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TUSSELLING WITH FLAUBERT
INITIATING QUESTIONS
GROPINGS TOWARDS A THEORY OF INTERPRETATION:
Dissection of texts to some sort of re-integration through an interpretation that identifies
the conflicts in and between Flaubert’s writerly selves:
KEY: The creative tension between a barely subdued ‘romanticism’ and the drive to
‘realism’ (whatever these two well-worn words might mean);
‘There are in me … two distinct personalities (i.e. literary): one who is fascinated by
bombast, lyricism, great eagle flights, all the sonorities of style, the high summit of idea,
another who burrows and digs for the truth, excavating as much as he can, who likes to
give the humble details as much emphasis as the grandiose, who wants you to feel the
things he represents with an almost physical immediacy; this person who likes to laugh
and feel the animal side of man’s nature …’ To Louise Colet, 16th January 1847. And
‘…des hauteurs du ciel aux profondeurs du cul.’ To Louise Colet, 23 February 1853.
This tension is expressed in his language which varies:
a) à la Balzacienne: e.g. when Frédéric speaks insincerely to Mme Dambreuse (point
made by Pierre-Marc De Biasi in his introduction to Livres de Poche edition of
L’Education Sentimentale);
b) ‘style indirect libre’ where the language of realism is anything but: ‘that subtle
rendering of indirect thought’ (Julian Barnes), but it would appear that Flaubert is
smuggling in an occluded narrator e.g. Emma’s reverie on Paris, Madame Bovary p. 129.
See ‘On Writerliness’ below,
c) the matter-of-factness of much of Flaubert’s language: e.g. the death of Emma ‘Elle
n’existait plus.’; the ending of ‘Herodias’. See also below ‘On Prose’
d) high-flown: ‘orgiaque’ Madame Bovary p.427
This tension exemplified in the three ‘skeins’ of Trois Contes:
‘REALISM’
‘Un Coeur Simple’
RELIGIOUS/MYSTICAL
VISIONARY
EXOTIC/HISTORIC
‘St. Julien l’Hospitalier’
‘Herodias’
La Tentation de Saint Antoine
Salammbô
Hence, by extension to:
Madame Bovary
L’Education Sentimentale
Bouvard et Pécuchet
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This schema does not include Les Memoires d’un Fou, Novembre, the two
L’Educations and the three Tentations, travel writings, carnets, letters.
Any such schema is, however, a reduction. The ‘skeins’ tangle:
1. thematically in e.g. Emma’s reading; Félicité’s vision of the Holy Ghost (‘Un
Coeur Simple’). Note that Félicité, Emma’s maid, a minor character in Madame
Bovary, is switched to the central protagonist in ‘Un Coeur Simple’, with a great
deal of Catherine Leroux (Madame Bovary p.251), her simplicity contrasting with
Emma’s romantic imagination;
2. stylistically in e.g. language and in what Flaubert means by ‘style’: ‘The form of a
thought is its very flesh’; See On Style below.
3. methodologically, in e.g. Flaubert’s extensive research.
Almost paralleled in the Normandy/Africa (Egypt and Tunisia) dichotomy. Flaubert is in
Egypt October 1849 to July 1850 and in Tunisia April/June 1858 to ‘unblock’ his work
on Salammbô, cf Francis Steegmuller, Flaubert in Africa (1979).
The relevance of Said’s Orientalism (1978) here is striking
NB ‘One never knows if he is responsible for what he writes.’ and ‘Who is speaking?’ It
is unlikely that this last can ever be answered. Barthes S/Z LIX p. 140.
Such an approach, i.e. through ‘skeins’, is still essentially thematic, but more
sophisticated than through character, events, themes, such as betrayal etc. Perhaps an
approach through the essential writerliness (fakery, even?) of Flaubert’s work might be
more illuminating, Novembre (1842) being a case in point: written when he was 20 years
old but as if by an 18 year old, and ‘the narrator’ adopts the persona of an older man and a
found manuscript. There are thus FOUR layers here, c.f. Foucault’s introduction to La
Tentation de St. Antoine (1874) and Barthes’s comment above.
Thus the focus is to be on Flaubert’s fictive personae. Note also the ending of Novembre
where this is revealed and the evasions/displacements taking place when he talks of ‘a
friend of his’ falling in love with a woman suckling a baby. This was Flaubert and Elisa
Schlesinger! Note also the fantasy section on flight and on being different nationals (p.
84-88 Hesperus, London, 2005 edition of Novembre) before visiting Egypt. And the
callowness: compare the depictions of Marie and Rosanette/The Marshal. Marie is the
adolescent fantasy of a woman, Rosanette based on real events in a real life. Hence we
see adolescent longings v. mature grasp.
The autobiographical, whatever Flaubert says, is not far below the surface of his works.
Cf. The ‘fucking’ cab ride: ‘Cela se fait à Paris’ Madame Bovary p.390. How does
Flaubert know? Probably because he had it off with Louise Colet in a cab (Brown
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Flaubert: A Life (2006) p.187, and see below. Note that in Lui Louise Colet calls her
Flaubertian hero/louse Léonce, surely a reference to Flaubert.
‘I am not a novelist, or a playwright, or a journalist. I am a writer, and style, style as
such, does not make money.’ To Madame Brianne 18th July 1865 Wall, Selected Letters
p.396.
And Baudelaire has it that Flaubert has a ‘secret chamber’ in this soul, and his works
revealed a veiled romanticism.
FURTHER OBSERVATIONS
On Bovary Translation:
‘I had a translation of Bovary (into English) done under my supervision and it was a
masterpiece. I pleaded with Levy to come to an agreement with a London publisher.
Nothing happened.’ To Ernest Duplan 12th June 1862,Wall, Selected Letters p. 286.
This was by Juliet Herbert. The manuscript has disappeared, Flaubert blaming Levy. Is
this justly or unjustly?
Flaubert and Modernism (see also ‘A Novel about Nothing’ below):
It might be helpful (if on the face of it odd) to approach this through Kandinsky’s notions
of art: ‘The content of painting is painting’ (Quoted in KANDINSKY, Ulrike BecksMalorny, Taschen 2003 p.191 from a 1937 article in a Swedish magazine, but no further
details are given). This is an impeccable epitome of modernism in art. Can it apply to
Flaubert’s ‘novel about nothing’ (i.e. Madame Bovary)? This is unlikely as it is
impossible to escape the link between ‘writing’ (however defined) and the significations
inherent in all symbolic forms of language, ‘writing’ being merely one of these. Although
it can be argued that abstract painting (or Kandinsky’s own art, at least) has its own
‘language of colour’ it escapes signification, despite Kandinsky’s own theorizing about
synaesthesia.
On Ivory-Towerism:
‘So to avoid life, I throw myself into Art, despairingly ...’ ‘Now I know of nothing more
noble than the ardent contemplation of the things of this world.’ To Mlle Leroyer de
Chantpie, 18th December 1859 Selected Letters p. 278.
‘I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is surging up against the
walls, threatening to bring them down. To Turgenev, 13th November 1872
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Julian Barnes, in Something to Declare, traces the ‘history’ of this image.
Also what is meant by ‘ardent contemplation’? Reflection? Recollection (Wordsworth’s
‘emotion recollected in tranquility’)? Re-Collection? Then there is Flaubert’s own desire
to ‘order and shape’ experience:
‘… if one gets mixed up with life, one cannot see it clearly; one suffers too much or
enjoys it too much. The artist is, in my opinion, a monstrosity, something outside
nature…’ To His Mother, 18th December 1850
‘… it isn’t enough merely to observe: we must order and shape what we have seen.
Reality in my view ought to be no more than a spring-board.’ To Turgenev 8th November
1877. Cf. Yeats: ‘Hammer your thoughts into unity’.
Flaubert on Courbet and Manet:
‘It is with great interest I have just read your work on Courbet. ‘He’s got it; which means
I entirely share your opinion.
One incisive phrase set me thinking. ‘He did not possess the sacred terror of Form’,
which is perfectly correct, and that is why such a clever man was not among the great.
What I dislike about him is the charlatan side. Anyway, I don’t like dogmatists of any
kind. Down with all disciplinarians. Get ye hence, all who claim to be realists,
naturalists, impressionists. You bamboozlers, let us have a little less talk and a little more
achievement.’ To Camille Lemonnier, 3rd June 1878, Wall, Selected Letters p. 413.
A nice irony this, given that he had pontificated for at least four years at poor Louise
Colet about ‘ART’. This is a very superficial judgement to say the least. But then
Flaubert wasn’t much good on the non-conventional visual arts, his taste being very
conservative, it being epitomized by his predelictions for Paul Baudry’s anodyne nudes
and Pradier’s monumental (and overly smooth) statuary. As far as Manet is concerned:
‘Quant a Manet je ne comprends pas goutte a sa peinture, je me recuse.’ This remark is
not a dismissal, but acts as a genuine perplexity when faced with the disconcerting
anomalies, paradoxical challenges, visual puns and pranks, and the destabilizing
painterliness of Manet’s art, e.g. his Dejeuner sur l’herbe of 1863. It is interesting to note
that Georges Charpentier (one of Flaubert’s publishers) was the original owner of
Manet’s The Battle of the Keersage and The Alabama. Charpentier’s sister-in-law was
Mme. Isabelle Lemonnier (whose portrait was painted by Manet.) Is she a relation of
Camille Lemonier?
But Flaubert’s affinities, surely unwitting, lie with Manet, in their common concern with
‘la vie moderne’ and ‘Il faut etre de son temps’. Flaubert writes to Mlle Letroyer de
Chantpie (6 octobre 1864) that he is ‘harnessed to a modern novel set in Paris’ and that he
wants ‘to write the moral history of my generation’. Moreau does not ‘connect’ with the
characters around him just as Manet’s subjects, say, on The Balcony do not relate. Further
both are republicans and vehemently anti-bourgeois, although Manet is much more the
left-winger.
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Of all the French writers it is probably Zola (La Terre?) who is ‘nearest’ to Courbet.
Contradictions:
Contradictory statements on Madame Bovary: impersonality v. ‘Emma Bovary, c’est
moi.’ The source for this is Amélie Bosquet, but there are other reported versions:
Madame Bovary, c’est moi.’ and ‘…moi, après moi.’ I now have reservations of it
actually being said. But a recent book, Ecrire Madame Bovary, Geneviève Winter
+Lecture image par Betrand Leclair (folioclassiques: Gallimard Paris 2009) claims that
Flaubert said this during his trial (1857) and was never said or written again. Although
this can only remain a hypothesis, it does explain the prima facie oddity of the remark.
Flaubert himself does not use it in any of his letters. This would contradict the famous
doctrine of impersonality:
‘… there is nothing true in Madame Bovary. The story is totally invented. I have put
nothing of my own feelings or my life into it. On the contrary, the illusion (if there is
one) stems from the impersonality of the work. That is one of my principles, you must not
write yourself. The artist in his work must be like God in creation, invisible and allpowerful: you can sense him everywhere but you cannot see him.’
To Mlle Leroyer de Chantpie, 18th March 1857. Wall Selected Letters p.248
Note also the contradictory statements to the Goncourts. My own view is that he shoots
his mouth off in exasperation! e.g ‘I am bored to death with my Bovary’ To Frédéric
Baudry February 11th 1857 (NB after the court case and publication)
The above letter to Madame Leroyer de Chantpie continues:
‘Then again, Art should rise above personal feeling and emotional susceptibilities! It is
the time we gave it, through rigid systematisation, the exactness of the physical sciences!
The chief difficulty for me, however, still remains, style, form, that indefinable beauty
arising from the very conception which, as Plato says, is the very splendour of truth.’
This is all very well, but hardly credible. As an anti-Romantic credo, it is fine, but this
‘principle’ is not borne out in this texts. Flaubert is ‘writing himself’ in the text. See in
particular my notes on Madame Bovary and L’Education Sentimentale below. What is
meant by ‘style’ and ‘form’? A possible answer, in its time, is given in the letter to Louise
Colet 24th April 1852. (See below). Whenever Flaubert talks about ‘Art’ it is his writing
that he means, not any of the visual arts or even writing by other authors. Further, he is at
his most portentous to Mlle Leroyer, delighting her no doubt with these grandiloquent
utterances that don’t actually reveal themselves in the texts! And if Flaubert means
‘learning’ by ‘science’, OK, but if not, then he’s well wide of the mark!
Again:
‘The reason I am going so slowly is that nothing in this book originates from within me:
never before has my personality be so useless to me. I may subsequently do things that
are more powerful than this (I certainly hope so) but I cannot imagine doing anything
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more skilful.’ To Louise Colet, 6th April 1853, Wall, Selected Letters, p. 210.
‘A novel about nothing’
This of Madame Bovary, appearing in a letter To Louise Colet, 12th January 1852 (i.e.
early on in the resumed relationship):
Ce qui me semble beau, ce qui je voudrais faire, c’est un livre sur rien …
There are widely differing interpretations of this passage which is not surprising given the
differing translations. For some, taken out of context, it is a modernist manifesto, for
others a vindication of ‘Art-for-Arts-Sake. Perhaps the nearest there is to a novel ‘about
nothing’ is James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. BUT while it is possible to loosen the
signifier/signified bond, it is impossible to sever it completely. Further, while novels do
not have to tell a story, this is the expectation of the realist novel. E.M.Forster in Aspects
of the Novel (1927) states, if reluctantly, ‘Yes – oh dear yes – the novel tells a story’
Perhaps the translation of ‘sur’ as ‘about’ is slightly misleading. If we substitute ‘on’ for
‘about’ this shift of emphasis indicates the novel is a study of ‘nothing’, and tying this in
with what I regard as an elliptical statement by Flaubert, we find that the novel is ‘on
nothing heroic/romantic, i.e. it is, as the subtitle suggests, a study of everyday life in the
provinces. Ordinary life as lived by ordinary people becomes then the ‘subject’.
On Style:
‘I’ve imagined a style for myself – a beautiful style that someone will write one day, in
ten years’ time maybe, or in ten centuries. It will be as rhythmical as verse and as precise
as science, with the booming rise and fall of a cello and plumes of fire; it will be a style
that penetrates the idea for you like a dagger-thrust and from which at last thought is sent
sailing over smooth surfaces as a boat glides rapidly before a good wind. Prose was born
yesterday – this is what we must tell ourselves. Poetry is pre-eminently the medium of
past literatures. All the metrical combinations have been tried, but nothing like this can
be said of prose. To Louise Colet, 24th April 1852.
‘La Style c’est la vie! C’est le sang même de la pensée’ To Louise Colet, 7 sept 1853
‘Where Form is missing, then the Idea is no more. To seek the one is to seek the other.
They are as inseparable as substance and colour, and that is the reason why art is Truth
itself.’ To Louise Colet, 15th-16th May 1852, Wall, Selected Letters p. 177.
Then again: ‘… style is only a way of thinking…’ To Ernest Feydeau, 15 May 1859
Selected Letters p.268.
‘La première qualité de l’Art et son but est l’illusion’ To Louise Colet, 16 sept 1853
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‘Among all the lies, art is still the least dishonest. To Louise Colet, 8th-9th August 1846.
