Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, in the Haute-Normandie Region of France.
Flaubert's curious modes of composition favored and were emphasized by these peculiarities. He worked in sullen solitude, sometimes occupying a week in the completion of one page, never satisfied with what he had composed, violently tormenting his brain for the best turn of a phrase, the most absolutely final adjective. It cannot be said that his incessant labors were not rewarded. His private letters show that he was not one of those to whom easy and correct language is naturally given; he gained his extraordinary perfection with the unceasing sweat of his brow. One of the most severe of academic critics admits that in all his works, and in every page of his works, Flaubert may be considered a model of style.
That he was one of the greatest writers who ever lived in France is now commonly admitted, and his greatness principally depends upon the extraordinary vigour and exactitude of his style. Less perhaps than any other writer, not of France, but of modern Europe, Flaubert yields admission to the inexact, the abstract, the vaguely inapt expression which is the bane of ordinary methods of composition. He never allowed a cliché to pass him, never indulgently or wearily went on, leaving behind him a phrase which almost expressed his meaning. Being, as he is, a mixture in almost equal parts of the romanticist and the realist, the marvellous propriety of his style has been helpful to later writers of both schools, of every school. The absolute exactitude with which he adapts his expression to his purpose is seen in all parts of his work, but particularly in the portraits he draws of the figures in his principal romances. The degree and manner in which, since his death, the fame of Flaubert has extended, form an interesting chapter of literary history.
The publication of Madame Bovary in 1857 had been followed by more scandal than admiration; it was not understood at first that this novel was the beginning of something new, the scrupulously truthful portraiture of life. Gradually this aspect of his genius was accepted, and began to crowd out all others. At the time of his death he was famous as a realist, pure and simple. Under this aspect Flaubert exercised an extraordinary influence over Émile de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet and Zola. But even after the decline of the realistic school Flaubert did not lose prestige; other facets of his genius caught the light. It has been perceived that he was not merely realistic, but real; that his clairvoyance was almost boundless; that he saw certain phenomena more clearly than the best of observers had done. Flaubert is a writer who must always appeal more to other authors than to the world at large, because the art of writing, the indefatigable pursuit of perfect expression, were always before him, and because he hated the lax felicities of improvisation as a disloyalty to the most sacred procedures of the literary artist.
He can be said to have made cynicism into an art-form, as evinced by this observation from 1846:
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
His Oeuvres Complètes (8 vols., 1885) were printed from the original manuscripts, and included, besides the works mentioned already, the two plays, Le Candidat and Le Château des avurs. Another edition (10 vols.) appeared in 1873–1885. Flaubert's correspondence with George Sand was published in 1884 with an introduction by Guy de Maupassant.
He has been admired or written about by almost every major literary personality of the 20th century, including philosophers such as Pierre Bourdieu. Georges Perec named Sentimental Education as one of his favou
“-...a boldogságot nem találjuk meg benne.-De hát megtaláljuk-e egyáltalán?-Meg. Egyszer csak találkozunk vele....-Egyszer csak találkozunk vele-ismételte meg Rodolphe-, egyszer, hirtelen, mikor már lemondtunk róla. És akkor megnyílik a láthatár, s mintha erős hangot hallanánk: "Itt van!". Úgy érezzük, egész életünket rá kell bíznunk valakire, mindent nekiadunk, mindent feláldozunk érte. Nem beszélünk, kitaláljuk egymás gondolatát. Egymást látjuk álmunkban. (És ránézett Emmára.) Szóval, itt van, itt van az a kincs, amit annyit kerestünk, itt, előttünk, csillog, villog. De mégse tudjuk biztosan, nem merjük elhinni, káprázik a szemünk, mint mikor sűrű sötétből kilépünk a fényre.”
“Je suis né avec le désir de mourir.”
“She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.”
“Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.”
“No hay que tocar a los ídolos: su dorado se nos queda en las manos”
“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
“Ah!" thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, "that was what she came for." At last he said with a calm air— "Dear madame, I have not got them." He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them, although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and most destructive.”
“Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.”
“Elle lui parut donc si vertueuse et inaccessible, que toute espérance, même la plus vague, l'abandonna.Mais, par ce renoncement, il la plaçait en des conditions extraordinaires. Elle se dégagea, pour lui, des qualités charnelles dont il n'avait rien à obtenir ; et elle alla, dans son cœur, montant toujours et s'en détachant, à la manière magnifique d'une apothéose qui s'envole. C'était un de ces sentiments purs qui n'embarrassent pas l'exercice de la vie, que l'on cultive parce qu'ils sont rares, et dont la perte affligerait plus que la possession n'est réjouissante.”
