) by “Jean Delaire” (the French-born Pauline Touchemoulin, later Mrs. Muirson Blake, 1868-1950).
30 I have left this expression untranslated because of its subsequent involvement in wordplay that would be lost if it were merely rendered as “preliminaries.” It’s literal significance is “the trivialities of the door”, and it originally referred to the patter employed by fairground showmen trying to entice clients into their booths; as early as the 1820s, however, it became one of the most commonplace literary euphemisms for sexual foreplay, verbal or physical.
31 It was conventional for Parisian publishers of the era to produce a number of special copies of their books, usually large-sized and cloth-bound, printed on high quality “Japanese paper,” which would be signed by the author. The preliminary material of Nora states that ten such copies were produced of that book.
32 Phryné was a famous Greek courtesan. As the book is fictitious, we can only guess at its contents, but it doubtless made use of the legends stating that she was the model for at least two famous statues of Aphrodite by Praxiteles, that she financed the rebuilding of the walls of Thebes, and that when she was put on trial (on an unspecified charge), the tide was turned in her favor when her defender—one of her many lovers—removed her robe in order to display her breasts to the judges, who were so impressed that they acquitted her. The courtroom scene was featured in a famous painting by Jean-Léon Gêrome, Phryné devant l’Areopage (1861) and she was the subject of an 1893 opera by Camille Saint-Saëns. Anatole France wrote a novel about another famous courtesan, Thaïs (1890), which some consider to be his masterpiece. It was not illustrated by Édouard Chimot, although a reprint of the novel would have fitted very well into the series of high-quality illustrated editions the artist produced in the 1920s under the rubric of Les Éditions d’Art Devambez.
33 This chapter title adapts the famous Latin proverb, the source of the phrase “post-coital triste,” attributed (apocryphally) to the physician Galen: post coïtum omne animal triste est, sive gallus et mulier [all animals are sad after sex, except for cocks and women].
34 Pédauque was a mythical queen of the Visigothic kingdom centered on Toulouse in the fifth and sixth centuries, who was supposed to have had (as her name signifies in Occitan) the feet of a goose. Anatole France summarized her legend and many historical variants thereof in his Voltairean comic novel La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque (1893). The Pédauque whose injunctions Ernest Paris is ignoring, however, will subsequently be revealed to be his maidservant.
35 L’Humanité, founded by Jean Jaurès in 1904, was the newspaper of the French Communist Party for many years (it still exists but has long been independent). As an enthusiastic member of the party, which he had joined during his angry participation in the Dreyfus Affair, Anatole France assisted in the founding of the paper and was a frequent contributor until his death.
36 A famous collection of Latin love poems by “Janus Secundus”, which went through numerous French versions in the 18th and 19th centuries. The edition cited was published in 1826.
37 I have translated this quotation from the French Bible literally, although the standard English rendering of Matthew 23:8 is not much different.
38 The girl has mistaken Lemay’s auteur [author] for hauteur [height], perhaps deliberately.
39 Déa is the object of the affections of the surgically-deformed Gwynplaine in Victor Hugo’s novel L’Homme qui rit [The Man Who Laughs].
40 The historian Ernest Renan (1823-1892)—from whom Champsaur might have borrowed his hypothetical author’s forename—published a c
lassic speculative Vie de Jésus (1863; tr. as The Life of Jesus) treating the account given by the gospels with a conscientious scholarly skepticism, which scandalized the devout.
41 Paphnuce is the name of the central character of Anatole France’s Thaïs.
42 “Ravachol” (Francis Koenigstein, 1859-1892) became the archetypal anarchist bomber of legend when he was guillotined for having carried out dynamite attacks against two magistrates, although his responsibility for those crimes remains highly dubious; the one murder to which he actually confessed had no political significance whatsoever, and was seemingly motivated by desperation. He was, however, glorified by real anarchists as a hero and a martyr, and it was in protest against his judicial murder that Auguste Vaillant threw a firework into to the Chambre des Députés in 1893, which was also described as a “bomb” by his prosecutors, and cemented the scarecrow image of the bomb-throwing anarchist.
43 The central character of Le Crucifié is simply named Jesus, in spite of this argument.
44 Pontius Pilate never published anything, and thus cannot be held to have ignored Jesus, but Anatole France’s most famous short story, “Le Procurateur de Judée” (1893; tr. as “The Procurator of Judea”), in which a retired Pilate reminisces about old times, reveals in its punch-line that although he can remember Mary Magdalen very well, he has no memory at all of Jesus.
45 I have left this noun in lower case, as the author does, evidently referring to a plant of the hydrangea variety. If it were a proper name it would refer to a female Roman orator famous for making a speech opposing the taxation of women, on grounds similar to the slogan adopted by the American Revolutionaries—no taxation without representation—but that would make a paradox of the employment of the word as an emblem of stupidity.
46 L’Amour (1859; tr. as Love) was one of the historian Jules Michelet’s most popular books.
47 The Romantic painter Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) was not very exceptional; it is not obvious why Ernest Paris would prefer him to all others, but Anatole France wrote a biography of him for a book of his paintings and drawing issued in connection with the centenary of his death.
48 The story is, of course, implausible, because the formula used in the Latin mass is Dominus vobiscum [The Lord be with you], which could just as easily be employed on any other occasion…
49 The reference, found in Plutarch although nor original to him, is to the god Silenus, a prototype of the satyrs.
50 The term “vaginal gland” is nowadays restricted to Bartholin’s glands, which secrete mucus into the vagina and are homologous with the bulbourethral glands, or Cowper’s glands, in males. The description of the operation is not sufficiently clear to determine whether the latter are the glands to which Voronoff is referring, although they seem unlikely candidates for a crucial source of revivification. He cannot, however, be referring to the prostate gland, which is singular, although its homologue in females is the paired Skene’s glands.
