[Up: Flaubert] MBov Salam SentimE StAnt 3Tales B&P [home]
"It is the work of all my life, since the idea first came to me in 1845, in Genoa, in front of a [table] of Breughel, and since that time I have never stopped thinking about it and doing related readings." GF 1872 [French]'To me, as poet, the Tentations is jettatura [evil eye?], it is the effect of Flaubert's time on Flaubert; I mean he was interested in certain questions now dead as mutton, because he lived in a certain period; fortunately he managed to bundle these matters into one or two books and keep them out of his work on contemporary subjects; I set it aside as one sets aside Dante's treatise De Aqua et Terra; as something which matters now only as archaeology. Joyce, working in the same medium as Flaubert, makes the intelligent criticism: "We might believe in it if Flaubert had first shown us St Antoine in Alexandria looking at women and jewellers' windows."' --Ezra Pound [etext]
spelling note: AltaVista shows 'Antony' about 15,000 times, 'Anthony' almost 200,000 times [searchpattern]
Supposedly inspired by c1550 Bruegel (2x3ft): [pic] ditto [info] small
Completely different Bruegel??? [pic]
Other artists' versions: links
Historical background: notes
Athanasius's Life of Antony: [etext] [info] [etext w/anchors] [multipage] [vanilla] [Fordham]
Jerome's Life of St. Paul the Hermit: [etext] (not considered reliable)
Anthony: Cath, Pontitanus?, short DMoz
1839: 'Smarh' [French]
1849: [French] [Google-trans] 2 [tr] 3 [tr] 4 [tr] 5 [tr] 6 [tr] 7 [tr] 8 [tr] 9 [tr] 10 [tr] 11 [tr] 12 [tr] 13 [tr] 14 [tr] 15 [tr] 16 [tr] 17 [tr] 18 [tr] 19 [tr]
1849: [French-600k]
1856: [French] [Google-trans] 2 [tr] 3 [tr] 4 [tr] 5 [tr] 6 [tr] 7 [tr] 8 [tr] 9 [tr] 10 [tr]
1856: [French-300k]
1874: [bi-ling] [French] [Google-trans] 2 [tr] 3 [tr] 4 [tr] 5 [tr] 6 [tr] 7 [tr] 8 [tr]
1874: [French-300k]
mainly based on Henri Troyat's 1988 'Flaubert' (ht)
1 franc in 1850 was equal to about $4 today
1821: 12Dec: Gustave Flaubert born in Rouen [map]
1831: starts at Latin-oriented dayschool (boards after March 1832); sees himself as superior/different, views others ironically
"From the time I entered school I was melancholy, restless, seething with desires... I dreamed of passions and wanted to experience them all."
reads Michelet, Froissart, Commynes, Brantome, Hugo, Dumas;
writes wildly romantic historical stories and plays
1834: attempts novel about Isabeau of Bavaria (15thC); publishes one-man 'review' called 'Art and Progress'; writing compensates for disgust with life's "cruel joke" (claims suicidal urges)
studies ancient history and English; reads Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Scott
1834: writing-style becomes gothic: The Death of Marguerite de Bourgogne; A Journey to Hell; Two Hands on One Crown; A Secret of Philip the Wise; A Perfume to Breathe; The Woman of Fashion; The Plague of Florence; Bibliomania; Rage and Impotence; Norman Chronicle of the Tenth Century
"...to write is to seize hold of the world, of its prejudices and virtues..."
alter-ego 'the Boy' expresses vulgar rage at mediocrity; older friends (incl Louis Bouilhet) teach GF sexual cynicism (homosexual experiments?)
1835: publishes 'Voyage en enfer' [French]
1838: writes autobiographical 'Agonies' [French] and finishes 'Fou' [French] ditto
"...an abyss behind me, an abyss ahead..." (Agonies)"Woe to men, who have made me corrupt and evil, I who was good and pure! ...Woe to the aridity of civilisation...!" (Fou)
[Rabelais and Byron are] "the only two who have written in a spirit of malice toward the human race and with the intention of laughing in its face."