‘Enfin, je tache de bien penser pour bien ecrire. Mais c’est bien ecrire qui est mon but, je
ne le cache pas.’ To George Sand, end December 1875
And an oddity? Flaubert’s predeliction for the reflexive verb? As well as intensifiers,
such as ‘re-‘ and ‘… ne … point…’ See ‘On Writerliness below, and Gérard Genette,
Figures 1966 in Blackwell translation 1982 ‘The Figures of Discourse’.
On Prose:
‘… I want to impart to prose the rhythm of verse (leaving it still prose and very prosey)
… To Louise Colet 27th March 1853, Wall, Selected Letters p. 203. Note stress on
‘rhythm’, not rhyme, nor ‘poetic’ forms.
On The Orient: (i.e. the near east)
‘What I love about the Orient, … is that obvious grandeur, and that harmony between
things dissimilar.’ To Louise Colet, 22nd March 1853, Wall, Selected Letters p. 200.
The Break with Louise Colet: (May? October? 1854)
There is no information on the occasion for the break, no comments in either his letters or
Louise Colet’s Journal. What did she say to him? His Art? His mother? Wanting to be
his wife? Her new lovers? And was it her to him, or him to her? We shall probably never
know. Cf. Brown, Flaubert: A Life p.312.
But Flaubert writes to Ernest Feydeau, 21st August 1859 about Louise’s Histoire d’un
Soldat (i.e. Flaubert) that she is ‘… that pernicious creature…’. And again to Amélie
Bosquet (November 1859, Selected Letters p.275) the liaison is seen as ‘a prolonged
irritation.’ Bruneau, Correspondance Vol. 2, p. 1270 suggests it is ‘la lassitude de
Flaubert’ which is the cause of the rupture. Then there is the apparent callowness of
‘Back to work’ on hearing of Louise’s death: To Edma Roger des Genettes, 13-18 mars
1876. What do these say about Flaubert’s protestations of love for Louise before the
rupture? Is not then Flaubert-the-lover yet another fictive persona?
Flaubert’s Politics: A vexing question:
Distinguish between
1. Utterances of political beliefs, usually in letter form, so immediate context, wider
context, date and addressee are all relevant to credibility. Flaubert a republican, a
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Voltairean but prefers a ‘mandarin’ government (To George Sand 3rd August 1870 and
29th August 1871, Wall, Selected Letters, p.348 and 358) which is seen as ‘a legitimate
aristocracy’. It is not clear what he means by this, but probably some sort of meritocratic
elite. He is opposed to egalitarian democracy and levelling-down socialism, largely
because of its dogmatic proponents, as well as the desire to twit George Sand. He
remains, however, politically naïve.
2 The novels which seem to belie the above. Frédéric at Les Tuileries ‘… moi, je
trouve le peuple sublime.’ p.432 and the martyrdom of Dussardier p.614.
3. On 1848: The extraordinary letter to Louise Colet, March 1848 which obviously is a
reply out of the order of her points/complaints: a) ‘recent events’ i.e. February 1848, but
to be seen ‘au point de vue de l’Art’!!; b) dismissal of her complaints about Du Camp; c)
her pregnancy and his reaction (surely false) and his statement of her always being able
to rely on him (surely false again!) and the dismissal of her bitterness and anger towards
him (her accusation of his ‘monstrous personality’ (later ‘monstrous ego’). The source
for this amazingly callow notion of ‘l’émeurte’ (the riots) is Du Camp’s Souvenirs de
l’année 1848, with the same phrasing. This looks highly suspicious as tainted with
hindsight. Wall takes this letter at face value!!
However, Flaubert admires Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) a somewhat screwball
economist, a great devotee of libre-échange (free trade). This admiration might help to
explain some of Flaubert’s battier socio-political outbursts. Correspondance has five
references: II p.37 to Louise Colet without comment; IV p.385 to Georges Sand
(Bruneau glosses Bastiat as ‘un ennemi de socialisme); V p.677 to Raoul-Duval 10 July
1879 when Flaubert calls Bastiat ‘le grand’, and again 11th November 1879 where he
admits he has read Bastiat several times, applauding him and stating he has been ‘dans
l’ombre’; V p.801 to Raoul-Duval, 30th January 1880, where he refers to ‘mon Bastiat’,
and praising Raoul-Duval for his pamphlet which obviously echoes Bastiat’s loony
judgements.
On La Tentation de Saint Antoine:
See my notes on the work itself below.
‘La tentation a été pour moi et non pour le lecteur.’ À Louise Colet, 6 juillet 1852
Correspondance II p.127. Is Flaubert here identifying with the sexually voyeuristic
temptation of the saint himself?
‘It was an outlet; the writing of it was a pleasure, and the eighteen months I spent
writing those 500 pages were the most profoundly voluptuous time of my whole life.’
To Louise Colet, 6th April 1853. This is of the first version. Note stress on ‘voluptuous’
‘Taking a subject which allowed me total freedom - by way of lyricism, sensation and
excess – I felt completely in my element and I had only to get on with it. Never again
will I experience stylistic exaltations such as I induced in myself in that book over those
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eighteen months. How exquisitely I arranged all the precious stones in my necklace.
Only one thing did I forget, the thread. Second attempt was even worse than the first.
Now I am on my third. It is time either to succeed or to throw myself out of the window’.
To Louise Colet, 16th January 1852, Wall, Selected Letters, p. 170.
This is not the third 1874 published version. But this is evidence for how much Madame
Bovary ‘s genesis is ‘contaminated’ by the continuing work on Saint Antoine. Note the
self-induced nature of the extravagant, over-exuberant, tumultuous writing. Is this selfindoctrinating? And the imagery. All this in my view goes to support a selfconsciousness writerliness.
‘I have brought my book up to a pleasing degree of insanity.’ To George Sand, 14th
October 1871. Surely tongue-in-cheek here!
The painting, The Temptation of St. Antony by Pieter Breughel the Younger was seen by
Flaubert in Genoa in 1845. Flaubert’s notes read: ‘Naked women lying down. Love in
one corner’ Later, from memory, he wrote, ‘St. Antony with three women, turning away
to avoid their caresses: they are naked, white, smiling about to put their arms around him.
The whole composition is swarming, crawling, sniggering in a quite grotesque and frantic
fashion …’ from Oeuvres Complètes, Seuil Paris 1964 (known as Intégrale edition).
Quoted in Wall, op. cit, pp 90-91.
The string of pearls
A commonly repeated image by Flaubert delineating for the act of ‘composition’ itself.
See Bruneau Correspondance Vol. 2 p.1038, where he (conveniently) lists the other
references: To Louise Colet: 31 January 1852; 26 August 1853; 18 December 1853 and
To George Sand 11 December 1875
The image stands for the compositional process: the pearls are the descriptive passages,
which, however brilliant, are disorganised, all over the place, without the ‘fil/thread’ of an
organizing structure. Flaubert had complained to George Sand in a letter, 12 June 1872
of ‘the defective structure’ of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. The thread becomes, as in a
string of pearls, the creative principle.
On The Letters (i.e. Flaubert as a letter writer):
Handle the letters with extreme care. Flaubert’s letters are not ‘a window into his soul’,
nor do they ‘reveal the man.’ They are not that transparent. Flaubert remains the writer,
in his letters, so several fictive personae are adopted, such as ‘St. Polycarp’, ‘Cruchard’
and even ‘Géant Aplanti’ (Mr. Laid-Low Giant). But these are overt personae. Much
more subtle, and insidious, are the covert personae of the writer-being-a-writer. As a
result one has to doubt Flaubert’s veracity in his letters. He adopts differing roles, or
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voices, perhaps, for differing recipients, see Barnes Something to Declare, p. 199. And
these roles are not in a temporal, developmental order. In the same context, speaking of
Mlle Leroyer de Chantpie, Barnes talks of ‘fandom’s twittering’ a quirky but telling
phrase for this overcredulous recipient. In sum, the letters cannot be read as Flaubertian
truthfulness. In this context see To Louise Colet, 23 decembre 1853 (Correspondance
pp.290-294 and Selected Letters pp. 232-234) in particular:
1. as a statement of love (relief from headache?)
2. ‘Illusion’ Note the capital letters.. What does Flaubert mean by this? Fantasy?
see below Addendum to Writerliness
3. overwriting: ‘un casque der fer sur le crâne’
4. writing as ‘une delicieuse chose’
5. ‘attaque des nerfs’: Flaubert and imagination and self-induced states.
6. ‘Le grand air froid de Parnasse’ Hum!
7. Fact becoming Form. Hum!
Then there is the plain forgetfulness: in his letter to Taine of 20th November 1866 he says
‘Il y a bien des details que je n’écris pas. Ainsi, pour moi, M. Homais est légerèment de
petite vérole.’ having forgotten that in Madame Bovary p. 151 he describes Homais’s face
as ‘…quelque peu marqué de petite vérole.’
Editions: Correspondance eds. Jean Bruneau et Ivan Leclerc, Pléiade (Vol. V March
2007)
Correspondance ed Bernard Masson, texte établi par Jean Bruneau, Folio Classique
Gallimard 1998.
Selected Letters ed. Geoffrey Wall, Penguin 1997
In sum, Flaubert is an unreliable witness.
On Illustrations:
‘Jamais, moi vivant, on ne m’illustra, parce que la plus belle description littèraire est
devorée par le plus piètre dessin. Du moment une type est fixée par le crayon, il perd le
charactère de généralité … To Ernest Duplan 12 June 1862. Note the stress on ‘type’
and ‘generality’. Further, no reader’s imaginative depiction tallies exactly with that of the
illustrator, whose vision is by definition externalized.
The Novel as Social History:
Many non-literary commentators use the novel as social history. This is all very well, but
any novel is a subjective construct which characterises and embodies the ideological
point, or points, of view of its creator. T. J. Clarke in his ‘The Absolute Bourgeois (1999)
p. 21 quotes from ‘L’Education Sentimentale’ on the revolution of 1848. It is essential to
ask here (and every time) ‘who is speaking?’ The relevant passages are in the opening of
Part III of the novel (p. 290 Penguin and p.431 Le Livre de Poche editions). Here,
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probably, Flaubert is speaking in his own voice, so Clarke gets away with it!
Realism:
The key to understanding realism, as a literary and artistic movement is that it can never
be reality. A novel is, after all, fiction.
On Taking Flaubert too seriously:
‘Do not take too seriously the exaggeration of my anger.’ To George Sand, 12 December
1872. This translation from Selected Letters, but in his biography of Flaubert, Flaubert,
A Life (London ) 2001, Wall translates this as ‘the melodrama of my anger.’ p. 325.
‘Ėcrire, c’est s’emparer du monde.’ Take this with a huge pinch of salt, nor take, for
that matter, any of Flaubert’s own statements at their face value. Remain sceptical, and
always.
So why do Flaubertists take Flaubert so seriously?
Henry James on Flaubert (1902):
The House of Fiction, pp. 187-219 Mercury Books 1962. A general (over?)appreciative
overview.
SO:
Do we believe Flaubert fully?
‘Though perfectly frank by nature, he is never wholly sincere in what he says he feels or
suffers or thinks.’ Edmond de Goncourt, Journal. Quoted by Barnes, op.cit. p. 248, but
without a reference.
It has to be said, for me, that the letters (and autobiographical utterances and literary
biographies) get in the way of the novels.
SO: then back to Lawrence’s dictum:
Trust the tale, not the teller.
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ON MADAME BOVARY
Written: 1852 – 1856
Published: Revue de Paris November 1856
Trial for indecency: January 1857
Published in book form: February 1857
NB Page references are to the Livres de Poche edition (1999) edited by Jacques Neefs.
Neef’s preface (pp.7 – 45) attempts an explanation of the contemporaneous impact of the
book. His preface also points to its birth, amid the welter of, and the ‘contamination’ by,
existing Flaubertian projects, the first L’Education Sentimentale, the first and subsequent
workings and re-workings of La Tentation, and its apparent failure. See also Claudine
Gothot-Mersch, La Genèse de Madame Bovary, 1966 and distrust Du Camp’s Souvenirs
littèraires, 2 Volumes, Paris 1882-83, as myth-making
The preface is useful for its references. The rest however is fairly straightforward: Une
Revolution dans Le Lettres (Maupassant); La vie elle-meme apparu; La Perfection en soi;
Réalisme moderne; Ėcrire face à son temps; Homme-Plume; Une Livre sur rien; L’Art en
soi pârait toujours insurrectional; Lieu commune; Apologia de La Cannaillerie humaine.
NB: ‘It faut bien ruminer son objectif avant de songer à la forme…’ To Louise Colet, 29
November 1853.
Events of the novel take place from about 1838 to 1846, see notes to page 308 and 458.
The book is a book of ‘misprisions‘, i.e. misreadings. ‘Moeurs de province’: provincial
life is shown as boring; educationally, artistically, culturally null; stultifying and stunting
of personal growth. The novel a critique of romanticism and the false perception of
reality it engenders. The name ‘Bovary’: ‘…a distortion of the name Bouvaret ‘ i.e. that
of the Cairo hotel-keeper (brothel?) Flaubert met in Cairo in 1850. To Madame Hortense
Cornu, 20th March 1870. (NB Bouvard in Bouvard et Pécuchet) Is this another instance
of the ‘exotic’ being smuggled in to the ‘realistic’? NB Du Camp’s version of Flaubert
shouting the name while charging the pyramids looks more like Don Quixote rather than
the truth. It is more likely Flaubert said this in a Cairo brothel.
PART I
‘Nous étions à L’Ėtude …’ These opening words of the novel were corrections, at the
last minute apparently, on the copyist’s copy. They have greater impact in their
immediacy, the closeness and their sense of community, yes, … but who is the ‘nous’?
The effect is to draw the reader, unwittingly, into the narrative. But the ‘nous’ is the
persona of the narrator (‘nous’ in this sense is p.99, after which it melds into ‘on’, but
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which recurs p.418 and makes a last return p.487), after which the narrator internalizes
(The Occluded Narrator? e.g. Emma’s reverie of Paris, p.129). This contrasts with The
Didactic Narrator, e.g. description of Rodolphe p.225, before any demonstration of his
having a ‘tempérament brutal’. And when, where and how does the initial antipathy
towards Charles (the multi-coloured buffoon) become sympathy. His doting pushy
mother?
Oddly (?) Charles ‘frames’ Emma, the book opening with him and ending (almost) with
his death. Emma is initially seen through Charles’s eyes and by external description p. 75.
Her childishness, she sucks her thumb, p.72 and bites her lips p.73. She is linked
throughout with the colour blue. Emma and Charles’s first wife (the widow Dubuc of
Dieppe) p.75.
NB The ‘narrator’ will often talk through Charles, p.75
Do people die a little too conveniently in the book: the first Madame Bovary (the widow
Dubuc) p.78, Charles himself, p.501? What does he die from? Is it a broken heart,
clutching a lock of Emma’s hair?