51 Georg Friedrich Nicolai (1874-1964) was one of the co-signatories in 1914, with Albert Einstein, of an “Appeal to Europeans” opposing Germany’s entry into the Great War and invasion of Belgium, and lost his status in consequence, although he was still assigned to military duties until he was court-martialed in 1916, when he escaped to Demark. Briefly rehabilitated by the Weimar Republic, accusations of treason by right-wing groups forced him to emigrate to South America in 1922, where he became a professor at the University of Chile, so Ernest Paris could not have met him in Berlin in 1929. Anatole France paid tribute to the Appeal, which was reprinted in Nicolai’s book Die Biologie des Krieges [The Biology of War] (1917), after receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, and he met Nicolai in Berlin on his way back to France from Stockholm in 1921, in company with Einstein (who was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for physics belatedly, the following year.)
52 The reference is to Félix Potin (1844-1955), a successful grocer who became the proprietor of a chain of department stores, which were at their peak in the 1920s, and were seen by some as an emblem of vulgarity.
53 The reference is to Charles Rappoport (1865-1941), a Russian-born French communist politician, who was a representative of the Comintern throughout the 1920s. His numerous books included La Philosophie de l’histoire comme science de l’évolution [The Philosophy of History as Evolutionary Science] (1903).
54 Aristide Briand (1862-1932) was the President of the Council for the eleventh time between July and November 1929, but held the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs continually from 1925 until his death. A co-founder of L’Humanité, he is nowadays remembered as the leading pacifist in European politics during the interbellum period, when he put forward a plan for the United Federal States of Europe.
55 Louis Barthou (1862-1934) had served one brief term as President of the Council before the Great War and held numerous other ministerial posts during his long career, and was appointed Ministry of Justice in 1926. Champsaur loathed him, not so much for his conservative views as because he considered him to be a model of hypocritical opportunism, and made derogatory remarks about him in many of his novels. The reason why his remark qualifies as a quip is illustrated by the rapid reversal of the commonplace judgment into the conventional form of the common quotation that is being mangled (the word “fools” being substituted for the word “poor”).
56 Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934) served his third term as President of the Council immediately prior to Brian from July 1926 to July 1929, and was presumably still in that post when the author wrote this passage.
57 This reference to La légende des siècles [the legend of the centuries] gives the reader a specific clue as to exactly which “poem” Nora is dancing: Victor Hugo’s flamboyant epic of progress.
58 The discovery of what Robert Millikan called “cosmic rays”—thought at first to consist entirely of electromagnetic radiation, although they are actually a cocktail whose principal components are now known to be high-energy protons and atomic nuclei—is now dated to 1909 when Theodor Wulf set up his electrometers to demonstrate higher levels of radiation at the top of the Eiffel Tower than at the bottom. The significance of the experiment was not widely accepted or realized at the time, however, and it was not until Victor Hess sent electrometers up to altitudes higher than five thousand meters in 1912 that the phenomenon really began to generate the “noise” that, after an interruption by the Great War, reflected the increasing interest of scientists in the 1920s.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
105 Adolphe Ahaiza. Cybele
102 Alphonse Allais. The Adventures of Captain Cap
02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life
118 Henri Austruy. The Eupantophone
119 Henri Austry. The Petitpaon Era
120 Henri Austry. The Olotelepan
130 Barillet-Lagargousse. The Final War
103 S. Henry Berthoud. Martyrs of Science
23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
121 Richard Bessière. The Masters of Silence
148 Béthune (Chevalier de). The World of Mercury
26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller
06 Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future
92 Louis Boussenard. Monsieur Synthesis
39 Alphonse Brown. City of Glass
89 Alphonse Brown. The Conquest of the Air
98 Emile Calvet. In A Thousand Years
40 Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow
81 Félicien Champsaur. Ouha, King of the Apes
91. Félicien Champsaur. The Pharaoh’s Wife
133 Félicien Champsaur. Homo-Deus
143 Félicien Champsaur. Nora, The Ape-Woman
03 Didier de Chousy. Ignis
97 Michel Corday. The Eternal Flame
113 André Couvreur. The Necessary Evil
114 André Couvreur. Caresco, Superman
115 André Couv
reur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 1)
116 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)
117 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3)
67 Captain Danrit. Undersea Odyssey
149 Camille Debans. The Misfortunes of John Bull
17 C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)
05 Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole
68 Georges T. Dodds. The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men
125 Charles Dodeman. The Silent Bomb
49 Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut
144 Odette Dulac. The War of the Sexes
145 Renée Dunan. The Ultimate Pleasure
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid;
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Thieves of Silence
10 Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself
08 Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus
01 Henri Falk. The Age of Lead
51 Charles de Fieux. Lamékis]
108 Louis Forest. Someone Is Stealing Children In Paris
31 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega
70 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega & The Shadowmen
112 H. Gayar. The Marvelous Adventures of Serge Myrandhal on Mars
88 Judith Gautier. Isoline and the Serpent-Flower
136 Delphine de Girardin. Balzac’s Cane
146 Jules Gros. The Fossil Man
57 Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality
134 Edmond Haraucourt. Daah, the First Human
24 Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods
131 Eugene Hennebert. The Enchanted City
137 P.-J. Hérault. The Clone Rebellion
140 P. d’Ivoi & H. Chabrillat. Around the World on Five Sous
107 Jules Janin. The Magnetized Corpse
29 Michel Jeury. Chronolysis