Well, it turns out that our chewy nougat center has, I don't know, a thin ribbon of caramel or something running through it, in the form of the cottager's completely superfluous and interminable backstory. Bah. We dug down four levels deep into this nested narrative, now we claw our way back up. First, though, our next cover! This edition was published sometime in the 1990s by Holt, Rinehart and Wilson.
Aww, sad monster.
Mostly literary notes, and a lot of them, after the jump!
7:39 - "Volney's Ruins of Empires." Felix reads to his family (and, unwittingly, the monster) from this book by Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney. Volney was a philosopher, historian, and politician of the late 1700s and early 1800s, and his Ruins of Empires was a genuinely radical anti-establishment book published in 1791, basically calling for all the reigning ideologies of the day to be torn down. You can read it here, if you're so inclined.
14:47 - "Constantinople." Safie's father plans to flee to Constantinople, the largest city in Turkey, now of course known as Istanbul, not Constantinople. Been a long time gone, Constantinople. Why did Constantinople get the works? Well, it actually started as Byzantium, founded by Greek colonists in 657 BCE, thought to be named after the personal name "Byzas," who maybe was the leader of the colonists, or something. Around 330 CE it was made into the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine, who had it renamed in honor of himself as Constantinople. It remained the capital of the Roman Empire (in various forms) until 1453 when it was conquered by the Islamic Ottoman Empire, becoming its capital instead. During this time period, Europeans still referred to the city as Constantinople, while the Turks themselves sometimes called it Kostantiniyye, and sometimes Istanbul. The latter name is generally thought to come from a Medieval Greek term meaning "to the city," reflecting its status as by far the most important city in the area. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed following World War I, it was replaced by the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923, and in 1930 the city (which by this point was referred to by several different names) was officially renamed Istanbul.
Short answer? It's nobody's business but the Turks.
18:32 - "through France to Lyons, and across Mont Cenis to Leghorn." Felix leads the fugitives through Lyons, aka Lyon, a city in east-central France that is, incidentally, where the Lumière brothers invented motion pictures as we now know them. They cross into Italy at Mont Cenis, an alpine mountain that contains one of the most important passes between the two countries. They end up in Leghorn (more properly now Livorno) a port city on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy, that was one of the most important Mediterranean ports of the Renaissance.
25:17 - "portmanteau." Oh man, we should've read Through the Looking-Glass first! A portmanteau is simply a type of suitcase or luggage that opens into two equal halves. Though this is of course what it means in this context, nowadays the word is better known for the meaning given it by Lewis Carroll via Humpty Dumpty, when Alice asks him to explain the strange words in "Jabberwocky." "You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word." An easy example is the word "smog," a combination of "smoke" and "fog." We'll get to this one soon enough, I promise.
25:30 - "Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, Sorrows of Werter." The monster very conveniently finds three French volumes abandoned in a suitcase in the German forest. The first of these was The Sorrows of Werter, more properly The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1774. It's an epistolary novel that chronicles the title character's unrequited love for his friend Lotte, engaged and later married to another friend, Albert. Werther eventually despairs and kills himself. The novel was Goethe's first, published when he was 24, and made him an instant literary celebrity. In later years, Goethe distanced himself from the book, feeling that it overshadowed all of his other work in the public consciousness, and also a little embarrassed at his dumb 24-year-old self's having essentially made his own unrequited love for one Charlotte Buff public knowledge. Fun fact: rashes of copycat suicides after a single, well-publicized suicide are also known as "the Werther effect." The whole thing can be read here.
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, aka Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographical essays written by the Greek historian Plutarch in the first century CE. They were written in pairs, one Roman and one Grecian, to highlight certain commonalities. Twenty-three pairs and four unpaired lives still exist, and (despite noted inaccuracies) they are an important source of information not only about their subjects, but of the time period they were written. A 19th-century English translation can be found here.
John Milton's 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, mentioned last installment, is easily the most familiar of these three works to modern audiences, I would say. The story follows Satan, recently fallen from Heaven, as he tempts Adam and Eve into their own fall. It's notable for making Satan practically into a tragic hero, rather than as a pure villain. A useful annotated version can be read here.
27:31 - "the path of my departure was free." Oh for crying out loud. Now Percy Shelley is having the monster quote from that same poem of his that he previously shoved into Victor's mouth.
29:01 - "admire peacable law-givers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus." These are, of course, various real and legendary leaders taken from Plutarch's Lives. Romulus, twin brother of Remus and legendary founder of Rome, most famously killed his brother over an argument about where their new city should be located and went to war with the Sabines because Rome needed women and he figured "why not just steal them?" Plutarch pairs him up with Theseus, legendary Greek hero and founder-king of Athens and probably best remembered for killing the Minotaur. Theseus, like Romulus, kidnapped many a woman and also killed a family member, this time his son Hippolytus whom Theseus' second wife Phaedra was in love. Hippolytus rejected her, she claimed he raped her and then killed herself, and Theseus killed him out of revenge. Yeah, a lot of those old myths are like this.
Next up, Plutarch compares Numa Pompilius and Lycurgus of Sparta. Numa was the second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus. He was of Sabine origin (the Sabines having been "united" with Rome as described above). Celebrated for his wisdom, moderation, and piety, especially after Romulus' tyranny, he was supposedly responsible for establishing many of Rome's traditional religious and political practices. Lycurgus similarly helped establish the practices of austerity, militarism, and equality that the state of Sparta would become famous for.
Last, the monster mentions Solon, the only one of the five that historians are pretty sure was actually a real person. Living from around 638-558 BCE, he was an Athenian statesman who was temporarily given dictatorial powers by Athenian citizens in order to sort out all the various warring city-states and petty tyrants in Greece. He instituted a series of political, economic, and moral reforms that are generally credited with laying the foundation for the democracy that Athens, in its turn, would be famous for. (Incidentally, Plutarch pairs Solon up with the Roman Publius Valerius Publicola, who helped overthrow the Roman monarchy and establish the Roman Republic.)
Phew, okay! That was quite a lot! Thanks for sticking with me. We'll finish up Volume Two next time.
If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!
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