Charles’s happiness, p.96 contrasting with Emma’s unhappiness with married love p.97,
here the stress is on overt and covert romanticism. ‘Les mots manquerait donc,
l’occasion, la hardiesse.’ p.106. ‘Pouquoi, mon Dieu! me suis-je mariėe? p.111 ‘…et
l’ennui, arraignėe silencieuse, filait sa toile dans l’ombre à tous les coins de son coeur.’
p. 111. The ball at Vaubyessard pp.113-127. ‘… mais le regret lui resta.’ p.127. This is
the first real instance of where Emma becomes the victim of her own romantic
imaginings and longings: snobbery, class-consciousness, social climbing. Thus Emma, in
herself, must share some responsibility for her victimhood. The denseness of the language
and the ‘placing’ of characters, Emma and her dog, Djali p.111-112. Note also the toand-fro of sympathy towards both Emma and Charles: e.g. Charles conversation is as
‘platte comme un trottoir de ville.’ p.106 and Emma’s brusqueness to him during the
preparations for the ball. p. 118. The effect is to create sympathy for unattractive
characters. Emma’s pregnancy p.141 but how this comes about, owing to her antipathy to
Charles and his eating habits p.133, is stretching credulity somewhat.
PART II
Yonville l’Abbaye p.143. Homais: one of his first remarks: ‘Il faut marcher avec son
siècle.’ p.152. Léon in the Lion d’Or, p.159 on, is another silly mooning romantic p.165,
his love of poetry not enough for him to be able to write Emma a love poem, hence he
copies from a book p.413. Emma’s romanticism again ‘Je déteste les héros communs et
les sentiments tempérés, comme il y a dans la nature.’ p.165. Low cunning: Mère Rollet
p.179; M. Lheureux p.190 and p.326, but too much the villain? p.190 and ‘Je te tiens,
pensa Lheureux.’ p.299. Love and dissatisfaction (lack of money) merge p.197. A worry:
Emma falls in love with Rodolphe very rapidly – self-persuasion? Charles is
unsuspecting of her turmoil and her attempts to suppress it, p.197. Frustration in
marriage leading to illness p.198. The misreading of Abbé Bournisien (‘C’est
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l’indigestion , sans doute’.) pp.201-204. To Louise Colet 13th April 1853 note p.204
‘…inepte, crasseux…)
Humour: Near farce: the double fainting of Justin and the carter p.227 (almost
cinematographic this); Mockery: The agricultural show, its pomposity, its cant, pp.227256 II 8; Self-deluding: where Homais having said he is pressed for time delivers a
lengthy discourse on chemistry, p.230. Léon leaves for Paris p.212, almost immediately
‘replaced’ by Rodolphe Boulanger p.222. Also a ‘romantic’ name and a somewhat
melodramatic villain? His wicked intentions p.226 ‘Il était de tempérament brutal.’
p.225. And who actually says this? Surely it is Flaubert stating before enacting. The
Agricultural Show with its placards ‘To Commerce’, ‘To Agriculture’, ‘To Industry’, ‘To
The Fine Arts’ pp.227-256 Part II 8 (Probably that at Le Grand-Couronne, To Louise
Colet 18 July 1852, note on p.227) Note the bustle in the language. The verbal seduction
of Emma interlaced with the droning platitudes of the stand-in, M. Lieuvain (Mr. Empty
Space?), a device much copied. Lieuvain’s eulogies to peace and prosperity under the
July Monarchy (Louis Phillipe), about to crash a mere five years’ later. Her first
‘misreading’ of Rodolphe. Emma appears on Rodolphe’s arm p.232 (Is this too
quickly?). Note that how many of the utterances of the Yonvillais and of Rodolphe
himself, appear in Dictionnaire des Idées Recues (DIR). Lieuvain’s final appeal to the
existing class structure p.247. The ghastliness of Catherine Leroux’s servitude pp.249251 and the brutal insensitivity of the bourgeois. Homais’s flowery tribute in Le Fanal de
Rouen.
Emma gives herself to Rodolphe, ‘Elle s’abandonna’ p.264, (note the odd imagery
‘…comme un fleuve du lait.’) and fuses this with her reflections on romantic heroines,
‘…elle devenait elle-même une partie veritable de ces imaginations …’ p.266. The
botched operation on Hyppolite’s club foot, p.283 on; gangrene p.287; the amputation
p.290. Note Homais’s role in all of this as instigator/persuader, pushing his own
ideology. Rodolphe v. Charles p.294. Emma at the height of her well-being p.306.
Rodolphe’s brutal letter p.312, (which Charles finds later p.492). The biscuit tin
containing his ex-lovers’ letters etc.p.313. Another ‘misprision’: Emma receives
Rodolphe’s letter in a basket of apricots. She collapses. Homais and Charles think the
cause is the apricots, p. 323. ‘… du régime, voila tout!’ p.323. (Thus paralleling him with
the Abbé Bournsien above p.201) Another worry: Emma is prostrate for 43 days p.324.
The debts mount p.326. The visit to Lucia de Lammermour in Rouen with Emma’s reawakened romanticism, pp.342-343. Re-appearance of Léon and Charles’s naiveté p.347.
PART III
The meeting in the hotel p.357 where both do not say exactly what they feel, merely
exaggerate their unhappiness. In Rouen Cathedral pp.364-369, with the Verger. Another
device much copied. The cab-ride (of at least five hours!) pp.369-373. ‘… ballottée
comme un navire’ p.372. Emma throws pieces of torn up paper (her now useless letter to
Léon) out of the window. Imagery of fluttering associated with Emma in love: papillons
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(butterflies) p.373 and see above p.264, colibris (humming-birds), and ‘beating wings’
p.387 just as the coach, L’Hirondelle, (‘The Swallow’) represents flight, p.246, and
escape p.385, and again p.392. Of all the major protagonists it is only Emma’s emotional
states that are objectified through affective correspondences with her ambient situation
i.e. the dappled light in the woods, p.264, and later the bustle and tumult of Rouen p.394
(Quelque chose de vertinigeux …) The chaos of the jam-making, and the first mention
that Homais has arsenic in his ‘glory-hole’ p.376. Death of Charles’s father and Emma’s
callous reactions p.380. ‘T’es-tu bien amusée hier?’ ‘Oui.’p.380. (Ouch!) Emma’s
manipulation of Charles p.384. The visits to Léon in Rouen. Léon, as Rodolphe before
him (p.312) sees her as his ‘maîtresse’, a married woman and thus ‘safe’ (p.397). Is this
Flaubert speaking here, given his extreme reluctance to co-habit with a woman? Emma in
love again (note imagery again, as above), the ‘placing’ of Emma in her surroundings, the
boat, p.385, the drive into Rouen, p.393-94, ‘their’ hotel, p.395-98, all this
aggrandisement and tumult of love ended by the blind beggar, p.399 on. Romanticism
again: in books not life pp.420-21. Charles for the first time backs Emma against his
mother p.410 and the final rupture after her death p.497.
Emma’s mounting extravagance p.403 and 421 interwoven with mounting debt (III 6).
Lheureux’s trap p.403. Emma’s self-deception in love p.419. She gives way to
fantasizing: ‘… des tableaux orgiaques…’ p.427 and her fantasy lover p.429. Do these
fantasies merge into hallucinations, such as Flaubert describes to Taine? The passage
where Emma allows herself to be taken along by poor students, p.430, looks
hallucinatory. But these allow the surely apposite comment that here is the
‘voluptuousness’ of the writing of the first St. Antoine reappearing in a realist novel as
cross-fertilisations or ‘contaminations’. See Claudine Gothot-Mersch Le Genèse de
Madame Bovary 1966. Then ‘Emma retrouvait dans l’adulterie toutes les platitudes du
marriage’ p.429. The desperation mounts p. 446, Emma wanting to ‘…battre les
hommes…’. Her unwitting preparedness to prostitute herself to Rodolphe again p.451,
having rejected similar advances from Le Notaire Guillaumin p.445. Justin and the
arsenic p.458. Homais’s covering of this up with the lie about icing-sugar p.473. Emma’s
death, the blind man and his plangent song p.472. The macabre bickering of Abbé
Bournisien and Homais over Emma’s dead body p.476-78. Their eventual paralleling
p.483. Bourgeois hypocrisy is exemplified by Lheureux p.488, whereas Hippolyte wears
his best false leg p.486. Leon’s forthcoming marriage to Mlle Leboeuf, of Bondville,
p.491. Homais’s campaign for the Legion d’Honneur p. 490 on and his attack on the
blind man p.494. Charles finds the letters and love tokens p.499. Charles and Rodolphe
p.500. ‘C’est la faute de la fatalité ‘Charles’s (unexplained) death clutching the lock of
Emma’s hair p.501. Homais awarded the Legion d’Honneur p.501.
NB: How autobiographical is the novel? Charles and Emma are invited by Le Marquis to
the ball at Vaubyessard only because Charles is the ‘lucky’ doctor, which is what Achille
Flaubert told Flaubert was the nature of the state of medicine at that time, i.e. patients
recover by themselves! Then there is Emma’s monument where a trip to Rouen is needed
accompanied by the garrulous Vaufrylard. This was Flaubert’s nickname in Pradier’s
studio! Note p.496. And it’s hard not to see Louise Colet and Louise Pradier in some of
16
Emma’s mood swings.
A Note on Railways:
First and only mention in Madame Bovary is by Homais, naturally, p.495. Madame
Bovary is set in the stage coach era, while L’Education Sentimentale is firmly in the
railway era, with a plot dependence on them: money as well as movement. Railways,
then, come to represent progress. Also the two striking images in the later novel:
1. the smoke from the engine ‘qui dansaient sur l’herbe…’p.299
2. smoke (again) ‘…comme une gigantesque plume d’austruche …’p.573
ON SALAMMBÔ
Written: 1857-1862
NB Trip to Tunis: April – June 1858
th
Published: 24 November 1862
Novel first called Carthage, then The Merceneraires, then Salammbô
Main Source: Polybius. Flaubert’s additions: Chs. 3, 5, 10, 11, 13.
These notes will not be so full as with Flaubert’s other works as I regard this novel as a
dead end, enacting no more than a study in the obsessions of love and religion, embodied
in the static one-dimensional characters of Matho and Salammbô.
Problem of why he chose to write this pre-Islamic Magreb novel. His trips to Egypt and
Tunisia are to imbibe what for him becomes ‘The Orient’, far removed from its grubby
reality, but an exotic unreality, whatever he says to Louise Colet on 22nd March 1853, see
above. Said’s Orientalism is obviously relevant here, but at least Flaubert can be
absolved of an overt or covert colonialist drive. Some clues:
‘I am going to write a novel which will be set three centuries before the birth of Christ,
because I feel the need to get away from the modern world, the world in which my pen is
all too deeply immersed, a world which it fatigues me to portray and disgusts me to
observe.’ To Mlle Leroyer de Chantpie 18th March 1857.
‘Here I am back in Carthage. I’ve been working at it for the past three days like a maniac
… I am in a labyrinth. … It may well be I have made a great mistake in taking on such a
subject.’ To Jules Duplan 1st July 1858
‘When people read Salammbô, I hope they give no thought to the author. Not many
people will realize how sad I must have been to undertake the resuscitation of Carthage.
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It is a thebaid forced upon me by the disgust I feel for modern life.’
To Ernest Feydeau, 28th November 1859.
BUT do we believe all these? The first letter looks far too rhetorical to carry conviction,
and ‘disgust’ and ‘thebaid’ (a boorish tirade?) ring liked cracked bells.
The reception on publication exceeds Flaubert’s expectations. To Laure De Maupassant,
8th December 1862, and its instantaneous success is peculiarly difficult to explain. Wall
in Flaubert: A Life (p.243) has ‘a perverse fancy-dress eroticism’ as an explanation but
this is only seeing it through the spectacles of later writers and critics. Flaubert himself
had talked about ‘… a need for immense epics.’ to ‘… novels with a grandiose setting
…, luxurious and tragic at the same time’ The ‘voluptuousness’ of the writing of the first
La Tentation de St. Antoine has not gone away, resurfacing in this novel’s lack of
restraint. The novel establishes Flaubert as a successful, established and fèted author and
opens many doors, societal and literary, for Flaubert with the Goncourts, the Magny
dinners, Sainte-Beuve, Turgenev and above all George Sand as a consequence. Then
there is the farce of the Empress and Salammbô’s dress, revealed as too ‘revealing’. So
no Imperial titties at the Tuileries! And of course the invitations to Imperial hob-noberies
at weekends in Compiègne.
So did France need the exotic in 1862 and 1863? Jean Leon Gerome’s ‘orientalist’ works,
such as The Slave Market were popular in the Paris Salon at the same time. See Linda
Nochlin, The Politics of Vision (1988/91) Ch. 3 ‘The Imaginary Orient’ So …?
Flaubert makes two elaborate defences of the novel:
1. the archaeologist, G. Froehner’s criticisms are rebutted in detail from his own
researches which were, apparently, tolerably accurate at the time, although he was
not fully accurate, in that, for example, there was no aqueduct at Carthage.
2. To Saint-Beuve. See Wall Selected Letters pp289-298 and Masson
Correspondance pp 426-439 which Flaubert entitles Mon Apologie.
This falls into two parts, Analysis ( A) and Verdict (V)
A1 ‘Am I supposed to have embellished it, toned it down, Frenchified it?’ This in
answer to the charge of extravagance. Unfortunately he has done exactly that!
A2 Not Chateaubriand, i.e. Flaubert dealing not with typical, but actual martyrs. Yes.
A3 Sources: Flaubert dismisses Hanno’s Periplus as a source. For him the
‘incontestable authority is Polybius in questions of fact’. Yes, in so far as Polybius is the
more reliable.
A4 Salammbô is ‘… not Emma Bovary, but a single-minded maniac’ ‘For neither you,
nor I, nor anyone, ancient or modern, can understand the woman of the Orient’. First part
of the statement makes sense, but the second, in its exotic/sexism, is decidedly dodgy.
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A5 No need for a glossary: ‘I could have bored the reader to death with technical terms.’
Yes.
A6 A refutation of Aristotle’s claim that there was no tyranny in Carthage. Successful.
A7 There is nothing ‘perverse’ about Salammbô and the Serpent. Flaubert claims it is a
rhetorical device, asking whether then it is indecent. Hum!
A8 Attempted refutation of the charge of invented torture, showing ‘a sadistic tendency’.
Flaubert finds this charge ‘wounding’, but it is largely accurate!
A9 Flaubert accepts the charge of ‘stretching’ historical truth. ‘I simply exaggerated a
bit.’ A lot, in fact. But child sacrifice did take place in Carthage.
V1 Flaubert claims the book is in ‘harmony’ with itself. A successful claim.
V2 He claims he chooses his language with great care. A successful claim.
V3 ‘The pedestal is too big for the statue’ i.e. the background outweighs the foreground
and to restore balance he would have liked ‘another 100 pages exclusively about
Salammbô’ Perhaps it is as well there aren’t these extra pages!
V4 Flaubert admits he ‘cheats’ with the aqueduct and the name of Hanno.
V5 ‘My Carthage is far from being a fantasy.’ A successful claim.
ON L’EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE
(An Education in Sensibility? – NGW translation)
Written: April 1864 – May 1869
Published: November 17th 1869
NB Not ‘The First Education Sentimentale’ of 1837
NB Page references to Livres de Poche edition, edited Jean-Pierre de Biasi.