1839: writes medieval mystery play 'Smarh' (early variant of 'St Anthony') [French] ditto, ditto
"...this mad enterprise in which my mind was stretched to the limit."
1840: brief flirtation with Christian mysticism
"Every day I admire the poets more and more... I have in mind three novels... each requiring a particular way of writing. That will suffice to prove to myself whether I have talent or not."
1845: Apr: GF at Balbi Palace in Genoa sees Breughel of St Anthony [info?] (it's not clear to me this is the right one)
"Underneath the impression of merrymaking suggested by the details, the thing as a whole is crawling, seething, jeering in a wild, grotesque way. At first the painting seems confused, then it becomes strange to most people, funny to some, something more to others. For me it blotted out everything else in the gallery." [ht57]"...made me think of adapting the story for the theater. But it would take some other fellow to do it. I would gladly give the entire collection of Le Moniteur, if I had it, and 100,000 francs besides, to buy that picture, which most people who see it surely think is bad." [ht57]
begins research for St Antoine
"Happiness is in the idea, and nowhere else."
1848: Mar? begins writing 1st St Anthony
"St Antoine did not require a quarter of the concentration which Madame Bovary demands of me. It was an 'outfall'; I experienced only pleasure in writing it, and the eighteen months that I passed writing those 500 pages were most deeply voluptuous of all my life." GF, 1853 [French]
1849: May: mideast trip planned
1849: 12Sep: Antoine finished
"If you don't roar with enthusiasm, it will be because nothing is capable of moving you!" [ht92]
1849: 17Sep? Du Camp and Bouilhet condemn 'Anthony' after marathon 4-day reading by GF "We think you should throw it in the fire and never speak of it again." [ht93] "all his defects and only a few of his good qualities" [ht112]
1849: Nov: travels around eastern Mediterranean until April 1851 [map] [French] [naughty bits] [bkrev] (epileptic attacks; catches syphilis)
1849: 08Dec: watches sunrise from top of Great Pyramid [FiE52]
"...as the sun climbed behind the Arabian chain the mist was torn into great shreds of filmy gauze..."
1850: Jan? GF interviews Coptic bishop about Trinity, Virgin, Gospels, Eucharist "all my old erudition of St Antoine came flooding back to me... I took profound pleasure in it..." [ht99]
"Is Saint Antoine good or bad? That is something I often ask myself. Was it I who was mistaken, or the others?" [ht99]
1850: late Jun: GF photographed in Cairo in Nubian costume with formidable black beard [FiE40]
"Literature! That old whore! We must try to dose her with mercury and pills and clean her out from top to bottom, she has been so ultrascrewed by filthy pricks!" [FiE213]
1850: 14Nov: [FiE216]
"Speaking of subjects, I have three, which are perhaps one and the same, and that worries me considerably. 1st, Une Nuit de Don Juan, which I thought of in the lazaretto at Rhodes: 2nd, the story of Anubis-- the woman who wants to be laid by the god. That is the loftiest, but involves atrocious difficulties; 3rd, my Flemish novel about the girl who dies a virgin and mystic, having lived with her father and mother in a small provincial town, at the foot of a garden planted with cabbages and fruit-trees, beside a stream the size of the Robec. What troubles me is the way these three ideas are related. In the first, insatiable love in the two forms, earthly and mystical. In the second the same, except there is fucking involved, and the earthly love is the less elevated for being more specific. In the third, they are both combined in the same person, and one leads to the other; only my heroine dies of religious masturbation...My metaphysical clarity terrifies me... I must know what my domain can and cannot be expected to produce, before beginning to till it."
