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My recent interest in Flaubert was stimulated by a long essay [2pg] by AS Byatt in the Guardian (her introduction to a new Norwegian edition). But if your French is weak this essay is problematic, so I've translated her various extracts below, and linked a convenient online etext (the 1886 Marx-Aveling translation at Bibliomania, broken into short pages: M-A).
If you have Javascript enabled this link: [compare] and its twin a few paragraphs down should split the browser-window, with Byatt in the upper half and this page in the lower.
'J'ai un amant. J'ai un amant.' [II.9 misquoted, "I have a lover, a lover!" M-A] When she decides to set out on the fatal riding expedition with him, it is not desire, let alone love, which propels her - it is Charles Bovary's promise of a riding habit, an 'amazone'. 'L'amazone la décida.' [II.9 "The riding habit decided her." M-A]
His style, he wrote, should be 'lisse comme un marbre et furieux comme un tigre' [smooth like marble and furious like a tiger] 'chaud en dessous et splendide à la surface' [hot below and splendid on the surface]. Prose, he said, should be stuffed with things 'et sans qu'on les aperçoive' [without noticing them].
'elle trouvait moyen d'offrir un plat coquet, s'entendait a poser sur des feuilles de vigne les pyramides de reines-claudes, servait renversés les pots de confiture dans une assiette, et même elle parlait d'acheter des rince-bouche pour le dessert.' [I.7]
"When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish-- piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates-- and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert." [M-A]
'La rosée avait laissé sur les choux des guipures d'argent avec des longs fils clairs qui s'étendaient de l'un à l'autre. On n'entendait pas d'oiseaux, tout semblait dormir, l'espalier couvert de paille et la vigne comme un grand serpent malade sous le chaperon du mur, où l'on voyait, en s'approchant, se trainer des cloportes a pattes nombreuses.' [I.9]
"The dew had left silvery lace on the cabbages, with long shiny threads stretching from one to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espaliered fruit-trees were covered with straw, and the vine was like a great sick snake under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the many-legged woodlice crawling." [M-A] (translation tweaked via Lowell Bair's)
'Tout en cousant, elle se piquait les doigts, qu'elle portait ensuite a sa bouche pour les sucer.' [I.2]
"...as she sewed she kept pricking her fingers and raising them to her lips to suck them."
'Charles fut surpris de la blancheur de ses ongles. Ils étaient brilliants, fins du bout, plus nettoyés que les ivoires de Dieppe, et taillés en amande. Sa main pourtant n'était pas belle, point assez pâle peut-être, et un peu sèche aux phalanges; elle était trop longue aussi et sans molles inflexions de lignes sur les contours. Ce qu'elle avait du beau, c'étaient les yeux; quoiqu'ils furent bruns, ils semblaient noirs à cause des cils, et son regard arrivait franchement à vous avec une hardiesse candide.' [I.2]
"Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails. They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness." [M-A]
'Un homme au moins est libre; il peut parcourir les passions et les pays. Mais une femme est empêchée continuellement. Inerte et flexible a la fois, elle a contre elle les mollesses de la chair avec les dépendances de la loi. Sa volonté, comme le voile de son chapeau retenue par un cordon, palpite a tous les vents; il y a toujours quelque désir qui entraine, quelque convenance qui retient.' [II.3]
"A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains." [M-A]
'Elle portait une robe de chamber toute ouverte, qui laissait voir, entre les revers à châle du corsage, une chemisette plissée avec trois boutons d'or. Sa ceinture était une cordelière à gros glands, et ses petits pantoufles de couleur grenat avaient une touffe de rubans larges, qui s'étalait sur le cou-du-pied. Elle s'était acheté un buvard, une papeterie, un porte-plume et des envelopes, quoiqu'elle n'eut personne à qui écrire; elle époussetait son étagère, se regardait dans la glace, prenait un livre, puis, rêvant entre les lignes, le laissait tomber sur les genoux. Elle avait envie de faire des voyages ou de retourner vivre a son couvent. Elle souhaitait a la fois mourir et habiter Paris.' [I.9]
"She wore a lowcut dressing gown with a shawl collar and a pleated dicky with three gold buttons. Her belt was a cord with large tassels, and her small garnet-red slippers had tufts of wide ribbons at the instep. She had bought herself a blotter, a writing case, a pen, and some envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she would dust her what-not, look at herself in the glass, pick up a book, and then, daydreaming between the lines, let it drop on her lap. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris." [M-A]
she tells him things she has found in novels 'car, enfin, Charles était quelqu'un, une oreille toujours ouverte. Elle faisait bien des confidences à sa levrette. Elle en eut fait aux buches de la cheminée et au balancier de la pendule.' [I.9]
"Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of high society that she had seen in a gossip-column; for, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock." [M-A]
Proust wrote to defend Flaubert against hostile criticism in 1919. He said that he himself believed that 'la métaphore seule peut donner une sorte d'éternité au style, et il n'y a peut-être pas dans tout Flaubert une seule belle métaphore.' [only metaphors can make style eternal, and there isn't a single beautiful metaphor in all of Flaubert]
It appears in the profound irony of the juxtapositions in sentences like 'Il admirait l'exaltation de son âme et les dentelles de sa jupe.' [III.5 "He admired the exaltation of her soul and the lace on her petticoat." M-A] Or 'Elle souhaitait a la fois mourir et habiter Paris.' [I.9 "She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris." M-A]
He told Louise Colet 'Rien dans ce livre n'est tiré de moi . . . Tout est de tête' [nothing in this book is based on me, it's all imagination], but he also told Amélie Bosquet, famously, 'Madame Bovary c'est moi! - d'après moi.'
a clergyman whose anointing of her body is told in terms of the sins that body has committed - 'les yeux, qui avait tant convoité toutes les sumptuosités terrestres... puis sur la bouche qui s'était ouvert pour le mensonge, qui avait gémi d'orgueil et crié dans la luxure. . .' [III.8]
"First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness..." [M-A]
Even Proust, writing his precise and elegant defence of Flaubert, begins with a caveat. 'Ce n'est pas que j'aime entre tous les livres de Flaubert, ni même le style de Flaubert.' [There's nothing that I love among all Flaubert's books, not even his style.]
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