A novel of ‘misprisions’ (cf. Madame Bovary) again, misreadings of people and
situations. Misinterpretation of states of mind, actions and motives. Does ‘misprision’
shade into duplicity? Note also the degree and blitheness of lying, here linked with
societal, and personal, relations as opposed to the solely personal in Madame Bovary.
Male friendship and betrayal: Deslauriers, and the ending with Deslauriers and Frédéric.
Money and inherited wealth: to what end? And for what use?
Debt and manipulation:
Aspirations and disillusion: ‘Le defaut de ligne droit.’ p.624;
The intermeshing of love, politics and betrayal;
The impossibility of happiness;
The high farce: the duel with Cissy, the Club d’Intelligence (anything but!); love/sex
blotting out revolutionary zeal; the waiting for Madame Arnoux, and with Rosanette at
19
Fontainbleu;
Criticism of Second Empire: coded republicanism, (unlike Zola’s much easier task with
the benefit of hindsight);
Criticism of the bourgeoisie: its hypocrisy, its unprincipled pursuit of money, power and
influence, e.g. M. Dambreuse;
A world of contingency and contingencies: ‘Ne pas conclure!’;
What is the end of this education in sensibility, this coming-of-age? A worldly-wise
knowingness? Anticipation, not realization;
The sympathy for an anti-hero;
How autobiographical is the novel?
Cf. Proust: ‘Apropos du Style de Flaubert’ Nouvelle Revue Francaise, January 1st 1920
and Commentary by Gérard Genette, Figures, Tel Quel 1966
Flaubert uses ‘un proletaire’ p. 429. He is sitting on the throne at Les Tuilleries. This part
written in 1868, but the word had entered French in 1819 by Sismondi.
De Biasi is the only commentator I know to link Flaubert and Marx.
KEY CHARACTERS
FRĖDĖRIC: his weakness, the failed revolutionary (love and sex get in the way!) his
thwarted aspirations, his love for Mme Arnoux, his deceptions, his lies, his affairs with
Rosanette and Mme Dambreuse, (his insincerity expressed here in language à la
Balzacienne), his emotional double dealing, his money-mania, his social climbing, his
unrootedness, his vacillation, but his integrity, his understanding, sensitivity, his
generosity, (emotional and financial) his pain, his emotional honesty. NB how do we
know he is lying to Rosanette having made love to her in place of Mme Arnoux?
DUSSARDIER: The key political figure. His fight against injustice (the boy beaten up by
the police), ‘un sorte d’Hercule’ p.82. His occupations: carrier’s man p.46; shop
assistant, p.82; cashier p.226, but is most commonly called ‘commis’(clerk), ‘le brave
commis’, p 511, p.533. His social position: ‘la position infirme’ p.224; his innocence p
117; his republican politics p.353. NB he says ‘Vive la Républic twice only; firstly, p.434
at Les Tuilleries, and secondly on his death, p. 614. (The red tiles, p.90). Dussaardier v.
Senecal: ‘le brave garcon’ v. the socialist theoretician/dogmatist pp.226-232. His
reading, p 252. His anguish at apparently finding himself on the wrong side p.500; his
disillusion, his near-despair: ‘J’ai envie de me faire tuer.’ His martyrdom ‘ une cariatid
…’ (i.e. a support) p 614. ‘Il tomba sur le dos, ses bras en croix’. Note ambiguity:
usually translated ‘with crossed arms’, but surely ‘arms cross-wise’ p.614, i.e. Christ.
REGIMBART: old style republican, but too severe. But with both these characters
Flaubert is using his coded republicanism. Surely Dussardier is a ‘sans culotte’? NB :
Flaubert gives ‘La République! Comme si etait possible en France!’ to the bourgeoisie he
is criticizing, hence not endorsing this social caste.
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SENECAL: ‘…quelque chose dur et froid …’ p.109. ‘Homme des theories’ p.205-6.
The crypto-authoritarian. His double-dealing: emotional (re Mme Arnoux) and political
at Le Club d’Intelligence pp. 452-458. His eventual betrayal of La Républic and the
killing of Dussardier p.614.
DESLAURIERS: wishes for ‘un nouveau ‘89’; as a revolutionary, pp.193-94, ‘Le future
Mirabeau’, p. 232. His betrayal of Frédéric. His marriage to Louise Roque.
HUSSONET: his introduction, as a phoney, p.77 The debate with Frédéric at Les
Tuilleries, p.432. ‘… ce people me dégoute.’ Frédéric: ‘… moi, je trouve le people
sublime …’. His pursuit of preferment and money, his double dealing. His ‘end’ where
he occupies ‘un haute place’ as censor to Napoleon III p.622
ARNOUX: the ‘fixer’, the entrepreneur with unethical business practices, eye on the
main chance, crude, insensitive , deceiving, but brave.
MME ARNOUX: the near-impossible ideal (only the serious illness of her son prevents
her from ‘coming’ to Frédéric). The pure woman. Their love unconsummated. Her
white hair, p.619.
PELLERIN: the failed artist, in that he can never finish a painting, replacing talent with
verbiage, finally ending up as a photographer (Nadar?)
ROSANETTE (Rosa Bron): A sexual victim, but shallow, egotistical, vindictive
(treatment of Arnoux and Vatnaz) empty-headed, politically naïve.
The ‘education’ is thus a movement from callow youth to a mature grasp of reality
through the agencies of love (for Mme Arnoux) and political awareness (freedom and the
republicanism of Dussardier).
ON LA TENTATION DE SAINT ANTOINE
Three versions:
Texts:
1. 1849
2. 1856
3. 1874 (i.e. the final published version)
L’Edition de Claudine Gothot-Mersch, 1983. L’édition definitive.
Page references are to the Folio Classique paperback.
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Translations:
Three in English. The first (used by NGW) was by Lafcadio Hearn in
1902. Reprinted (with revisions) in 2001 by Modern Library Classics
(USA) with a foreword by Michel Foucault, reprinted from his
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice.
Hearn’s translation is frightful sub-scriptural fustian. There are also plain
mistakes: e.g. ‘La chaloupe’ becomes ‘a scallop shell’ instead of a
‘scallop boat’. ‘Matter then… must be part of God’ where ‘ferait’ is
translated as ‘must be’ instead of ‘would make up’ p.212. Flaubert uses
‘tu/toi’ throughout. Hearn makes not even a nod towards this usage.
Much more impressive is the translation by Kitty Mrosovsky, Penguin
1980.
THE BOOK ITSELF
The book consists of one night’s hallucinations, induced by deprivation of food (bread)
and water. This provides a realistic basis for such hallucinations, taking the form of
various temptations. (Note also there is a reality in dreams and dreaming).
BUT: What kind of a book is it?
A novel?
A dramatic spectacle? Note the stage directions, and the 1966 staging by Maurice Béjart.
A philosophical/ethical/metaphysical dialogue?
A philosophical poem? In both these instances ‘philosophy’ takes the forms of
assertions, with the total absence of any analysis. Thus there is a lack of any
philosophical rigour, and the work becomes a procession of declamations of unsupported,
unargued for or against, beliefs. Apollonius shouts in Antony’s ears, p.155. Such
didacticism spills over into the text where the reader is repeated ‘told’ what to believe or
what has happened, e.g. ending of Part V p.160.
A drug-induced reverie (No evidence Flaubert. habitually used or took drugs)?
A phantasmagoria?
‘… ni récit, ni pièce de theater, ni poème ‘ p.37 Introduction by Gothot-Mersch.
An allegory of doubt and certainty, rationality and faith? An exposition of pantheism?
This is in my view closer to the mark, and in my view also the work is a monumental
flop.
Cf. The Pilgrim’s Progress, but this work is less accessible. Philosophy, and ethics, have
developed, so the book remains a philosophical historical oddity. Of Flaubert’s
noted reading list of 134 works, only seven are strictly speaking ‘philosophical’
(i.e. Spinoza and Kant) and he quotes one of Spinoza’s arguments to rebut The
Devil but Flaubert has not learnt to philosophise. But Spinoza’s influence infuses
this and (Bouvard et Pécuchet) i.e. his ‘infinite variety of forms’ (Kitty
Mrosovsky). But this is not my reading of Spinoza, who is a tolerant ‘monist’
even if the monism is that of ‘God or Nature’ But what of Kant’s ‘Pure
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Reason’/’Practical Reason’? Is not this nearer the pure/applied knowledge
evidenced in Bouvard et Pécuchet?
Origins
Painting by Breugel (seen in Genoa in 1845): work originally conceived of as a play and
an engraving by Callot hangs in Flaubert’s study at le Croisset (from 1846). BUT the
theatricality of language and of the declamations by ‘characters’ remains in the final
version.
Problems of Structure:
A procession of barely realized ‘characters’ – ‘voices’, perhaps?
A tableau effect, mitigating against a structured whole.
The Sections:
I.
The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed, anger, pride, gluttony, lust, envy,
Idleness. (Why does ‘lust’ reappear in Part VII?)
II.
The Queen of Sheba
III.
The Eternals (The Eons) and the Gnostics
IV.
The Heretics
V.
The Gods
VI.
Science
VII. Death/Luxury(Lust); The Sphinx/Chimera. The Beasts. The
Ending and ‘matière’
NB There is a progressive strengthening of each temptation, but the ending is
problematic: why Part VII at all when Hilarion’s (The Devil/Science) temptation is
surely the greatest. How does this square with the materialistic notion of ‘matière’?
Language:
There is often ambiguity in the language used: e.g. Marcellina and her silver images
(where only that of Christ is kept) p. 118.
Elle entrouve son manteau
La veux-tu ?
But what, exactly? Sexual? Also the patrician women in the graveyard, ‘…ils se mêlent
…’p. 129.
Cf Gérard Genette, ‘Silences de Flaubert’ in Figures, Tel Quel 1966
23
So we have to ask (as with all Flaubert’s utterances) who is speaking:
in the persona of Antony?
in the stage directions?
in the prose linking passages?
‘C’est l’oeuvre de toute ma vie’:
(‘It’s my whole life’s work.’) But this again is another Flaubertian ambiguity, and as it is
to Mlle Leroyer de Chantpie (the most credulous of recipients) in a letter June 5th 1872 it
strikes a pose. See’Letters’ above.
Drenched in Sexuality:
Overt:
The Queen of Sheba and Lust are failures for modern readers (I suggest) as their eroticism
fails to convince. Sade-ism (and yes I want it spelt that way) at the outset. A naked,
whipped Ammonaria p.54. The patrician women in the graveyard pp.127-29 where
languor and ennui give way to lesbian sex.
‘ithyphallic’ (i.e. erect phallus) Gods, p.161
The goddess Alicia penetrated from the rear by a black p.200
Thoughts of the naked Ammonaria, p.218
Lust, p.220
Covert:
Little wonder the work (as was his life) is a happy hunting ground for Freudians (from
Freud himself, via Theodore Reik, Jeanne Bem, Sartre to Foucault). Bem even sees
Flaubert’s father as ‘le père castrateur’ (!!!)
Probing of Motives
The temptation by Hilarion, p.90. (My translation)
‘You are a hypocrite who enforces solitude on himself all the more to live in the excesses
of desire. You deprive yourself of meat, wine, baths, slaves and honours: but you let
your imagination run riot, conjuring up feasts, body-perfumes, naked women and the
applause of the crowd. Your chastity is no more than a subtle corruption, and your
contempt for the world is only the impotence of your hate for it. Is it that that makes what
you like so melancholy, or maybe it is doubt? No, the possession of truth brings
happiness. Was Jesus himself always so mournful? He was surrounded by friends, he
entered public houses, drank many glasses of wine, pardoned the woman taken in sin, and
cured all disorders. You, you only have pity for your own misery. It is like a remorse. It
24
eats at you like a frenzy of madness, so you push aside the nuzzling dog, the smile of a
child.’
Antony bursts into tears, saying
Enough, enough! You move my heart too much.
Prodigious Reading: (see pp. 273-285)
Scholarship v. extravagant over-exuberant imagination. This last, the i.e. ‘the fantastic’
wins out partly because there is no bourgeoisie to hate. The letters to Louise Colet, above,
reveal a stress on ‘freedom’, ‘lyricism’ and ‘voluptuousness’, all of which allow his
fantasies to run riot. But the book remains a patchwork of unharmonised sources, with its
implications for the structure of the work. See Jean Seznec, Nouvelles Études sur La
Tentation de St. Antoine London 1949.
Imagery:
Recurring imagery of net/network: ‘Un réseau noir’ p.71; ‘Grid p.73 Crisscross p. 134;
‘Un bois de cypres’,p.73 and‘a forest of columns’ p.129 (and the similar use of fôret
above p.133). All suggest entrapment.
Fusion:
Apollo (The sun) and Jesus in the ending of the book. (Why not the Cross/Jesus on the
Cross? - merely because as Flaubert would have us believe the Cross is an unaesthetic
object. So what of the use of the Cross, and its shadow, in earlier passages?
Helen of Troy fused with La Pensée (The first thought) pp.135-36. Helen as a prostitute
p. 136.
Hallucination and Creativity:
For Flaubert (whatever he says)) these are analogous states and occurrences, hence his
‘attraction’ to St. Antony. He discusses this in his letters to Taine, 20th November 1866
(Emma’s poisoning and his own nausea: Hum! At least ten years after the event!) and
1st December 1866, this second bearing explicit sexual imagery (‘fouteur’) and stating
that finishing a work is like post-coital ‘calme’ (cf Milton’s ‘All passion spent’?) .
NB: ‘Malgré le vacarme de sa tête, … p.22, i.e. Flaubert himself, so this is to be tied in
with imagination/fantasy.
The Core and The Ending:
The notion that simple faith can overcome doubt is unconvincing in the extreme,
25
‘undoing’ all the ‘hallucinations/temptations’ that have gone before. Then there is the
problem of meaning he attaches to ‘Science’: knowledge (the temptation of Faust)?
rationality?
materialism?
And what does Flaubert mean by ‘la matière’? ‘La matière est éternelle’ p.101. Further,
the relationship between ‘Matter’ and ‘Substance’ is unresolved. Does God become
‘Matter’? Apollonius/Damis prefigures this (‘être la matière’) in ‘Il croit, comme un
brute, à la realité des choses.’ p.159 and ‘spirit of Matter’ p.161. Relationship between
God and Matter not clear. p.212. Antony wants to fuse himself with ‘matter’. This looks
rum on the face of it. Is this the end of his pantheism?
The core of the book surely lies in the exchange between Antony and The Devil
(Hilarion): Again who is speaking here?
Antoine
Quel est le but de tout cela?
The Devil
Il n’y a pas de but.
The ending of Section VI fails, in that The Devil, who is about to swallow Antony,
abandons him when Antony makes one final effort of Hope. So why then Section VII
(‘The Beasts’)?
TROIS CONTES
La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier : written September 1875 to February 1876;
Un Coeur Simple: written March 1876 to August 1876;
Herodias : written October 1876 to February 1877.
Published in the reviews Le Moniteur and Le Bien Public, April 12 to 22nd 1877.
Published in book form: April 24th 1877
Note that the order of publication in the book form is not that of the order of writing.
