#recap notes

Originally, kaiseki comprised a bowl of miso soup and three side dishes; this is now instead the standard form of Japanese-style cuisine generally, referred to as a セット (setto, "set"). Kaiseki has since evolved to include an appetizer, sashimi, a simmered dish, a grilled dish, and a steamed course, in addition to other dishes at the discretion of the chef. (Episode 1)

So Japanese cuisine is the season theme, as previously mentioned. Bear in mind that a few of the S1 episode titles had a thematic and/or literal connection to the episode story ("Oeuf"--"egg," the idea of offspring-- and "Rôti"--"roast," for Will's fever--strike me as the clearest examples). Will update as the last few are confirmed.

Sakizuke (先附): an appetizer similar to the French amuse-bouche. (Episode 2) (x)

Hassun (八寸): the second course, which sets the seasonal theme. Typically one kind of sushi and several smaller side dishes. (Episode 3?)

Mukōzuke (向付): a sliced dish of seasonal sashimi. (Episode 5)

Takiawase (煮合): vegetables served with meat, fish or tofu; the ingredients are simmered separately. (Episode 4)

Futamono (蓋物): a "lidded dish"; typically a soup. (Episode 6)

Yakimono (焼物): (1) flame-broiled food (esp. fish); (2) earthenware, pottery, china. (Episode 7)

Su-zakana (酢肴): a small dish used to clean the palate, such as vegetables in vinegar; vinegared appetizer. (Episode 8)

Hiyashi-bachi (冷し鉢): served only in summer; chilled, lightly cooked vegetables.

Naka-choko (中猪口?): another palate-cleanser; may be a light, acidic soup.

Shiizakana (強肴?): a substantial dish, such as a hot pot. (Episode 9)

Gohan (御飯?): a rice dish made with seasonal ingredients.

Kō no mono (香の物?): seasonal pickled vegetables. (Episode 11)

Tome-wan (止椀?): a miso-based or vegetable soup served with rice.

Mizumono (水物?): a seasonal dessert; may be fruit, confection, ice cream, or cake.

Overcome with grief, [Dante Gabriel] Rossetti enclosed in his wife's coffin a journal containing the only copy he had of his many poems. He supposedly slid the book into [Elizabeth] Siddal's red hair. She was interred at Highgate Cemetery in London. By 1869, Rossetti was chronically addicted to drugs and alcohol. He had convinced himself he was going blind and couldn't paint. He began to write poetry. Before publishing his newer poems he became obsessed with retrieving the poems he had slipped into his wife's coffin. Rossetti and his agent, Charles Augustus Howell, applied to the Home Secretary for an order to have her coffin exhumed. It was done in the dead of night to avoid public curiosity and attention, and Rossetti was not present. Howell reported that her corpse was remarkably well preserved and her delicate beauty intact, probably as a result of the laudanum. Her hair was said to have continued to grow after death so that the coffin was filled with her flowing coppery hair. The manuscript was retrieved although a worm had burrowed through the book so that some of the poems were difficult to read. Rossetti published the old poems with his newer ones; they were not well received by some critics because of their eroticism, and he was haunted by the exhumation through the rest of his life.

More specifically, Jan Marsh writes,

On the day of the funeral, February 17, he silently placed "the book of his MS poems into the coffin", telling his companions, "I have often been writing at those poems when Lizzie was ill and suffering, and I might have been attending to her, and now they shall go". Later, his brother William expanded on the "grave sacrifice", saying that by thus abandoning the volume, Gabriel had renounced the hope of poetic fame, "which had always been a ruling passion with him". What fair copies destined for the publisher did the calf-skin notebook contain? By inference it held several long pieces ("Dante at Verona”, "A Last Confession”, "The Burden of Nineveh”, "Love’s Nocturne”, "Bride-chamber Talk” and "Jenny”) together with shorter poems composed before 1860, including "Stratton Water”, "The Woodspurge”, "The Staff and Scrip”, "Sister Helen”, and several sonnets on paintings. Most are dramatic rather than confessional, and few can be characterized as love poems. All were duly consigned to the Rossetti family grave, plot no 5779 in Highgate Cemetery. For six years Rossetti wrote little or nothing, but then his poetic impulse reawoke.... Secondly, his vision faltered, with double images, mistiness, "wavering and swimming”, "whirling and flickering”. Failing eyesight was a painter’s dread. He was told to rest, take exercise, go on holiday. He spent October in Ayrshire with Bell Scott and Alice Boyd, talking gloomily of suicide. Scott and others urged that, if he could not paint, he might return to his first love, poetry. [...] Critical commentators on the exhumation sometimes query why Rossetti could not re-create his poems from existing drafts and memory. The evidence of the proofs shows that major texts were missing: "A Last Confession”, "Dante at Verona”, "Bride-chamber Talk” and, especially, "Jenny”. They could not be reconstructed; the buried manuscript was the only source. [...] "The book in question is bound in rough grey calf and has I am almost sure red edges to the leaves”, Rossetti wrote. "This will distinguish it from the Bible also there as I told you.” As legally required, a solicitor (H. V. Tebbs) and a doctor (Llewellyn Williams) were witnesses that no crime or fraud was involved. On the evening of October 5, workmen removed the grave slab, dug down in the narrow space to the coffin, prised up the lid and lifted out the notebook. Lid, earth and slab were then replaced, and the workmen tipped with beer money. The manuscript was taken to be disinfected. Howell reported that although the book was soaked, "all in the coffin was found quite perfect”. A consummate story teller, he may also be the source of fanciful elaborations about Lizzie’s red hair retaining its bright colour, with luxuriant posthumous growth, which cannot be true.