{"id":4517,"date":"2014-11-25T19:10:52","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T17:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpethzprd.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/?p=4517"},"modified":"2024-02-20T13:40:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T11:40:33","slug":"proust-my-family-and-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/2014\/11\/25\/proust-my-family-and-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Proust, my family and Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was reading Proust<\/a>, I noted with some amusement the character named simply “Ski” in the first volume of his appearance, a sculptor and amateur musician who is later revealed to be properly called “Viradobetski”, an actual name which was too complicated for the dear Madame Verdurin<\/i> to try to remember. I just learnt from my better educated brother that<\/p>\n

\n Proust s\u2019est inspir\u00e9 d\u2019Henri Kowalski n\u00e9 en 1841, fils d\u2019un officier polonais \u00e9migr\u00e9 en Bretagne. Il \u00e9tait \u00e0 la fois compositeur de musique et concertiste.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\nProust used as model Henri Kowalski, born in 1841, son of a Polish officer who emigrated to Brittany. He was a composer as well as a concert player.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

to quote an authoritative list of Proust characters<\/a>. <\/p>\n

That Henri Kowalski is, it turns out, the son of Nepomus Adam Louis Kowalski, whose brother was Joachim Gabriel Kowalski, one of whose sons was Eug\u00e8ne Joseph Ange Kowalski, one of whose sons was Louis Andr\u00e9 Marie Joseph Kowalski, the fourth son of whom was my father. This puts me at genealogical distance (at most) six to a character from Proust. (Of course, rumors that Viradobetski was inspired by someone else can be safely discarded).<\/p>\n

Wikipedia has a small page on Henri Kowalski, who was quite active and successful as a musician, and a rather impressive traveller. He spent thirteen years in Australia, leaving enough traces to be the subject of public lectures<\/a> at the university of Melbourne. There are a few of his pieces on Youtube, for instance here<\/a>. He also wrote a travel book<\/a> which I now intend to read…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was reading Proust, I noted with some amusement the character named simply “Ski” in the first volume of his appearance, a sculptor and amateur musician who is later revealed to be properly called “Viradobetski”, an actual name which was too complicated for the dear Madame Verdurin to try to remember. I just learnt … Continue reading Proust, my family and Australia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[313,1185,113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france","category-literature","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}