1851: Apr? "Back in Croisset I shall probably bog myself down in India and the great explorations of Asia... I need poetic orgies. What I have seen has made me hard to please. The Don Juan goes ahead slowly; from time to time a few sections are 'set down in writing'." [FiE217]
1851: 19Sep: begins Madame Bovary
1851: Oct: debates letting du Camp publish excerpts from StA in his Revue de Paris [ht111]
"Sometimes I even think it wrong of me to want to write a rational book [MB], instead of letting myself indulge in all the lyricism, all the bombast, all the fantastical philosophical extravagance that might enter my head." [ht112]
1852: Jan: Louise Colet praises StA [ht117]
1852: May: conceives metaphysical novel, 'The Spiral' [French] [tr] (spiral of successive tests/trials culminating in insanity)
1856: Jun: immediately after sending off MB, begins contemplating rewriting St Anthony "I hope to make it readable and not too boring" [ht142] "it will be increasingly stranger than beautiful... I seek brutal effects" [French]
1856: Oct-Dec: Madame Bovary published serially
1857: Jan? excerpts from StA in L'Artiste (praised by Lamartine?) [ht148]
1860: Jan: praises de Sade
"He is the spirit of the Inquisition, the spirit of torture, the spirit of the medieval Church, the hatred of nature. There is not one tree in de Sade, not one animal." [ht173]
Goncourts on GF: 'One has the vague sense that he undertook all his great travels partly to astonish the people of Rouen.' [ht174]
1863: debates revising StA or SE [ht191]
1866: Aug: Sand dedicates Le Dernier Amour to GF, visits Croisset [ht209] GF reads her 1856 St Antoine
1866: 29Sep: GF to GS [ht211]
"I possess memories that go back to the Pharaohs. I see myself at different periods of history very clearly... Many things would be explained if we could know our real genealogy."
1869: Jun: on finishing SE, returns to StA [ht226]
"I've gone back to an old infatuation of mine, a book that I've already written twice and that I want to do all over again. It's totally absurd but it amuses me. So now I am lost in the Church Fathers as if I meant to become a priest!" [ht226]
1870: Jul: GF returns to StA as "something fantastic to get my poor head going again" [ht235]
1870: Dec: buries StA ms as Rouen occupied by Prussians [ht242]
1871: May: "my only occupation is my St Antoine, which I'm working away at without pause... This fantastic work keeps me from thinking about the horrors of Paris." [ht247] "I try to intoxicate myself with ink"
1871: 18Oct: Goncourt: "he talked to me about... all the ordeals to which he was subjecting the hermit of Thebaid and from which he emerges victorious... he confided to me that the saint's final defeat is due to the cell, the scientific cell. The curious thing is that he seemed surprised by my surprise." [ht253]
1872: Jan: reads 115pp of StA to Turgenev who is 'jubilant with admiration' [ht254] "He gave me two or three suggestions regarding very fine points in StA"
1872: death of mother
1872: 01Jul: StA finished [ht259]
1872: Aug: decides to write B&P before publishing StA [ht260]
1873: 14Apr: GF reads StA to GS for six hours ('Splendid!') [ht266]
1873: Dec: Charpentier agrees to publish StA [ht274] Turgenev arranges Russian translation; GF recommends against naming baby after Antoine ("so troubled a man')
1874: Mar? 1st edition of 2000 sells in days; critics baffled or hostile "What comes as a surprise is the hatred underlying much of this criticism-- hatred for me, for my person-- deliberate denigration, and I keep looking for the reason." [ht278]
1874: May: new edition of 2500 (3rd or 4th?) [ht278]
1874: Dec: Renan agrees to write laudatory review [ht282]
1880: 08May: dies suddenly of stroke [deathmask]
c1900? first StA finally published
historical allusions in each chapter will be redated here as if the 'temptations' happened in 2000AD, instead of 355AD, to give a more vivid sense of their antiquity from Anthony's perspective. By this dating, Jesus was crucified c1675AD.
one [bi-ling]
memories: former times (Colzin since 1959), left home (1915), citadel (1930), Didymus (anachronism 1950), persecution (1953?), Arians (1998?), Hilarion (1951), Ammon (anachronism?), Constantine (1930-1982), Athanasius (b1940), Eusebius (1905-1985), Macarius (b1945), Pachomius (1935-1991), Nicaea (1970), Paphnutius (d1995), Diocletian (1929-1950)
two
temptations: sloth?, gluttony, avarice (Alexander, Demetrius, Ptolemies, Caesar), wrath (Mark Antony), pride? (Novatians-1970?, Arians-1945?, Meletians-1951, Crispus-d1981), lust? (Nebuchadnezzar), envy?
