Huis Clos (original French title) PRONUNCIATION
In the judicial/legal field, "un huis-clos" is "a deliberation behind closed doors" or, to use a bit of Latin, "in camera". But the expression is used in a far wider range of contexts in French to mean some kind of claustrophobic confrontation or stand-off between, usually, two people.Direction: "A drawing-room in Second Empire style." (3)
A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained. The name is derived from the sixteenth-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the seventeenth century, and made their first written appearance in 1642. In a large sixteenth- to early eighteenth-century English house, a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or a distinguished guest who was occupying one of the main apartments in the house could "withdraw" for more privacy. It was often off the great chamber (or the great chamber's descendant, the state room or salon) and usually led to a formal, or "state" bedroom.
Second Empire is an architectural style, most popular between 1865 and 1880, and so named for the architectural elements in vogue during the era of the Second French Empire. As the Second Empire style evolved from its 17th century Renaissance foundations,it acquired an eclectic mix of earlier European styles, most notably the Baroque often combined with mansard roofs and low, square based domes. The style quickly spread and evolved throughout Europe and crossed the Atlantic. Its suitability for super-scaling allowed it to be widely used in the design of municipal and corporate buildings. In the USA, where one of the leading architects working in the style was Alfred B. Mullett, buildings in the style were often closer to their 17th-century roots than examples of the style found in Europe.
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| Second Empire-style drawing-room |
Garcin: "A false position in a Louis-Philippe dining-room..." (3)
Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the Revolution of 1789 but was nevertheless guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile. He was proclaimed king in 1830 after Charles X was forced to abdicate. Louis Philippe himself was forced to abdicate in 1848 and lived out his life in exile in the United Kingdom. He was the last king to rule France, although Napoleon III would serve as its last monarch.
The Louis Philippe style of furniture, which is still very much in vogue today, is derived from a nineteenth century French style. It takes its name from the monarch who reigned from 1830 to 1848. The simple, softly rounded lines with very little ornamentation, and darker woods such as mahogany, palissandre, and walnut are its distinctive features. Table and commode surfaces are frequently topped with marble.
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| Louis Philippe-style furniture |
Garcin: "A bronze atrocity by-what's the fellow's name?- Barbedienne." (5) PRONUNCIATION
Ferdinand Barbedienne (10 January 1810 – 21 March 1892) was a French metalworker and manufacturer, who was well known as a bronze founder.
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| a Barbedienne masterpiece |
Garcin: "...and it was a regular Black Hole so we never kept our coats on." (13)
In French, the term for "black hole" – "Trous Noir" – is slang for "anus". Garcin is remarking that the office was unbearably hot in a very crass way.
Estelle: "...by understrappers, you know what I mean. Stupid employees who don't know their job." (15)
A business / industrial relations & HR term for a less common word for underling. Originally, a term for someone who harnesses horses. Estelle is definitely putting down these people by relating them to this low-level position in society while also referring to them by a business term.Inez: (singing) "What a crowd in Whitefriars Lane...." (18)
Inez is singing a well-known song about public execution to irritate Garcin, who is attempting not to listen. Whitefriars Lane was a common site of public execution.Inez: "There... you know the way they catch larks- with a mirror? I'm your lark-mirror..." (21)
A lark mirror is a small mirror used to attract and trap small birds attracted to shiny things. In several languages (French, Italian, etc.) the saying "mirror for larks" is used to refer metaphorically to an apparently attractive offer that is really just trying to attract gullible people.Inez: "...sitting there, in a sort of trance, like a yogi..." (22)
A Yogi is a practitioner of Yoga. The word is also used to refer to ascetic practitioners of meditation in a number of South Asian religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.Garcin: "A word was enough to make her flinch. Like a sensitive-plant." (24)
Mimosa pudica (from Latin: pudica "shy, bashful or shrinking"; also called sensitive plant and the touch-me-not), is a creeping annual or perennial herb often grown for its curiosity value: the compound leaves fold inward and droop when touched or shaken, re-opening minutes later. The species is native to South America and Central America, but is now a pantropical weed.Garcin: "I brought a half-caste girl to stay in our house." (25)
Direction: "Her voice grows shrill, truculent." (28)
Half-caste is an archaic term for category of people of mixed race or ethnicity. It is derived from the term Caste, which comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race, and is now considered offensive.Half-caste—along with terms such as caste, quarter-caste and others—were widely used by ethnographers in British colonies in attempts to classify natives. In Latin America, the equivalent term for half-castes was Cholo and Zambo.In just about any area that fell under the crown's dominion, the term was made use of, and anyone of mixed Caucasian and conquered races could be properly described as being half-caste. As such, it did not necessarily carry any stigma with it. For some, the term half-caste is more offensive than mixed-race, even if the latter is suggestive of tainting and dilution of ethnicity.
Feeling or displaying ferocity; aggressively assertive. Expressing bitter, scathing opposition.Estelle: "What's that tune?-I always loved it. Yes, the St. Louis Blues." (32)
"Saint Louis Blues" is a popular American song composed by W. C. Handy in the blues style. It remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire. It was also one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song. It has been performed by numerous musicians of all styles from Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith to Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, and the Boston Pops Orchestra. It has been called "the jazzman's Hamlet".[1] Published in September 1914 by Handy's own company, it later gained such popularity that it inspired the dance step the "Foxtrot".
The version with Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong on cornet was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993. The 1929 version by Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra (with Henry "Red" Allen) was inducted there in 2008.
Inez: "...you'll live in my gaze like a mote in a sunbeam." (34)
Inez is comparing Garcin's future to that of a speck of dust's incapability of escaping the Sun. See also: the Eye of Sauron.
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| the all-seeing Eye of Sauron! |
(Earth Sciences/Physical Geography) a soft wet area of land that gives way under the feet; a bog.Garcin: "...about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." (45)
In John Milton's Paradise Lost:
"He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marl, not like those steps
On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire."
Henry David Thoreau:
"Where an angel travels it will be paradise all the way, but where Satan travels it will be burning marl and cinders."