This may have something to do with complicated publishing deals for Germany and
Russia.
Edition used: Trois Contes, Folioplus Classiques, Gallimard 2006
Flaubert breaks off from the writing of Bouvard et Pécuchet, probably as a result of the
creative problems it was setting him, that is the organisation of recalcitrant material.
26
The Forms of Trois Contes
If one takes this formal approach, then it is hard to avoid the problems of definitions of
such forms: short story, novel, fable, tale, short novel. However, any attempt to tease out
the category (or categories) these tales fall into is ultimately sterile as they themselves do
not, and cannot, allow for such a quasi-taxonomical approach. Further any attempt to talk
about the fluidity of, or Flaubert’s ‘playing’ with, those forms is merely ducking the issue.
How ‘long’ does a short story have to be before it becomes a ‘short’ novel, or indeed, a
novel? This is a futile question, as all are works of prose fiction, and hence are fictive
texts. Hence the approach of fictiveness will apply.
A Thematic Approach
Is there a central unifying theme? No, although a great deal of cod-critical ingenuity has
been fruitlessly expended in an attempt to find one:
1. ‘Sainthood’: But this applies to only two of the three tales. Yes, Flaubert does
want to see the person underneath the saintliness, but what of Félicité here? Is she
a lay Saint, or a subject for subsequent canonization? Hardly. Nor is Flaubert
interested in the formalities of organized religion.
2. ‘Animals’: e.g. Félicité and her parrot; Herodias and the hiding of her white
horses ; St. Julian and his hunting of the ‘talking’ animals. Animals are only used
to reveals aspects of the nature of the human protagonists, and their use cannot
carry enough weight to be a thematic unity. Further, animals played an important
part in the historical background of all three tales, and thus this approach looks
like a backwards reading.
I cannot find a unifying theme across Trois Contes, and any attempt to find one looks like
an exercise in critical self-persuasion. The Tales remain different from each other: cf.
Pierre-Marc de Biasi: Une légende (a ‘marvellous’ tale); une conte (a simple tale); un
romance court (a short novel). The unity lies in the writing, but the telling significance of
Trois Contes is that the Tales do not relate to each other but to the strands running
through the total oeuvre: e.g.
Emma and Félicité: their disillusion; their disappointments;
Félicité and Catherine Leroux: their servitude;
Misprision: St. Julian ‘misreads’ the situation of the two bodies in the bed, killing his
parents instead of his supposedly adulterous wife and her lover;
Piety versus eroticism: ‘Herodias’and La Tentation de Saint Antoine;
A dark eroticism : ‘Herodias’ and Salammbô;
The aspiration of characters to what they cannot, or ever hope to, attain, merely glimpsing
it far off, tragically in the case of Emma, comically in the case of Bouvard and Pécuchet.
Thus the only unity in Trois Contes is the protean exposition of Flaubert-the-writer.
27
Autobiographical Elements
Again, never far below the surface, e.g. the lower Normandy setting in ‘Un Coeur
Simple’; Rouen Cathedral in ‘St. Julian’; names of characters: La Mère David as the
woman innkeeper; names of places: St. Gratien; the deaths of Caroline and Virginie and
the two mothers (one ‘historical’, the other fictive); Félicité and Virginie/Caroline’s
bonnet.
The Crafting
e.g in ‘Un Coeur Simple’ : Félicité’s difficulty in visualising the Holy Ghost p.26 and her
death-bed vision p. 52 where she sees that the Holy Ghost depicted in the church ‘Il avait
quelque chose du perroquet.’
ON BOUVARD ET PĒCUCHET
(to include DICTIONNAIRE DES IDĖES RECUES)
Bouvard et Pécuchet is unfinished on Flaubert.’s death in 1880. Published in La
Nouvelle Revue in November, in book form in 1881.
Edition used: Claudine Gothot-Mersch 1979
‘Avec un chain de scénarios du
Sottiser
L’Album de la Marquise
Et
Le Dictionnaire
Des idées recues.(DIR)
Page references are to this edition.
Gestation and Sources:
A very long gestation period. ‘L’Histoire de Deux Commis’ whose date of 1843 is given
by Maxime Du Camp Souvenirs Litteraires (1882). Flaubert first mentions DIR to
Bouillhet Sept. 4th 1850; To Louise Colet 16th December 1852. 1863 sketches out the
first scenario for ‘Les Deux Clopôtres’. A further mention To Edma Roger de Genettes,
August 17th 1872. Then also in 1872 he names Bouvard and Pécuchet in a letter to
Caroline.
‘I am about to begin work on a book that will take me months and months of reading.’ To
28
George Sand, 12th October 1872, again ‘I have embarked on a work of great scope’, 28th
October 1872 and on 25th November to her again: ‘ What I am pondering at the moment
is a more substantial thing which will aspire to a comic effect.’ It is ‘ … a big book …’
26th May 1874, and ‘… a senseless book …’ 27th March 1875 , both to George Sand. ‘Le
samedi 1er août je commence enfin B&P’ To Turgenev 29th July 1874. AND ‘Bouvard
and Pécuchet occupy my thoughts to such an extent that I am turning into them! Their
stupidity is mine and that is sinking me. That may be the explanation’ To Edma Roger de
Genettes, April 1875. Careful: Flaubert is tentative about this and the ‘explanation’
offered is that of his fear of his ‘softening’ of his brain.
On Don Quixote:
‘Je retrouve toutes mes origines dans le livre que je savais pas coeur avant savoir faire
livre, Don Quichotte … À Louise Colet 19 juin 1852.
To be taken with a pinch of salt, surely! It does, however, attest to the lasting impression
(’Je suis ébloui’) that the book made on him (it was the first book read to him) and Wall,
op.cit. pp 24-25 tells us of the young Flaubert’s delight in the work. Does Don Quixote’s
‘misprision’ of people and events foreshadow that of Emma and Moreau? He adds, in a
further letter to Louise on 22nd November 1852: ‘Ce qu’il y a de prodigeux dans Don
Quichotte, c’est l’absense d’art et cette perpetuelle fusion de l’illusion et de la realité …’
The Book Unfolds:
Bouvard et Pécuchet is Flaubert’s Don Quixote with a double (anti)-hero/protagonist.
Don Quixote was read to Flaubert when he was a child by Père Mignon and ‘stayed’ with
him throughout. In a letter to Louise Colet, June 13th 1852 he says how important it is for
his ‘world-view’. Some nod towards Voltaire’s Candide, surely, in its skepticism and
philosophical doubt. The ‘war’ on stupidity, the banalities of the bourgeois e.g. DIR ‘Un
encyclopédie de la bêtise humaine’ p.18 ‘La bêtise consiste à vouloir conclure.’ p. 36.
La Tentation explores the realms of belief, religion and mythology; Bouvard et Pécuchet
the realms of ideas and are thus complementary (Science v. Belief as a 19th Century arena
of contest).
Note also the exchange between Bouvard and Pécuchet:
B. Quel est le but de tout cela?
P. Peut-etre qu’il n’y a pas de but?
p.139
Here it becomes a question whereas in La Tentation, in the exchange between Antony and
The Devil it is a direct statement. Thus one can regard this work as a counterpart of La
Tentation. There is also the same (rather unsatisfactory) pre-occupation with ‘matière’
and the soul, what might be called ‘the materiality of the spirit’ pp.301/302. That
29
Flaubert. sees the two books as in some way related is revealed; ‘Je vais me mettre cet été
à un livre de même tonneau.’ To George Sand, 1st May 1874.
Bouvard and Pécuchet are credulous, naïve, self-deluding dreamers, incongruous,
collectors of unrelated facts, too eager, too trusting in their own beliefs; ‘Et ayant plus
d’idées, ils eurent plus de souffrances.’p.61; intellectually ill-equipped to deal with their
aspirations, ‘bornées’, (limited) ‘un peu benêts’ (a little simple). Originally called ‘Les
deux clopôtres’ i.e. woodlice, but more likely to be something like dummies/suckers/poor
saps; looking for certainty in knowledge (a chimera for and anathema to Flaubert). ‘Ce
default de certitude les contrariait’ p.166; their method – voracious reading but with little
critical judgement and thus ill-equipped to deal with conflicting sources/authorities;
‘…comment concilier les deux portraits’ (of Duc du Angoulême) with an inability to
reconcile sources in general p.197, (their usual response being to give up and move on to
something else); self-persuasion to self-delusion (e.g. the druid sacrificial stone ‘…
impossible d’en douter’ p.177. ‘Et pour Bouvard et Pécuchet tout devint phallus.’p.180.
‘Cependent toutes les lectures aurient ébranlés leur cervelle.’ p.134. Eager to ‘suffer for
science’ p.120
Note Flaubert’s reading in: chemistry, anatomy, physiology, medicine, geology,
history, literature, politics, aesthetics, spiritualism, religion/theology, metaphysics. What
Flaubert calls ‘idées modernes’. (NB Queneau: no mathematics. Or physics NGW. But
see below)
Note also Comte de Faverges’s model farm as opposed to their ham-fisted attempts.
However the exchange between Dr Vaucorbeil and Pécuchet is that of the autodidact v.
the degree holder. Pécuchet turns out to be not all that stupid.
‘Mais Bouvard étais las de la médecine.’ p.134 ; ‘Les ressorts de la vie nous sont
cachées’ p.134. And studying medicine leads to hypochondria. p.134, BUT throughout
the novel Bouvard and Pécuchet are right to be so wrong-headed.
Their chance meeting: ‘Comment expliquer le sympathies’p.59. A little odd on the
face of it (a cop-out even? Or ‘romantic’ love, ironically) and note the autobiographical
trace: copyists and Flaubert’s relationships with these drudges. Compare de Biasi’s
solving of the time problem in L’Education Sentimentale where a misdating by a copyist
resolves this.
The Internal Time Structure
Bouvard and Pécuchet both aged 47 in 1838. In 1839, 20th January, Bouvard inherits a
large sum of money. ‘Comment serait bien a la campagne.’ p.52 and p.65. Mélie, the
serving girl, 3 years after they arrive at Chavignolles. Novel, up to Chapter 10, covers
some 21 years. This is thus NOT a ‘realistic’ novel (in the mould of Madame Bovary or
L’Education Sentimentale but more of a philosophical tract, and a skeptical one at that.
1845 p.185; 25th February 1848 p.226; Louis Napoleon’s coup 2nd December 1851 p.257;
‘war’ on Rome 1859 p.358. 1859 appears to be the end of the novel as we have it, which
was written from 1872 on and thus reveals late nineteenth century preoccupations, e.g.
Darwinism.
30
Structure and Organisation
The book consists of nine complete chapters and an incomplete Chapter 10.
1. The meeting, and exploration of Paris’s museums/libraries, the legacy;
2. Horticulture/agriculture;
3. Science: chemistry/medicine/astrology/geology (i.e. science v. belief: P. v. Abbé
Jeufroy);
4. Archaeology/architecture (druidism)/ history and c.f. p.192 for problems in
historiography;
5. Literature;
6. Politics (1848) revolution (and an attack on utopianism);
7. Love/sex (and clap!);
8. Gymnastics/spiritualism/metaphysics (where philosophising can lead to suicide!);
9. Pietism/religion/belief;
10. Education (Victor and Victorine)/ethics/town planning/adult education.
A common thread throughout is how the ‘practical applications’ of the
research/exploration/knowledge usually leads to disasters: medicine to hypochondria;
archaeology to dust; literature to failures to write novels or plays; history to the confusion
over the Duc du Angloulème; politics to farce and the cutting down of the liberty tree;
love to venereal disease and greed (Madame Bordin); philosophizing to suicide (botched);
religion a means of governing and control; education to the failure with Victor (cruelty)
e.g. the cooked cat p.390-391 and Victor’s reply that it is his to do as he likes with i.e.
conflict of self and consideration for other creatures, and Victorine (over-sexed).
This distinction probably answers Queneau’s query above re mathematics i.e. this being a
‘pure’ science lies outside the scope of their ‘practice’ (i.e. ‘theory’ v. ‘practice’ again!).
But note how they must always go back to first principles p.276. Bouvard and Pécuchet
never know enough and it is this circularity which gives the novel its non-linear structure.
Note the linking/bridging passages between one chapter and the next.
However the major question remains: What IS the second part of the novel? The
‘Sottiser’? or L’Album de La Marquise’? or DIR? Difficult to find a consensus of opinion
but on balance I will go for DIR (as does Gothot-Mersch). ‘… it will be composed almost
entirely of quotations …’ To Edma Roger de Genettes, 24 January 1880. The book is also
‘Un revue de toutes les idées modernes.’ But are these contemporary ideas those listed as
the chapters above? Certainly there was prodigious reading: ‘… some 1500 books and a
stack of notes 8 inches high.’ ibid. The effort is ‘like trying to put an ocean in a bottle’ to
Léonie Brainne, August 21st 1879. And the book at one time possessed a sub-title
‘Encyclopédie de la Bêtise Humaine’. Du Camp in his Souvenirs Litteraires (II p.594)
has it as ‘Un livre des vengéances contre la bêtise’.
31
Setting:
In Lower Normandy between Falaise and Caen: Chavignolles (NB plural of the cheese
Chavignol (Sancerre), so is there a reference here to the cheesiness of Lower Normandy,
the Camembert country?) ‘… sur un plateau stupide…’p.16. Chavignolles becomes a
microcosm: minor aristocracy: Comte de Faverges ; the church : Abbé Jeufroy;
professionals: Marescot; bourgeois: Mme Bordin; farming community: Gouey; then
labourers and the rest. A bedrock of a supposed normalcy based on shared values of
something like ‘common sense’ which patently does not work when others, such as
Bouvard and Pécuchet, do not share those values.
The Flow of Sympathy:
The initially ‘unattractive’ protagonists become ‘acceptable’ through the tuggings of
sympathy over the ‘wrong-headedness’, the plain silliness, their failures: ‘Ainsi tout leur
a craqué dans les mains’ p.414. Again this is part of Flaubert’s art: to get us to accept
characters such as Emma Bovary, Charles Bovary, Frédéric Moreau, even Félicité. See in
particular the ‘row’, over politics, between Bouvard and Pécuchet where Pécuchert retires
under ‘sa casquette’ pp. 255/6
The Occluded Autobiographical;
Again! Bouvard (fat) = Flaubert; Pécuchet. (thin) = Du Camp? Or is this too fanciful?
But Bouvard portly, sociable, ‘a man of the world’, while Pécuchet is pointy-nosed, thin
and a virgin. And to what extent do they become the Flaubert of St. Polycarp or
‘Cruchard’ (NB ‘My inability to put up with human foolishness’ To Edma Roger des
Genettes 24th January 1880)
Plus the usual difficulty in working out, (if possible) who is actually speaking in the
‘discours indirect libre’ pp.39-40.
And again the constant struggle in Flaubert between the real and the imagined is played
out.
A Testament?
Flaubert admits this in a letter to George Sand (18th February 1876) but this raises more
questions than it resolves. In what sense is the novel a testament? It looks as if Flaubert
is regarding this as his latest (greatest?) work, rather than being some kind of spiritual
will. Is then not the whole canon of a writer’s works his/her testament? Again this is not
a very helpful remark by Flaubert. Or have we here a problem of translation, and the
original doesn’t help much
32
The Philosophical Core of The Novel:
pp 319-327 Chapter 8.
