Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) (60 page)

Débit
(Fr.), short for
débit de boissons
, bar

déchéance
(Fr.) degeneration, decline

Dis
(Fr.) Say

dumm
(Ger.) stupid, dense

enceinte
(Fr.) pregnant

en maître
(Fr.) like the master, in charge

entresol
(Fr.) mezzanine, an intermediate floor between the main floors of a building

erdball
(Ger.) globe

esprit de corps
(Fr.) group morale, often military

Et alors?
(Fr.) So what?

femme de ménage
(Fr.) cleaning lady

fiançailles
(Fr.) engagement

flic
(Fr. slang) cop

fougue
(Fr.) ardour, spirit

Foute-moi donc la paix, imbécile!
(Fr.) Get lost, idiot!

Freiherr
(Ger.) baron

Gang
(Ger.) hallway

garçon
(Fr.) waiter

Garçon, l’addition
(Fr.) Waiter, cheque please

Geist
(Ger.) spirit, mind

Geschmack
(Ger.) taste

gigot
(Fr.) leg of mutton or lamb

gnädiges Fräulein
(Ger.) gracious lady

grande amoureuse
(Fr.) a great lover (female)

grands messieurs du Berne
(Fr.) great men of the Berne

Heraus!
(Ger.) Get out!

Herrgott
(Ger., interjection) (by) Christ

Himmel
(Ger., interjection) Heavens

Hoch
(Ger.) Raise your glass (to)

Ich danke sehr
(Ger.) Much obliged

Ich hasse dich
(Ger.) I hate you

Il n’y a rien pour vous
(Fr.) There’s nothing for you

intime
(Fr.) intimate; also used in English as a self-conscious gallicism

Ja
(Ger.) yes

Je ne demande pas mieux!
(Fr.) That sounds good to me

Knabe
(Ger.) youngster

lasse
(Fr.) weary

liebhaberei
(Ger.) hobby

loge
(Fr.) a caretaker’s lodge, either a dedicated living space within an apartment or rooming house or a separate dwelling adjacent to it

Mathematiker
(Ger.) mathematician

méchant
(Fr.) malicious

même jeu
(Fr.) the same story

mœurs
(Fr.) manners and customs

Mokka
(Ger.) mocha, coffee

mon Dieu!
(Fr.) My God!

Monsieur est distrait aujourd’hui
(Fr.) The gentleman is absentminded today

Na
(Ger., interjection) Well!

Na ja!
(Ger., interjection) more typically
naja
, ‘Well now!’, implying a degree of ironic detachment

ne plus ultra
(Lat.) to the most extreme possible degree

noch einmal
(Ger.) once again

nom d’amour
(Fr.) pet name

Oh là là
(Fr.) variant of ‘Ooh là là’, an expression of pleased surprise, often used by a man to comment upon the appearance of an attractive woman

parti
(Fr.) a suitable romantic or marital match

passe-partout
(Fr.) a skeleton or master key

Passez votre chemin!
(Fr.) Move along!

perbacco
(It., interjection) from ‘By Bacchus’, used to emphasize a positive comment

Pfui
(Ger.) interjection of disgust, comparable to English ‘ugh’

pièce de résistance
(Fr.) originally ‘the most substantial dish of a meal’, now more generally ‘the prize item in a collection’

plat du jour
(Fr.) the daily special

pommes a l’huile
(Fr.) a potato salad, made at times with onion and mustard, and dressed with oil and vinegar

poseuse
(Fr., and Eng. by adoption) a female poseur, one adopting an affected or pretentious persona

pour rire
(Fr.) laughable

premier venu
(Fr.) the first person who comes along

procédés
(Fr.) processes, behaviours

Prosit
(Ger.) a toast; ‘Cheers!’

Quel type!
(Fr.) What a character!

quoi?
(Fr.) What?

raison d’être
(Fr.) reason for existence

Rapin
(Fr.) an apprentice painter

Reisebureau
(Ger.) travel or tourist agency

Salaud
(Fr.) bastard

sans gêne
(Fr.) lack of embarrassment or restraint

sekt
(Ger.) sparkling wine

Schatz
(Ger.) sweetheart, lit. ‘treasure’

Schauspielerin
(Ger.) actress

Schicksal
(Ger.) fate

Schurke!
(Ger.) Scoundrel!