Sheba (695AD), pyramids (1000BC)
three
Hilarion (b1936), Paul (1879?-1992?), Eustathius (b1915), Arsenius (trial 1977), Dionysius (d1910), Cyprian (d1903), Gregory (???), Peter of Alexandria (d1956), Council of Elvira (c1955), Balaam (c600), Aeschylus (c1185), Clement (d1860), Hermas (c1750?), St Paul (d1711), Origen (1830-1899)
four
Procula, Poppaea, Manes, Saturninus, Marcion, Clement, Bardesanes, Hernians, Priscillianists, Theodas, Valentinus, Basilides, Elkhesaites, Carpocratians, Nicolaites, Marcosians, Helvidians, Adamites, Messalians, Paternians, Carpocras, Aetius, Nicolas, Buddha, Cubricus, Tertullian, Priscilla, Aesculapius, Montanus, Maximilla, Magdalen, Jane, Martha, Susanna, Eustolia, Leontius, Eotas
Archontics, Tatianists, Valesians, Cainites, Circoncellions, Audians, Collyridians, Ascitians, Appelles, Sampsians, Sabellius, Arius, Sethianians, Theodotians, Merinthians, Apollonarists, Marcellus, Calixtus, Methadius, Cerinthus, Paul of Samosta, Hermogenes, Pantherus, Corinthians, Encratites, Barcouf, Ebionites
Eusebius, Marcellina, Homer, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Glaucus, Ezechias, Ophites, Peter of Alexandria, Cyprian, Pionius, Polycarp, Domitilla, Kalanos, Augustus
Simon, Eunoia/Helena, Stesichorus, Lucretia, Caius Caesar Agricola, Pope Clement, Dositheus, Nero, Damis, Apollonius, Samaneans, Bucephalus, Ctesiphon, Phraortes, Porus, Iarchas, Sesostris, Gangaridae, Sachalitae, Aramitae, Homeritae, Pygmaei, Vespasian, Menippus, Flavius, Sporus, Domitian, Sabacius, Cabiri, Bona Dea
five
Simeon (1545-1645), Brakhmans, Pharisees, Pythagoras (c1115), Zoroaster (b1017?), Caosyac, Diana of Ephesus (temple 1100AD), Cybele, Atys, Cynocephalus, Typhon, Harpocrates, Archontes, Samos, Telesphorus, Sosipolis, Doespoena, Britomartis, Eurynomus, Orthia, Hymnia, Saphria, Aphia, Bendis, Stymphalia, Triopas, Erichthonius, Xerxes, Zalmoxis, Cimmerians, Aesars, Tages, Vertumnus, Naenia
six
Plato (1218-1298), Philolaus (b c1165), Aristotle (1261-1323)
seven
Didymus (1950?), Xenophanes (c1120AD), Heraclitus (c1150AD), Melissus (c1200AD), Anaxagoras (c1200AD), Saul (c500AD?), Razias (??), Pelagia of Antioch (c1950AD), Dominius of Aleppo (??), Hegesias (c1340AD), Erostrates (1289AD, Herostratus, Erostratus)
You can submit a new URL or any other suggestion for this page by typing it into the box below. It will instantly become visible to anyone at this comments page. I should get around to checking it out and updating it above within a week or three, at which point I'll delete it from the comments page.
If you want credit, include your name and email (otherwise it's anonymous). You can use HTML but you don't have to.
Hosting provided by instinct.org. Content may be copied under Open Web Content License.