This pre-occupation is introduced by ‘’Presque toutes (de nos efforts) viennent du
mauvais emploi de mots’ p.306. But, careful, a philosopher uses words differently from a
writer! But Flaubert’s focus appears to be, perhaps erroneously, on:
a) systems of thought;
b) living one’s philosophy, rather than merely treating it as an intellectual exercise
‘Tant de systèmes vous embrouille.’ p.309
But note how philosophically adept Pécuchet has become (p.315) where the priest is no
match for him and in the debate on free will (Touache the criminal p.317) where again he
is superior in argument (not difficult given the opposition!) but he does not distinguish
between the cardinal concepts of ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’.
But it is part of the ‘drama of the novel’ that Flaubert has to show the effects of their
philosophising: ‘Alors une faculté pitoyable se developer dans leur esprit. Celle de voir
la bêtise et de ne plus le tolerer.’p.319. This leads to paradox, to isolation, personal and
social disintegration and, hence, to attempted suicide p.322. ‘… restaient les coudres sur
la table, à gémir d’un air lugubre …’ p.320. But life always breaks in: Pécuchet is in
debt (p.309); the getting rid of the statue of St. Peter p.311; the double dealings of
Madame Bordin (p.312); Marcel’s lousy cooking p.313. It appears the resolution of all
this lies in simple faith, the midnight mass in the Church on Christmas Eve. But surely
this is too simple, and too blatant, to be convincing. They see the light of the Church and
are drawn towards it. Yes, they are in darkness, cold, isolated and, yes, the Church is
light, warm and a community activity is taking place, but look how dehumanized the
congregation is! Note the insistence on the sacrifical lamb p.325. Again as in La
Tentation the problem seems to be the materiality of the spirit, probably a false light for
Flaubert this. So this rather naïve resolution remains thoroughly unconvincing and a
ducking of the issues Flaubert has set up in the first instance. This is all the more
surprising as coming from an avowed Voltairean. Thus Flaubert remains the writer and
not, in any final analysis, a philosopher.
Remember – it’s a comedy:
This is difficult at times, it has to be said!
Note the incongruous at the outset: Pécuchet’s’s waistcoat in a heatwave p.57; the
ghastly dinner party pp103-108; the scare on the cliffs pp.152-153; Bouvard and his
umbrella; and the long-suffering Germaine (passim). Often the humour is visualized:
Pécuchet and the helmet p.172. Then there is Madame Bordin’s flirtatiousness: ‘Un jour
33
elle apparait décolletée.’ p. 207; Pécuchet on stilts in the garden p.276, and his first
communion p.340. Social comedy/satire: Madame de Noharis – her cant, her ‘fainting’
fits at Pécuchet’s declarations, becoming a bhuddist p.360.
Then the situational: Bouvard, Madame Bordin, the washing and the ‘fucking’ peacocks.
p.387.
Two oddities:
1. the railway reached St. Pierre-sur-Dives 1st February 1859 and Falaise on 1st
November 1859. Flaubert. makes no mention of this in what we have of the novel yet
railways represent modernisation; thus were railways to occur in the unfinished part of
Ch. 10?
Or did Flaubert intend to finish on the eve of this victory for modernization?
2. ‘Haussman m’empêche de dormir.’ p.405. Is this a conscious anachronism? Bouvard
and Pécuchet have their plans for modernizing Chavignolles involving demolition and
rebuilding, so is this a parody of Napoleon III’s Paris?
AUTHORIAL PRESENCE IN THE TEXT:
NB Flaubert never ‘disappears’ but is there either as an overt presence making direct
utterances, often didactically, or as an occluded narrator. He does, whatever he says,
‘write himself’!
MADAME BOVARY
NB Page references : Livres de Poche edition, Jacques Neefs.
‘… ne nous arrivent que par la traduction des écrivains.’ p.99
‘… qui vous mène en droite ligne …’ p.144
‘Yonville-l’Abbaye (ainsi nommé à cause de …’) p.145
‘… on fait les pires fromages de Neufchâtel de l’arrondissement…’ p.146
‘(tirant au cadavres de la paroisse un double bénéfice)’ p.149
‘Depuis les événements que l’on va raconter…’ p.150. Blatant, this intrusion.
‘On entendait …’ p.151
‘Rien poutant n’était moins curieux que cette curiositie.’ P.187
‘… c’était cette reverie que l’on est sur …’ p.215
‘… (la fenêtre, en province, remplace les théatres …’ p.221
‘… qui avait toujours des expressions congruantes à toutes les circonstonces
imaginable…’p.232
(‘Car le pharmacien se plaisir à prolonguer ce mot docteur’) p.271
34
‘On eut dit qu’un artiste habile en corruptions …’ p.305.
‘La plus fine melancholie catholique …’ p.331
‘… ou l’on roule les barriques …’ p.340.
‘D’ailleurs, la parole est un laminour qui allonge toujours les sentiments.’p.359 (i.e.
writerliness), Pretty blatant, this one!
‘… Beauvoisine, qui est plein de pensionnats, d’églises, et des grand hotels abandonnés.’
p.361.
‘… derrière les jardins de l’hôpital, ou des veillards en veste noire promenaient au soleil.’
Surely Léon and Emma cannot see as the blinds are down. Where is the narrator? p.372
‘On trouva même, au bout d’un mois, qu’elle avait fais des progress considérables.’ p.391
‘… cet inqualifiable que nous entraîne aux actions les plus antipathetiques…’ p.418.
‘… car tous bourgeois …’ p.428
‘… chaque notaire porte en soi le débris d’un poete…’ p.428
‘… et son pauvre coeur…’ p.451
‘… par suite de cette lâcheté naturelle qui caracterise le sexe fort …’ p.453
‘Après la morte comme un stupefaction … p.473
‘… cet bruit formidable qui nous semble être le retentisement de la éternité.’ p.487.
A note on Yonville-l’Abbaye, pp.145 and 146:
Situated, apparently, on the borders of Normandie, Picardie, Île de France on the
Beauvais-Abbeville-Amiens Road crossing the Rouen-Flanders route. This suggests
somewhere such as Aumale or Saint-Saëns. All, however, are more than ‘huits lieues’
from Rouen! But of course Yonville is totally fictitious and NEITHER Ry NOR Lyonsle-Forêt. In Heaven’s name why these towns want to be thought of as models for
provincial dullness, I don’t know! Flaubert with an ear for Pays de Bray names uses (and
fuses) local names such as the River Andelle and Argueil. He also uses local place
names, usually topographically accurate, although the distances are purposely vague, such
as Quincampoix and Buchy, for versimilitude.
L’EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE
NB Page references are to the Livres de Poche edition, Pierre-Marc De Biasi
‘Comme on avait coutume …’ p.45
‘C’est le premièr de ses rèves…’ p.61
‘… les personnes d’un humeur fôlatre…’ p.86
‘Rien n’est humiliant comme …’ p.125
‘(C’était un bal publique …’ p.136
‘… qu’n’avait point d’ambition …’ p.155
‘On croyait … la robe avait tombé’ p.260
‘Il se croyait peintre …’ p.272
Passim: At the Races, p.314 on
‘Alors, Frédéric se rapela les jours …’p.322
35
‘Il y a des hommes …’ p.366
‘… car la Seine, au-dessus de Nogent …’p.375
‘Un homme d’egoisme moins réflechi …’ p.387
‘… car il y a des situations …’ p.422
‘… et que le roi chicanait, hesitait …’ p.424 Who’s saying this?
‘un prestesse de zele …’ p.436
‘… homme de toute failblesse …’p. 446 The most blatant intrusion again!
‘… ces deux mésonges…’ p. 466
‘La lumière … ‘ p.482
‘La raison publique …’ p.502
‘La verbiage politique …’ p.538
‘Les coeurs des femmes …’ p. 575
‘Les salons des filles (c’est…’ p.577
‘Il y a un moment …’ p.620
Flaubert exhibits great sleight of hand in disguising most of these, using the device of the
narrator’s voice.
LA TENTATION DE SAINT ANTOINE
‘On égorge des hommes …’ p.162
‘… tous les astres que les homes plus tard découvrirent …’ p.210
BOUVARD ET PÉCUCHET
p. 122
‘De quel droit les juger incapables ?’
p. 140
‘Mais toutes les livres ne valant pas une observation personelle … Is this
Bouvard and Pécuchet taking to each other? Or Flaubert intruding?
p. 182
‘C’était l’époque ou les gens distingués …
p. 187
‘La Revolution est pour les une …, d’autres …’
p. 211
‘L’Art, en des certains occasions, êbranle les esprits médiocres …’
p. 269
‘… et un autre eut compris qu’elle ne manquait d’expérience …’
p. 277
‘… ces bourdes au public …’
And the BIG manifesto statement again:
‘I am bursting with suppressed anger and indignation, but according to my ideal of Art
I believe that all such feeling must be invisible, that the artist must no more appear in his
work than God does in the world. The man is nothing, the work is everything.’
To George Sand, late December 1875.
Here Flaubert is attacking ‘foregrounded’ emotions appearing directly in the author’s text
36
(examples being anger and indignation) but what of the ‘background’ emotions embodied
in ‘God’ and what does this ‘God’ appear as?
Further, the whole of the section on the materiality of the soul pp.299-301 reveals the
impossibility of knowing whose is the speaking voice, and even where that voice this
coming from.
St. Polycarp appears on page 351 but this is after Flaubert calls himself this in a letter
to George Sand 25 November 1872. (Bouvard et Pécuchet not started until 1874), after
which the usage becomes more common (the St. Polycarp dinners, for instance, in 1879
and 1880). Note Cruchard meaning an old jug! But it first appears in a letter to Louise
Colet, 21st August 1853!
TROIS CONTES
Again, it is present: ‘Un Coeur Simple’: ‘nous’ p.42; Loulou and M. Borais; Loulou and
Fabu; and his wandering off p.45. This is absolute anthropomorphism. It does, however,
give us an inkling of how ‘discours indirect libre’ works on, and through, human
protagonists as well.
NB: George Sand to Flaubert, January 12th 1876; ‘You disdainfully cloak your mind.’
BUT of far greater significance is the ending of La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier:
Et voilà, l’histoire de Saint Julien L’Hospitaler, telle à peu près qu’on la trouve, sur un
vitrail d’église, dans mon pays. p.100
This is the only instance in the whole of the œuvre that Flaubert breaks the fictive
occluded narrator mode and speaks directly to the reader.
Further, ‘dans mon pays’ is an oddity, as it is the conclusion of the Tale, and isolated in
its own phrase. The ‘mon’ establishes the presence of the narrator (but where is the
writer?), but what of ‘pays’, always an emotional identification with ‘home’ territory for
French speakers, which suggests a wider audience than that of the stereotypical
Normandy (for the French) in its down-to-earthness. Flaubert shows that Normandy, too,
can have its marvels, its miracles. There is also the topographical linking back to the
Lower Normandy of ‘Un Coeur Simple’. Baldrick, in his Penguin translation has ‘…in
my part of the world.’ The identification is thus within a specific ‘topos’, a rootedness in
Normandy, particularly Rouen, although the Cathedral is not identified as such, merely as
an ‘église’. And Rouen plays a significant part in the history of France (La Pucelle).
Further, there are carvings on the façades of the Cathedral of both St. Julian, and the story
of Herodias and St. John the Baptist. Similarly Madame Bovary is rooted in Upper
Normandy, with ‘Un Coeur Simple’ and Bouvard et Pécuchet in Lower. But the
publishers, and first readers, would belong to Metropolitan France, so there is a
dichotomy between ‘province’ and ‘not-province’, between the centre and the margin.
37
And we remember the subtitle of Madame Bovary: Moeurs de Province.
‘…telle a peu près … (‘or something like it …’) Here Flaubert overtly acknowledges
firstly the differing modes of discourse, i.e. the visual and the written and secondly the
additions the fictive mode has had him to make. Flaubert is claiming a versimilitude to
his sources, but he has embellished his version of the tale with details from ‘La Légende
d’Or’ of Jacques Voragne (13th century) and with significant accretions from his writery
imagination: 34 scenes in the window become a much longer tale; St. Julian discovers
his crime by himself; he expiates his crime by himself (not with his wife); he is taken up
into heaven by the leper/Jesus. Relevant here is the letter to Georges Charpentier, 16th
February 1879, where he insists on their being no illustrations to a later de luxe edition,
other than that of the stained glass window itself, as this is ‘an historical document’ and
people will ask ‘How did he get this from that?’ Flaubert probably worked from a
reproduction of the window in E. H. Langois’s Essai Historique et Descriptif sur la
peinture sur les vitraux les plus remarkables (Rouen 1832) but any such claim for
versimilitude is disingenuous, as it itself is part of the fictive mode.
IS THERE RESOLUTION?
Do, then, after all the skeins ‘knit’?
The simple answer is yes and no. But the problem with all ‘resolution’ arguments is that
it is one of the components of an ‘Eng.Lit’ ideology, that of ‘The Great Writer’. Thus if a
critic looks for a resolution he or she will probably find it, in short the question
presupposes the answer, the hypothesis the theory. And any ‘knitting’ of the skeins will
not only fit this categorizing, and probably won’t tell us that much after all. All it does is
to reveal how multi-faceted Flaubert’s writerly presentation and projection of his various
selves appears. Thus what, again, does Flaubert mean by presenting Bouvard et Pécuchet
as his testament? This is otiose, as he’s done it already, in his works.
Hence, as above on page 2 of these notes, such an approach is limited, and of limited
value. Thus, an approach through ‘writerliness’ (see below), as the skeins remain tangled,
will be far more telling.
38
FLAUBERT: A LIFE, Frederick Brown, London and New York, 2006.
A rather disappointing new (sort of) biography of Flaubert, but it doesn’t add much that is
new. The book is bulked out by greater social/historical context than previous
biographies (e.g. Wall) but without any convincing explanation of the relationship
between Flaubert and that context. No discussion of the big issues, such as ‘style indirect
libre’, impersonality, and the treatment of the books themselves is often cursory and not
particularly trenchant, Brown appearing content merely to describe. This might lead to
some sort of moral neutrality, but there is no need for guidance to be didactic. Thus there
is no ticking off of Flaubert for his lying, or his hypocritical treatment of Caroline over
her marriage to Commanville (Flaubert’s mother also bears a heavy responsibility). The
bibliography is partial, as I suppose a ‘Select Bibliography’ must be and there is no
mention of Barnes’s important essays in Something to Declare (2002). He does accept
however, (unlike Wall) that Juliet Herbert played an important part in Flaubert’s life (see
below my ‘Flaubert in Dieppe’) and gives Hermia Oliver due credit ( Flaubert and The
English Governess 1980). Brown is not all that well up on The Civil War of 1871 and
none too good on the details of lesser references e.g. Eleanor Marx’s betrayed suicide
pact with Aveling. Again it is NOT Queen Adelaide, but Queen Marie-Amélie (p.397).