“Se conocían demasiado para gozar de aquellos embelesos de la pasión que centuplican su gozo. Ella estaba tan hastiada de él como él cansado de ella. Emma volvía a encontrar en el adulterio todas las soserías del matrimonio”
“Entonces seguro de ser amado, no se molestó, e insensiblemente sus maneras cambiaron. Ya no empleaba como antes aquellas palabras tan dulces que la hacían llorar, ni aquellas vehementes caricias...de modo que su gran amor en el que vivía inmersa le pareció que iba descendiendo bajo sus pies...percibió el fango. No quería creerlo; redobló su ternura; y Rodolfo, cada vez menos, ocultó su indiferencia.”
“Quanto a Emma, non si chiedeva se lo amasse. Ella credeva che l'amore dovesse arrivare all'improvviso, con fragori e folgori; uragano dei cieli che cade sulla vita, la sconvolge, strappa via le volontà come foglie, e trascina all'abisso il cuore intero. Ella non sapeva che sulle terrazze delle case la pioggia forma laghetti quando le grondaie sono ingorgate, e avrebbe continuato a credersi al sicuro, quando a un tratto scoprì una crepa nel muro.”
“I envision a style: a style that would be beautiful, that someone will invent some day, ten years or ten centuries from now, one that would be rhythmic as verse, precise as the language of the sciences, undulant, deep-voiced as a cello, tipped with flame: a style that would pierce your idea like a dagger, and on which your thought would sail easily ahead over a smooth surface, like a skiff before a good tail wind.”
“How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.”
“There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.”
“Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto d'amare; ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere dal quell'amore non era venuta, e pensava che doveva essersi sbagliata. Ella cercava ora, di sapere che cosa volessero esattamente dire, nella vita, le parole felicità, passione ed ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate tanto belle, lette nei libri”
“[Hers] was an existence between heaven and earth... beyond her stretched as far as the eye could see... an immense space of joys and passions...[But] did not love, like flowers, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Sighs by moonlight, long embraces, tears cried into yielding hands...the fevers of the flesh and the langours of tenderness...”
“How she listened, the first time, to the sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholia echoing out across heaven and earth! If her childhood had been spent in the dark back-room of a shop in some town, she would now perhaps have been kindled by the lyric surgings of nature which only normally reach us as through the interpretation of a writer.”
“for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.”
“Everything measurable passes, everything that can be counted has an end. Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.”
“... et l'ennui, araignée silencieuse, filait sa toile dans l'ombre, à tous les coins de son coeur.”
“She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.”
“Mais, à mesure que se serrait davantage l'intimité de leur vie, un détachement se faisait qui la déliait de lui.”
“Tutto finisce, tutto passa, l'acqua scorre e il cuore dimentica.”
“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
“Adieu, mon cher vieux. Relis et rebûche ton conte. Laisse-le reposer et reprends-le, les livres ne se font pas comme les enfants, mais comme les pyramides, avec un dessin prémédité, et en apportant des grands blocs l´un par-dessus l´autre, à force de reins, de temps et de sueur, et ça ne sert à rien! et ça reste dans le désert! mais en le dominant prodigieusement. Les chacals pissent au bas et les bourgeois montent dessus, etc.; continue la comparaison.”
“Dar cum sa vorbesti despre un rau care nu poate fi descris,care isi schimba infatisarea ca norii, care se involbureaza ca vantul?”
“Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.”
“This was how they wished they had been: each was creating an ideal into which he was now fitting his past life.”
“She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold.”
“Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment.”
“You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.”
“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.”
“Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other dreams.”
“But the flames did die down, perhaps from lack, perhaps from excess of fuel. Little by little, love was quenched by absence, and longing smothered by routine; and that fiery glow which tinged her pale sky scarlet grew more clouded, then gradually faded away. Her benumbed consciousness even led her to mistake aversion toward her husband for desire for her loved, the searing touch of hatred for the rekindling of love; but, as the storm still raged on and her passion burnt itself to ashes, no help came and no sun rose, the darkness of night closed in on every side, and she was left to drift in a bitter icy void. So the bad days of Tostes began again. She believed herself much more unhappy, now, because she had experienced sorrow, and knew for certain that ti would ever end.”
“After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.”
“Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.”
“His wife had been wild about him at first; she had treated him with an amorous servility that had turned him against her all the more. Vivacious, effusive, and very loving in the early days, over the years she had, like a stale wine that turns to vinegar, grown ill-humoured, waspish, and nervy.”
“And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.”
“The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go to a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!”
“What vast funds of indifference society possesses”
“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”
“Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.”
“El autor debe estar en su libro como Dios en su universo, presente en todas partes, pero siempre invisible.”
“Mi amistad es como los camellos. En cuanto se pone en marcha ya no hay modo de detenerla.”
“Le monde est l'œuvre d'un Dieu en délire.”
“It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.”
“Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.”
“Je ne suis pas plus moderne qu'ancien, pas plus Français que Chinois, et l'idée de la patrie c'est-à-dire l'obligation où l'on est de vivre sur un coin de terre marqué en rouge ou en bleu sur la carte et de détester les autres coins en vert ou en noir m'a paru toujours étroite, bornée et d'une stupidité féroce.”
“God is in the details.”