Sophie's Choice Explanatory Notes
Chapter Four
Lee Capps
1. 84.1 Cracow
A city in southern Poland and the old royal capital. It largely escaped destruction during World War II.2. 84.9 Warsaw
Poland's modern capitol, located in E. central Poland. It met widespread destruction in the war.3. 84.16 storks . . . Brothers Grimm
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm, German brothers who collected and published German folk tales in the early 19th century. The tales usually feature animal characters and convey a lesson or moral. In Norse legend, the stork is said to deliver human babies, an idea popularized and spread beyond Scandinavia in the 19th century by the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen.4. 85.7 Sukiennice
Built around 1300 and after a fire in 1555, restored by Italian architect Padovano, this hall divides the Rynek Glowny, or market square, of the oldest part of Cracow.5. 85.10 clock tower there on the church of St. Mary's
Construction of this church was finished in 1397. The tower was added in the 15th century. The melody played on the trumpet to mark the hour is stopped short in memory of a watchman killed by a Tartar arrow.6. 86.5 misere
Misery (French)..7. 86.7 vraiment
Really (French).8. 86.13 university
Jagiellonian University. See note 37.9. 87.2 Lodz . . . Lublin
Lodz is a city in central Poland. Before the war the size of its Jewish population ranked second only to Warsaw. Lublin, a region in southeastern Poland, also had a large Jewish population. Lublin City, the principal urban center is the home of Poland's oldest Jewish cemetery, which dates back to the 16th century.10. 87.3 Vienna
The capital of Austria, located in the northeastern part of that country.11. 87.12 Pilsudski
Jozef Pilsudski, 1867-1935. A Polish general and politician, Pilsudkski had socialist leanings, but was more concerned with Polish independence than social aims. Pilsudski denounced pogroms and anti-Semitism, but his compromise, centrist government could do little, practically speaking, to protect Jews from the more conservative and nationalist atmosphere of pre-WWII Poland.12. 87.16 au fond
"At the bottom" (French).13. 87.37 tempetes
Storms (French).14. 87.41 nafka, kurveh
Yiddish, meaning: slut and whore, respectively.15. 88.10 Cossack
Cossacks are an ethnic group from southern Russia known as cavalrymen in the czarist Russian army.16. 88.19 Massenmord
Mass murder (German).17. 89.6 Anschluss
Hitler's plan to expand Germany to its pre-WWI boundaries.18. 89.22 Brest-Litovsk
Now Brest in Belarus, Brest-Litovsk was the location of the signing of a WWI peace treaty, before the general armistice, between Germany, Soviet Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. The agreement forced Russia to recognize the independence of much of Eastern Europe and to cede control of much of the rest of it, including Poland, to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The agreement was made null and void by the general armistice, less than a year later.19. 90.3 hussar
Any of various European light cavalry.20. 90.36 Prague
The capital of the Czech Republic.21. 94.8 chiropractor
A practitioner of chiropractic, a not always well- regarded therapy based primarily on the manipulation of the spine and
other structures of the body.22. 94.15 mamaloshen
Mother-tongue (Yiddish).23. 94.16 goy
Yiddish, meaning a non-Jewish person.24. 95.12 Yehudi Menuhin
Jewish American violinist. He was a child prodigy and also went on to teach and found music schools.25. 95.28-96.1 Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer . . . Look Homeward, Angel
John Dos Passos' (1896-1970) urban novel, Manhattan Transfer, was published in 1925. Ernest Hemingway's (1899-1961) World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929. Look Homeward, Angel (1929) and Of Time and the River (1935) by Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) are autobiographical novels chronicling the childhood and coming of age of a novelist from the American South.26. 96.11 Blitzkrieg
German, meaning lightning war. A military tactic utilizing a sudden, swift, and overwhelming attack by land and by air.27. 96.31 fete champetre
French, meaning a pastoral scene. Literally, a country feast or festival.28. 96.37 Watteau or Fragonard Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), a French Rococo artist best known for his paintings of the aristocracy in outdoor settings. Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806), another Rococo artist known for paintings of people at play. One of Fragonard's famous works if a painting--aptly called The Reader--of a woman engrossed in a book.
29. 97.22 Studs Lonigan
James T. Farrel's trilogy: Young Lonigan: A Boyhood in Chicago Streets (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), and Judgement Day (1935). The Lonigan trilogy is a realistic portray of rough and tumble life on Chicago's South side.30. 103.1 shtetl
A small town (Yiddish)..31. 103.28 nebbish
Yiddish, meaning: timid person.32. 106.6 Oy vey . . . farshtinkener
"Oy vey" is a Yiddish exclamation of disgust. Farshtinkener is Yiddish, meaning rotten.33. 106.38 -40 John Garfield . . . Carole Lombard
In the 1946 film, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Frank Chambers (John Garfield) and Cora Smith (Lana Turner) meet at the roadside cafe owned by Cora's husband, Nick (Cecil Kellaway). Cora and Frank plot to murder Nick. In the 1936 screwball comedy, My Man Godfrey Carole Lombard plays a rich socialite who brings home and hires as the family butler a bum, played by William Powell.34. 107.24 gozlin
Yiddish, meaning swindler.35. 109.26-27 Whitman and Poe and Frost
American poets, Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), and Robert Frost (1874-1963).36. 110.1ff Because . . . Immortality
A poem by American poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)37. 110.26-27 Jagiellonian University
Founded by King Casimir the Great in 1364.38. 111.3 David and Bathsheba
See 2 Samuel 11,12. After spying her bathing one morning, King David commits adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite and conspires both to cover it up and to have Uriah killed. David's first glimpse of Bathsheba is the subject of several paintings.39. 111.41 Charles Dickens
English novelist (1812-1870).40. 113.11-22 momzer . . . schmuck . . . kike . . . putzYiddish words. Momzer, meaning an untrustworthy or disliked person. Schmuck, a derisive term for a man, meaning fool or an obscene word for penis. Putz, a slang word for penis, but also used to mean jerk. Kike, is an offensive word for Jewish person. It was originally used by some Jewish Americans to describe other Jewish Americans they found offensive or vulgar. It may have its origins in the Yiddish word for circle, kikel. Believing that signing an "X" was bad luck, many illiterate Jewish American immigrants signed a circle instead. According to oral history, these immigrants were referred to first as kikels and then as as kikes.