Brown also quotes ‘Emma Bovary, c’est moi’ without the additional ‘… d’apres moi.’
and does not discuss whether Flaubert is talking (if indeed he said this) of the book or of
the character. Generally, this book is horribly overwritten.
Juliet Herbert and Flaubert:
Governess to Caroline (1855-58) p.324, with ‘Buttock grabbing’ by Flaubert. Juliet was
probably a somewhat Junoesque figure! Reluctantly dismissed by Madame Flaubert 1858
as a cost-cutting exercise. Flaubert in London 1865 for 17 days and again in 1866.
Projected visit in 1867 cancelled through his colic, p.410. But see Hermia Oliver below
for doubts about these datings. In London again 1870, pp.460 and 490. Juliet visits Le
Croisset or Paris nearly every summer 1865-1878 p.409. Flaubert in Paris 1870 and a
summer visit in 1871 put off to the winter (doubtful, this). Juliet and Julio’s (the dog)
collar p.474. She’s in Paris 1877 pp. 455-56 and 1878 p.555.
Also Flaubert meets her in Dieppe (see below with greater detail). However all the
evidence for their affair is circumstantial as both of them had reasons, albeit different, for
covering up. Juliet would have been dismissed from her position if it was found out she
was having a fling with a ‘dirty’ French novelist (!!!). Perhaps Juliet is the woman
George Sand had in mind when she urged Flaubert to marry. As far as the letters to
Flaubert are concerned, Brown thinks that were ‘probably’ on the ‘bonfire’ with
Maupassant, at Le Croisset but no conclusive evidence that this is so. Jean Bruneau (and
hence Julian Barnes) thinks the letters will turn up.
39
Juliet Herbert’s translations of, and probably with, Flaubert:
‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ (Byron) with F. Dated loosely to 1850’s p. 165.
Madame Bovary unpublished (the first) translation, pp.347-47. See above.
The first published translation in English by Eleanor Marx 1886.
Then there are Flaubert’s admissions of knowledge about English culture and events in
England; firstly, The Calf’s Head dinner references in L’Education Sentimentale;
secondly, that Brighton was regarded by the English as a health resort (Flaubert had sent
Caroline to London during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 but afraid that she might
become ill tells her to move to Brighton, Correspondance IV p. 237 and notes pp.11771178); thirdly, he tells his publisher, Georges Charpentier, (Correspondance V p. 235)
that four articles on his work have appeared in an English journal, The Secularist, during
1876. Was Juliet, now at Lydon Hall as governess to the Conan family, his informant in
all these cases?
Correspondance has the following references:
VOL II:
574 n.2;
603;
624 (alone with …);
626; 628 (‘English with …);
712 n. 2: translation of Madame Bovary …)
733; 735.
VOL III: 190 (gift of Grammar de …);
398; 399; (at Le Croisset) 447;
511 and 514 (F. in London n.4) 888; 893; 894; 908-909; 925; 945; 983 n.3;
1002.
VOL IV: 84; 237; 238; 240; 245; 246 n.1;
266 18.12.1870 To Caroline ‘when the ferries resume …’
267; 271;
274 01.02.1871 To Caroline ‘Le blocus continue …’
277 03.02.1871 To Ernest Commanville: Caroline returns from Newhaven
295 20.03.71 To Caroline ‘I shall go to London …’ To see JH.
296 21.03.71 To Caroloine from Brussels ‘Write to me at Juliet’s …’
296-297 (F. in London 1871) 354; 362; To Caroline ‘Juliette t’embrasse’
297 25.03.1871 To Caroline from London ‘Juliet t’envoi mille tendresses…’
538; 566; 568 (in Dieppe in 1872); 571; 573; 579;
699 11.08.1873 To Caroline. Des que la pauvre Juliette ne sera pas la,
J’irai a Saint-Gratien
40
708 05.09.1873 To Caroline. ‘Fais moi le plaisir de me dire a quel(le) (heure)
l’arrivee du paquebot de Newhaven …’
879 (F. will go to see JH in 1874).
See the very important note by Jean Bruneau p. 1198 Vol. IV:
‘Ce post-scriptum a été censoré dans les additions anterieures. Il est le meme
pour l’immense majorité des allusions a Juliet Herbert dans les lettres de Flaubert.’
This would be done by Caroline, BUT she merely bowdlerised the letters, she did NOT
destroy them
VOL V:
104; 792.
NB VOL III 468 ‘ … un rendez-vous lustif …’ NOT JH, so probably in a Paris brothel.
Lousi Douchin, La Vie Erotique de Flaubert, Ch XII ’La Grande Amour Censorée De
Gustave Flaubert’ Paris 1984
AND
‘Things not going smoothly’ letter from Juliet (lost ?) which Flaubert acknowledges in
his letter to Caroline, 23.06.1871, : ‘J’ai recu de Juliet Herbert une lettre indignee, parce
que je lui dis que je resterais a Luchon jusqu’aux premiers jours d’aout. Je tache de
contenter tout le monde …’
41
FLAUBERT IN DIEPPE
(London and Paris as well)
1851 Flaubert and his mother travel to London to visit The Great Exhibition and to look
for a governess for Caroline, a Miss Isabel Hutton. Flaubert not attracted!
1855 Juliet Herbert arrives in Le Croisset, leaving in 1858.Visits again in 1864. Corr.
III 398-399; 511 and n514
1864 Flaubert in Dieppe June 4th to August 12th. First clandestine visit to Juliet in
London
1865 Flaubert in Dieppe July 12th to August. Second clandestine visit to Juliet in
London, and 19th August (?) 1866 Corr. V Supp. 1012.
NB: This is the wrong date in Carnet 13. He says he caught PS Alexandria, but the
boat was out of commission having hit the rocks near Point D’Ailley the year
before.. Hermia Oliver, op. cit., argues for 1865 here and also in ‘Flaubert
and Juliet Herbert’ A Postscript.’ in Nineteenth Century French Studies
1983/84 Vol. 121-122 pp 116-123. Sept 13 1867 Corr. V Supp. 1014. La
Corespondance de Flaubert bears this out.
Caroline moves to 9, rue Albert Reville.
1868 August: Flaubert in Dieppe.
1869 September: Flaubert in Dieppe.
1870 August: Flaubert in Dieppe. And in September, but this time to sort out the hold
up of Princess Mathilde’s six trunks on a Dieppe quayside as she prepares to leave
France, after the fall of Napoleon III, eventually ending up in Brussels, this being
probably via Newhaven, London, Dover and Ostende. Wall p.310 using Bruneau
Correspondence Vol. IV p. 233.
1871 22nd to 27th March (i.e. during early part of The Paris Commune) in London
with Juliet. 30th March back in Dieppe, and spends most of April there. Was
Juliet there also? This is doubtful. See also Corr. V Supp. 1076
1872 April: Flaubert in Dieppe. In September he writes to Caroline asking her to find
out the time of arrival of the day boat from Newhaven. (Is Juliet on board?) Invites
Turgenev to stay with him in Dieppe who arrives October, staying at Neuville.
1873 September 17th 1873 Corr. V Supp. 1076.
1874 July: Flaubert in Dieppe.
1877 December 16th Flaubert going to Dieppe. Corr. V 326
1879 August 12th Flaubert is to spend afternoon in Dieppe. Corr. V 688 Flaubert is to
spend the afternoon with ‘La Princesse’, (i.e.with Princesse Mathilde). Is this true, or
code?
See Julian Barnes, Something to Declare, pp. 152-53 on Herbert Lottman’s biography
(i.e. Barnes’s review in London Review of Books May 4th 1989). See also Pierre-Marc de
42
Biasi Carnets de Travail de Flaubert. Barnes also endorses Hermia Oliver’s findings as
proof (if circumstantial) of the affair, lasting from 1855 to the end of his life. Geoffrey
Wall, Flaubert: A Life (2002) is hesitant, self-contradictory and inconsistent (Juliet is
Flaubert’s ‘English woman’ p. 324!!)
NB: Flaubert was in Paris 1872, 1874, 1875, 1877, and 1878, while Juliet was in Paris
1872, 1874, 1876, 1877 and very probably 1878. Flaubert Correspondance Vol.5
confirms much of this dating.
In 1876 Flaubert claims in a letter to Gertrude Tennant, Corr. V 125, that he has spent all
summer working on Herordias at Le Croisset except for a fortnight with Princess
Mathilde at St. Gratien. He also claims he spends several days there every autumn. Corr.
V 426. These claims look fishy.
ON WRITERLINESS
Writerliness is not a thing, nor an event, nor a state, nor a process, but an occurrence, and
as such it exhibits the characteristics of occurrences, i.e. continuity, incompleteness.
Being-a-writer involves embodying what might have been, could have been, should have
been rather than delineating the actuality in itself i.e. an enhancement of that reality and
the experiencing of that reality, often through the agency of a powerful imagination. And
as evidence of this ‘… et j’étais les chevaux, les feuilles, le vent, les paroles qu’ils se
disaient et le soleil rouge qui faisait s’entre-fermer les paupières noyées d’amour.’ To
Louise Colet, 23 decembre 1853. ‘I have had the same experience seeing things that do
not exist, knowing that it is an illusion, being convinced of it, and yet perceiving them as
if they were real’ À Taine 1 decembre 1866, quoted in Wall, Selected Letters p.319. Yeats
also demonstrates this in his associating Maud Gonne with the apple blossom of their first
meeting, whereas this took place on January 30th 1889, and not in a fictive May! Thus it
can be seen that fictive language, which in, and by, its very nature is self-reflexive,
occupies a cardinal space in the consciousness of the writer. Further he uses the reflexive
as a literary device for such enhancement (but could this be the conventional language use
of its time?). Further an examination of his imagery will reveal its fictiveness: ‘a river of
milk’; ‘flat as a city pavement’ (both Madame Bovary) and ‘like a gigantic ostrich
feather, whose plume kept blowing away’ (L’Educational Sentimentale).
Flaubert in the act of writing is consciously concerned with the nature of language itself.
Note the instrumentality of everyday language and the self-reflexive nature of the fictive,
i.e. that language that draws attention to itself as a reflective, creative medium, as in the
exchanges between Léon and Emma in the hotel in Rouen p.357. Madame Bovary, in
fact, raises the question of the relationship between writing and life.
Flaubert creates a parallel universe, i.e. that of Yonville l’Abbaye. Thus the relationship
between this parallel universe and reality, for convincingness (this co-terminousness
43
being one of the important conventions of the 19th Century realistic novel – the 20th
Century novel loosening these ties) is paramount. But how does the reader see this?
In this context, of course, there is the famous ‘homme-plume’ which first appears ‘Je suis
un homme-plume. Je suis par elle, à cause d’elle, par rapport à elle et beaucoup plus avec
elle.’ To Louise Colet, 31 January 1852. Wall (Selected Letters p.174) translates this as
‘I am a creature of the quill’ Then again, ‘When will my quill ever stop this voluptuous
itching?’ To Louise Colet 20th June 1853. Note again use of ‘voluptuous’ of writing and
creativity. Selected Letters p.216.
Neef’s Preface p.42 talks of ‘discours indirect libre’, a much more telling phrase than
‘style indirect libre’ ‘… cette parole que n’est de personne qui flotte entre le personage et
le narrateur.’ This is well said, the discourse hovering between character and narrator,
but it does not adequately explain the subtle shiftingnesses of ‘voice’. The writer-being-awriter is seen only from inside the writer’s perspective. ‘… c’est une délicieuse chose que
d’écrire! que de ne plus être soi, mais de circuler dans toute la création dont on parle.’ To
Louise Colet, 23 decembre 1853. What of seeing this from the outside? Are, then, some
of the Goncourts’ bitchy remarks relevant after all:
‘… au fond de provincial et poseur…’ ‘… sensible à la grosse caisse (the big drum) des
phrases…’ ‘…pataud (a clumsy oaf) excessif et sans legèrité en toutes choses.’ All from
Journal 16 mars 1860 ‘Mon ami Flaubert arrive à se griser presque sincèrement les
contravérités qu’il debite. Journal 3 mai 1873. Note the stress on ‘poseur’ (Baudelaire?)
and being ‘drunk on words’(The Goncourts). Flaubert is playing roles, presenting
multiple selves in everyday life. Note his interest in drama: his youthful plays (for his
sister Caroline); the initial conception of St. Antoine as a play; the later plays, Le
Candidat and Le Chateau des Coeurs as well as the staging of Louis Bouilhet’s play.
These become the enacting of the differing selves of the writer. Cf. Yeats: ‘His (the
poet’s) life is an experiment in living …’ And cf. Proust: a book ‘… est le produit d’une
autre moi que celui que nous manifestons dans nos habitudes, dans la societé, dans nos
vices. (Contre Sainte Beuve, quoted in Correspondance Bernard Masson, p. 8). And this
applies, of course, not only to the novels but to the letters.
Note also; ‘… given my capacity to induce feelings in myself by use of the pen.’ To
Louise Colet 8 Oct 1846 Wall Selected Letters p.95. Note also how Flaubert writes to
Louise at night ‘I think the night is made for special kinds of ideas, quite different from
those we use all through the day’. 8th Oct 1846.
Further Flaubert uses writing as defence, self-positioning (i.e. vis-a vis the bourgeoisie)
and disclosure in the internal handling of material and in relationship to external reality.
Julian Barnes op.cit. p.199 talks of Flaubert’s differing rôles as a letter writer, and quotes
‘The inkwell is the true vagina for a man of letters’ To Ernest Feydeau, 3 August 1859,
and ‘Drink ink’ to Ernest Feydeau
1861 (no date given). Such roles are embodied in
‘playfulness’, essentially in the nicknames he uses. But again these, because overt, are
plain to see, and need not take up too much enquiry. And the most famous example of
this ‘playfulness’ in the works themselves is, of course, Le Dictionnaire des Idées Recues,
44
not published until posthumously in 1881. But, as with Flaubert’s other accomplished
works the genesis of this work is much earlier. It appears in a letter to Louise Colet of
16th December 1852, where he says: ‘You’ll find there, in alphabetical order, on all
possible subjects, tout ce qu’l faut dire en société pour être un homme convenable et
aimable’ (although of his list only ‘negresses’ and ‘erection’ make it into the final 1882
version.) Correspondance pp.212-213. The DIR is of course the ironic placing of an
apotheosis of the blandness of the bourgeoisie. But there is an earlier mention (probably
the first) in a letter to Louis Bouilhet, September 4th 1850 where he talks of the reader
having ‘no idea whether we taking the piss or not’ (Wall’s translation Selected Letters
p.155), having introduced the idea as ‘Ce serait peut-être un oeuvre étrange, et capable de
réussir, car elle serait toute d’actualité.’ Correspondance p. 774. Thus we have another
example of how ideas for works occur much earlier than the work, or even the writing of
the work, itself, and thus furnishes another example of ‘contamination’ i.e. L’Abbe
Bournisien, and his insistence on indigestion being the cause of Emma’s distress, in
Madame Bovary. Further there are at least 30 cross-references/allusions to DIR in
Madame Bovary (as well as to Bouvard et Pécuchet - surely Flaubert’s Don Quixote)
while some of them are a straight lift from the text itself, e.g.:
‘Notaires: maintenant ne pas s’y fier’(p.77); Rince-Bouche: signe de richesse dans une
maison (p.107); (this of Emma’s social climbing); Romans: pervertissent les masses …
(Charles forbidding Emma to read novels p. 219); Lune: inspire la mélancholie’ (This in
Rodolphe’s verbal seduction of Emma p.236); the blatant sexism of ‘Negresses: randier
than white women’ given to Homais (p.416) and even the crack about arsenic being found
everywhere p. 458. Even these brief examples show how Flaubert.’s ranges from the
direct piss-take, to ironic dismissal of his protagonists and even to the point of distancing
himself from the tragedy he is writing e.g. arsenic!