Schwein
(Ger.) pig

Schweinerai
(Ger.) disgusting mess, lit. ‘piggishness’

Schön
(Ger.) Very well

Sois pas bête!
(Fr.) Don’t be stupid!

sommelier
(Fr., and Eng. by adoption) wine steward

sotto voce
(It.) in hushed tones

sympathisch
(Ger.) likeable, congenial

Table d’hôte
(Fr.) lit. ‘the host’s table’, a common table for boarders at a boarding house

tableau vivant
(Fr.) lit. ‘a living picture’—a motionless person or group of people theatrically posed and costumed to represent a well-known work of art

Tant pis
(Fr.) Too bad

terrasse
(Fr.) the outside eating area of a café

tête à tête
(Fr.) at close quarters, lit. ‘face to face’

Tor
(Ger.) fool

Tout de suite
(Fr.) right away

types
(Fr.) guys, blokes

Va-t’en!
(Fr.) Go away!

vieille barbe
(Fr.) grey beard, old bore

vis-à-vis
(Fr.) person facing opposite

Was heisst das
(Ger.) What does that mean?

Was wünschen Sie
(Ger.) What can I do for you?

Wunderbar
(Ger.) wonderful

Zigeuner
(Ger.) gypsies

Zut
(Fr., interjection) damn

¹
Ezra Pound, ‘Wyndham Lewis’ (1920), in
Literary Essays of Ezra Pound
(New York: New Directions, 1968), 424.

²
T. S. Eliot, ‘Tarr’,
The Egoist
, 5/8 (Sept. 1918), 106, and ‘Contemporanea’,
The Egoist
, 5/6 (June–July 1918), 84.

³
The Egoist
, 5/9 (Oct. 1918), 124.

⁴
See e.g. Fredric Jameson,
Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), and other critical works listed in the Select Bibliography.

⁵
See Paul O’Keeffe,
Some Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis
(London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), 93, 106, and 108.

⁹
Wyndham Lewis (ed.),
Blast
1 (1914; repr. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1981), 30.

⁶
See O’Keeffe on Lewis’s early infatuation with Dostoyevsky and Goethe (
Some Sort of Genius
, 70) and how Lewis urged the ‘disreputable Slav literature’ of Dostoyevsky on Kate Lechmere around 1912 (ibid. 122). Rebecca West notably compared Kreisler to Dostoyevsky’s character Stravrogin from
The Possessed
in an early review (‘
Tarr’, The Nation
(10 Aug. 1918); repr. in
Agenda
, 7/3 and 8/1 (Autumn–Winter, 1969–70), 67) and Pound wrote ‘He is the only English writer who can be compared with Dostoyevsky’ (‘Wyndham Lewis’, 424).

⁷
Pound, ‘Wyndham Lewis’, 424.

⁸
Ford Madox Ford, ‘Dedicatory Letter to Stella Ford’, in
The Good Soldier
, ed. Thomas C. Moser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 4.

¹⁰
For an exemplary instance of this effect, see Giacomo Balla’s painting
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
(1912), which represents the frenetic movements of a dachshund’s legs and tail as a blur of overlapping images.

¹¹
See e.g. Marinetti’s statement in ‘The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism’ that younger Futurists will in the future ‘attempt to kill us, driven by a hatred all the more implacable because their hearts will be intoxicated with love and admiration for us’ (
Futurism: An Anthology
, ed. Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Whitman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 53).

¹²
‘The Death of Futurism’,
The Egoist
, 4/1 (Jan. 1917), 7.

¹³
See O’Keeffe,
Some Sort of Genius
, 173.

¹⁴
Lawrence’s best-known statement on Marinetti and Futurism is found in his letter of 5 June 1914 to Edward Garrett. See
The Letters of D. H. Lawrence
, vol. ii.
1913–1916
, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 180.

¹⁵
Blasting & Bombardiering
(2nd rev. ed., Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 30.

¹⁶
Wyndham Lewis,
Doom of Youth
(Chatto and Windus, 1932; repr. Haskell House Publishers, 1973), 10.

¹⁷
Futurism: An Anthology
, 119.

¹⁸
Wyndham Lewis,
Rude Assignment: An Intellectual Autobiography
, ed. Toby Foshay (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1984), 165.

¹⁹
Blasting & Bombardiering
, 88.

²⁰
Letter of Mar. 1916,
The Letters of Wyndham Lewis
, ed. W. K. Rose (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1963), 76.

¹
Modernism and the Culture of Market Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 215.

²
See Paul O’Keeffe,
Some Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis
(London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), 206.

³
Wyndham Lewis Collection, Cornell University, Box 164.

⁴
Blasting & Bombardiering
, 2nd rev. edn. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 90.

⁵
Wyndham Lewis Collection, Box 96, folders 37 and 135.