But all this is witting playfulness. There is, however, another, unwitting, ‘playfulness’,
and it is that that is embedded in language itself, i.e. the ‘play’ of meaning, its dance
among its symbols (words), its fluidity backwards and forwards. (Ludicity; the ludic)
‘Six heures sonnèrent. Binet entra.’ (Madame Bovary p. 153). Genette has pointed out
Flaubert’s use of the past continuous (for habitual actions) rather than the expected past
simple. Here the sentences, in a paragraph to themselves, carry a meaning that can only
be established by reference backwards and forwards, our having previously recognized
Binet as a man of meticulous habit, and to those expectancies of meaning that Flaubert.
has set up in his text. And it is this ‘playfulness’ that Flaubert unwittingly employs as an
integral and core part of his use of ‘writing’ as a means of interpreting the world. Genette
suggests the six versions of the famous description of Emma’s descent (moral as well as
physical) into Rouen in the Hirondelle, (pp. 393-394) are moving from sketches to a
telling delineation of Emma’s internal state, her emotional tentativeness.
Valéry on Flaubert: that he is ‘… carried away by accessories at the expense of the main
point.’ Paul Valéry, Oeuvres Pléiade 1957 l.618 (on La Tentation de Saint Antoine)
Gérard Genette: Figures Tel Quel 1966
Translation: Figures of Literary Discourse Blackwell 1982 pp.183-201
45
See photocopy of this translation in own wallet.
And the ‘tricks’, such as:
a. dramatic irony: ‘Les affaires publiques le laissèrent indifferent, tant il était
preoccupé des siennes.’p.611, yes, given that the Republic was about to be
hi-jacked by Prince Louis Napoleon, and Dussardier martyred!
b. playing with the readership: ‘… la tête de veau…’ See De Biasi’s note
‘…. cette enigmatique tête de veau.’ p.482. For the explanation see
Hermia Oliver, Nineteenth Century Studies.
All the writings (novels, letters, plans, scenarios, carnets etc) are writerly facts.
It is difficult to find a French equivalent for ‘Writerliness’. I can only come up with
‘L’Ėcrivainerie’. Also key words in my interpretation of Flaubert, such as ‘slippery’ and
‘contingent’ (‘glissant(e)’; ‘la nature glissante’, and ‘provisoire’; ‘aleatoire’ respectively)
might not fully convey what I am arguing for.
NGW: A note on completion (see letters to Taine): some sort of rush, a plenitude, a
floating palpitation, heightened actuality seen through some sort of refracting glass, a
prism, oblique, watery even.
AN ADDENDUM TO WRITERLINESS
To Louise Colet, 23 decembre 1853:
(Correspondance pp290-294; Wall Selected Letters pp232-234)
Written, apparently, at 2.00 a.m. (But is this start-time? End-time? And how long did it
take?)
My translation:
It must be love to write to you this evening, because I am absolutely drained! I have a
splitting headache. Since two o’clock this afternoon (except about 25 minutes for supper)
I have been writing Bovary. I am at the big fuck, right in it, the middle of it. I’m in a
sweat and my throat is constricted. It is one of those rare days in my life that I have spent
totally, from one end to the other, in Fantasy. So much so, that at about six o’clock, when
I wrote the words ‘a nervous attack’, I was so carried away, so bawling at the top of my
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voice, and feeling so deeply what my little woman was going through that I was afraid I
was going to have an attack too. I got up from my desk and opened the window to calm
myself down. My head was spinning, my knees ache, and I have backache, and a
headache. I am like a man who has fucked too much (excuse the expression), who is in
some sort of lassitude full of drunkenness. And since I am in the middle of love, it I
absolutely right that I don’t go to bed without sending you a caress, a kiss, and all the
thoughts that are still within me.
Will it be any good? I don’t know (I am rushing it a bit so I’ve got something to show
to Bouilhet when he comes) but one thing is certain, it’s that I’ve been going quickly this
last week. May it continue! I’m so fed up with my slowness. But I’m dreading the
awakening, the disillusion of having to make fair copies. Not that it matters, for good or
ill. It is a delicious thing to write! Not to be oneself, but to move around in the creation
one speaks of. Today, for instance, a man and a woman together, lover and mistress, all
at the same time. I have been riding in the forest in an autumn afternoon, under the
yellow leaves, and I became the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words they spoke and
the sun that made their eyes, wet with tears, screw up.
Pride? Or Piety? Is it the exaggerated overflow of a self-satisfaction, itself exaggerated,
or a vague and noble religious instinct? But when I think about it, later on, about these
elated moments I am tempted to utter a prayer of thanks to the Good Lord, well if I knew
he would hear me, that thanks to him I have not been born a cotton merchant, a burlesque
player, a man of wit, or some such. Let us hymn Apollo as they did once. Let us breathe
deeply the cold air of Parnassus, let us make music from our own guitars and cymbals and
whirl like the dervishes in the eternal brouhaha of Forms and Ideas
‘What does it do to my pride when hollow people praise me’.
This must be a line of Voltaire’s, but where from I don’t know. But that’s what we must
keep telling ourselves. I’m waiting impatiently for La Servante. ‘If I were rich, then
these people would kiss my shoes’ But not only your shoes, but your footsteps, your
shadow. Such is the current of things. To make literature as a woman, you have to have
passed through the waters of the River Styx. And as far the offer of Du Camp to the good
woman Briard is concerned, well, there is between men a sort of silent brotherly pact
which makes them play the pimp for one another. For my part I have never done that.
You can recall the man of good education! But if I were the director of such a burlesque,
I would be no gentleman. At bottom old mother Briard’s articles are no better or worse
then anybody else’s. Everything is just above or below a certain standard. But for you, if
you submit anything, I’m sure they’d accept it, certainly it wouldn’t be a forgone
conclusion that it would be rejected, and what if it were? You’d have to pick up relations
with Du Camp again. And he’s a man who doesn’t see things. I think this idea I’m using
opens the door to all sorts of hypotheses. This wretched chap is one of the subjects I
don’t wish to think about. I like him at bottom, but he’s very irritating, repellent, denying
everything, and he does do such hateful idiotic things that to me ‘it’s as if he were dead’,
as Alphonse said to Madame Lucrezia.
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I have no dirty details about La Sylphide, who, it appears to me, has been thoroughly
gone over (and ploughed perhaps). Bouilhet only writes me notes nowadays. I have
always thought of her as a hot bit of stuff, and it appears I am not mistaken. But she gives
the appearance of carrying it off competently, in a very cavalier way. So much the better!
She’s a tart. She knows the world and she’ll open up new horizons for B. Wretched
ones! But I suppose we ought to know all the real compartments of the heart and our
social being, from the cellar to the attic. And we mustn’t forget the bogs, above all not
the bogs! A marvellous chemistry unfolds itself there, fruitful decompositions indeed.
Who knows that from what shitty soups come the smell of roses and the taste of melons?
Has anyone balanced out the desperate actions which would make up a great soul? That
is, all the nauseous vapours to be inhaled, all the sorrows, the pains to be borne to write a
decent page? We’re both sewer workers and gardeners. We pull from the putrifying
mess of humanity its delights. We can make clusters of flowers from heaped up miseries.
Fact distils itself from Form and rises aloft, like the pure incense of spirit, towards the
eternal, the immutable, the absolute, the ideal.
I’ve really seen Father Roger walking down the street in his overcoat and with his dog.
Poor little chap. How little he knows! Have you thought about the numbers of women
who have lovers, and the numbers of men who have mistresses, with all these
arrangements hidden in other arrangements, what lies, what manoeuvrings, what
betrayals, tears and anguish. From all this comes the grotesque, and the tragic as well.
The one and the other are no more than the mask which covers the same nothingness, and
in the middle of it all, there’s Fantasy laughing like a row of white teeth against a
countrywoman’s black bonnet.
Goodbye, my lovely Muse. Writing to you has made my headache go. I press my brow
to your lips, and I’m off to bed.
Goodbye again, a thousand kisses. Here’s to you.
Your G.
Commentary:
Time of Writing: Flaubert appears to think late night-time is appropriate for writing to
Louise. So is this a love letter or not? Nor is there a great deal about Louise herself.
Fantasy: The original French is Illusion, with a capital ‘I’. (Why?) For Flaubert Illusion,
fantasy and hallucination are all closely linked and it is never entirely clear in what sense
he uses these words. And what is the relationship to imagination, which is obviously
deployed further on in the letter in his ‘becoming’ the horses, leaves, etc. Nor is it
entirely clear whether Flaubert changes his views at a later date.
Slowness: Note his disquiet, but does he a) do anything about it, or b) use it as a cover?
Writing as escape from self: this is looking somewhat dodgy, in that paradoxically he is
escaping into realism, that it is not clear what he is escaping from, (everyday life?) and it
doesn’t sit that comfortably with his pronouncements about not writing ‘self’. Could this
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be a flight from his everyday self into a creative self? If so this can be dangerous, in that
it can lead to self-induced states of mind that border on wish-fulfilment and control. But
it would seem that there is some kind of fracture between the letter-writer, the novelist
and the everyday Flaubert.
Literariness: There is the flight into the high-flown, ‘the cold air of Parnassus’ and the
rather convoluted image of exploring the ‘house’ of the human consciousness from top to
bottom, and the bogs. What is Flaubert doing here? It is a letter from one writer to
another, admittedly, but this doesn’t explain it all, as it is possible to track the trains of
verbal thought that lead him by the nose, willy-nilly. There is an apparent delirium of
word spinning. This, taken with the above, leads to a certain evasiveness vis-a vis his
subject, both in the sense of Louise herself, and in what he is actually writing about. So
his language is again, inwardly self-reflexive.
Fact and Form: This on the face of it is Flaubertian tosh, but of course it does relate to
the creative problems he was experiencing with Madame Bovary, the forcing the
romantic, lushly-imaginative into the realistic straight-jacket, but it does now depend on
the degree of plausibility one attaches to such Flaubertian pronouncements. I would on
this tend to be at the more sceptical end of that spectrum as there appears to be in ‘…
comme un pur encens de l’Esprit vers l’Ėternel, l’immuable, l’absolu, l’ideal.’ no more
than self-induced word-intoxication, the list being just a tad otiose.
Relationship to Madame Bovary: amongst others, the convolutedness of affairs and the
necessary deceptions foreshadow Emma’s lying and deception of Charles in her trips to
Léon in the Rouen passages in Part III.
Your G: probably not ‘your’ in any sense of the word, and is not ‘G’ another fictive
persona, adopted especially for writing to Louise? Is ‘My Muse’ used ironically by
Flaubert, while Louise might take it for real? (not to mention the Flaubertistes!)
In sum, this letter is yet a further example of Flaubert’s predeliction for love-at-adistance, that of course being Juliet Herbert’s ‘attraction’.
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TUSSLING WITH FLAUBERT
The butterfly’s pin
the jarred specimen label ,
that formaldehyde fixity,
all, all anathema to being’s fluidity,
the flux, the counter-flux,
played in plunging, turbulent words,
slippery, contingent,
mercurial, unconcluding,
the prosaic barely staunching the romantic,
the matter-of-fact the exotic,
maddening to grasp
that elusive speaking who.
The inaccurate accusations:
‘There’s something insincere, yes, not sincere,
in what he says he feels.’
Yet traces of that charge remain:
the mismatch between utterance and utterer,
frightened of that fixity,
(the final fixity of death?)
in swooping words, and in love even,
love in all its flowing forms,
mother, whores, niece, lovers,
with above all that longed-for distance,
lover’s presence, lover’s absence,
only a summer month out of twelve,
presence only through the distance of writing,
that welcome hiding from enmeshing thereness,
that necessary, irritating intrusion.
Who can hold quicksilver in their palms?
NGW, by October 17th 2006.
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‘EMMA BOVARY, C’EST MOI…’ OR NOT
Triple-tongued writers dissemble their texts,
writers-being-writers, writers becoming their personae,
evasions and exasperations taking the place,
of that collective candour,
usurping reader reading effort
(readers looking for easy ways out
always ask ‘What’s it all about?’)
that hard work of a probing response
of feeling their way, groping, lame even,
which beckoning road to take,
which hesitant interpretation to make,
but absorbing text, any text, as theirs,
for just that fleeting conjuncture:
theirs, yes, not dissembling writers’ prescriptions.
thoughts about, afterthoughts about,
all that contradictory helplessness,
that whiff of seeming, fakery even.
Ingested, the text is theirs.
Don’t worry: texts remain; readings don’t.
So ignore what is said about,
not letting this meddle with what is said,
and what is taken to be said.
POTATOES
Lestiboudois, the sexton
set his potatoes between the graves.
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‘You’re making your living from the dead, the decaying.’
the priest in grubby cassock said.
So aren’t our industrialists of LIT.
those grubby merchants of fictive modes
doing the very self-same thing?
A NOTE ON MAUPASSANT’S BOULE DE SUIF (1879)
ITS HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. Source: La Vigie de Dieppe
DIEPPE ROUEN LE HAVRE
The Prussian Occupation :
Rouen from 5th December 1870 on
Dieppe 9th December 1870
Le Havre was not occupied but cut off near Yvetot and
Caudebec-en-Caux
Weather
: ‘Siberian’
Communications
:
Postal. From Dieppe to Le Havre via Fecamp, but far
from satisfactory (6th January 1871)
Railways:
: Dieppe –Rouen cut 6th December 1870; restored 26th
February 1871
Rouen-Le Havre cut 9th? December 1870
Port of Dieppe
: blockaded by the French Navy (why?) from 6th December
1870 to 29th January 1871 (the day after the Armistice of
28th January 1871)
NB The Brighton Company’s steamer, MARSEILLES gets, or is let,
through: Arrives 27th December; departs 30th December 1870
Arrives 1st January; departs 2nd January 1871
(Vigie de Dieppe 10th January 1871).
Armistice:
28th January 1871
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An Oddity
PS DIAMANT enters Dieppe 31st January 1871
PS ORLEANS with 20 passengers on 31st January 1871
Service (to Dieppe only) resumed on 1st February 1871
A cargo of ‘caisses’ (‘du merchandises et medicaments
Pour l’Armée de la Loire’ : goods and medical supplies for
The Army of the Loire) is turned back by the French 6th
January 1871 (on the MARSEILLES?)
Cf. Baron ERNOUF, Histoire des chemins de fer francaises pendant la guerre francoprussienne 18709-1871, Paris 1874. Facsimile issued by ‘La Vie Du Rail’ Paris 1980
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