[Up: Favorite authors] MBov Salam SentimE StAnt 3Tales B&P [home]

"le seul mot juste" (the one precise word)

c30yo

"This concern with external beauty that you reproach me for is a method for me. When I discover a disagreeable assonance or a repetition in one of my sentences, I can be sure that I'm floundering around in something false. By dint of searching, I find the right expression, which was the only one all along, and at the same time the harmonious one. The word is never lacking when one is in possession of the idea." --GF, March 1876

[pic source] [pix] [pic] [pic] [9yo] [autograph] ditto [handwriting] ditto

"Let us ask of life only an armchair and not a throne..."

• He was born in France in 1821, roughly contemporary with Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, and Karl Marx
• He claimed there was also an American Indian among the Normans in his family tree
• His father was a very successful and wealthy surgeon who died when GF was 24
• He grew up around the cadavers his father used to teach med students, which helps explain his extreme lack of sentimentality
• He began his career as a writer at age nine, and wrote prolifically thruout his school years (dozens of early works survive)
• From early youth he claimed to hate life and human stupidity
• At 21 he dropped out of law school (which he hated) due to epilepsy, and never held a job
• He lived with his mother until her death (when he was 50)
• He was attracted mainly to women ten years older than him
• He did his writing at home in Rouen (pop 120k), but made frequent trips to Paris for research and society
• He had a long affair with one of France's most beautiful women, the poet Louise Colet
• He preferred prostitutes (or abstention) as less distracting for a writer
• It often took him all day to write a single sentence
• He mostly wrote at night, and shouted out his sentences at top volume to listen for any false note
• He never considered saleability when choosing the subjects of his novels
• He was fascinated with the ancient world and preferred writing about it
• He spent 18 months exploring Egypt and the middle east when he was 28/29 [map] and caught a lifelong dose of syphilis which he treated with mercury
• It was during this trip that he began taking on his characteristic overweight
• He died at age 58 of a stroke

Long timeline

French biopic?

What you should know about Madame Bovary

• The Bovarys were based on a student of GF's father's whose wife carried on, ran up debts, and poisoned herself
• GF took the story on as a technical challenge, because it was so remote from his experience and interests
• He was trying to describe vulgar lives in the simplest, least judgmental language
• Thirty pages were cut for esthetic reasons just before publication, on the dubious advice of a close friend (not yet restored!?)
• The publishers were tried for obscenity but won the case
• GF would have accepted prison rather than censor himself
• GF refused to let it be turned into a play

more

Byatt essay: 2pg, translations

Etexts:
Marx-Aveling translation (1886): PGut txt (662k), Bibliomania (multimultipage)
May translation (1928): Litrix, BlackMask

What you should know about St Anthony

• Anthony was a historical figure who died around 350 AD in southern Egypt.
• (The 'gnostic gospels' discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945 date from that same general time and place: info)
• The 'Temptations' take place in one night (not historical)
• GF was inspired by a Breugel painting [qv] (and a puppetshow)
• He rewrote it three times, between 1849 and 1872
• GF was severely traumatised when the 1st version was execrated by his friends
• GF wove massive amounts of historical research very subtly into the text
• Michel Foucault used it as an example of a 'semantic web'
• GF's own approach to art was like a hermit resisting temptations

more

What you should know about Sentimental Education

• It takes place in France, mostly in the 1840s
• Woody Allen (in 'Manhattan') mentions it as the only book he thinks makes life worth living #quote
• Its attractions are very subtle (no hero triumphing over obstacles)
• One remarkable feature is that the characters keep revealing new sides to their personalities
• GF worked very hard to fit the characters into the background of history without overwhelming them
• GF had used the title twenty years earlier for a vaguely similar work (published after his death)

more

What you should know about Bouvard and Pecuchet

• Like Sentimental Education, it takes place in France in the 1840s
• GF died before completing it
• GF's notes for the 2nd half consist of a collection of cliches that's been published as the 'Dictionary of Received Ideas' [etext]
• The first half has only a skeletal plot, in which a Laurel-and-Hardy pair suffer catastrophe after catastrophe while trying to educate themselves in modern (ie French 1840s) thought
• Bouvard is the optimistic giant, Pecuchet the small pessimist
• GF conceived it as being published in parallel with St Anthony, and used the same method of exhaustive research
• It's possible to view B&P as modern analogs to Anthony, being tempted by modern 'heresies' instead of ancient ones

more

What you should know about Salammbo

• It takes place in North Africa c240 BC, but Salammbo herself is fictional.
• The culture of Carthage came from the same source as Judaism, and the language (Phoenician or Punic) was closely related to Hebrew
• The Romans went on to ruthlessly destroy the Carthaginian culture in 146 BC, so thoroughly that very little is known about it
• GF wanted to create 'an orgy of historical hashish'
• He researched it very thoroughly, and ably defended it against criticism from professional archeologists
• It was a moderate success (mainly because it was so lurid) and inspired several operas

more

Etexts: PGut txt, BlackMask

What you should know about 'Three Tales'

more

sources: [overview] [website] [bio] [bio] World&I, bk-rev, ditto, ditto, short, Barron's, Bibliomania, short, Babelfished, quotes, philosophy, bibliog

French: illustrated, website, timeline, ditto, etexts, ditto, ditto, works

other: Dutch

search: French

French: etext

reviews: [w/popup]

Amazon: French

French: etext, ditto, multipage, extracts, ditto, summary, drafts?

annotated bilingual: partial

English:
Marx-Aveling (1886): PGut txt, Bibliomania
May (1928): Litrix, BlackMask, concordance

translators: Eleanor Marx-Aveling (1886), William Walton (1896), William Blaydes (1902), M Walter Dunn (1904), James Lewis May (1928), Gerard Hopkins (1948), Joan Charles (1949), Alan Russell (1950), Francis Steegmuller (1957), Lowell Bair (1959), Mildred Marmur (1964), Paul De Man (1965), Merloyd Lawrence (1969), Geoffrey Wall (1992) [info]

other: Italian, Spanish

crit: Byatt-2pg, study guide, Sparknotes, Barron's, sources, influences, vocab, 1stThings, EJong, Baudelaire (French)

Amazon: paper, hard, largeprint, tapes, abridged-tape

Movies:
IMDb: US-1932, Fr-1933 (dir Jean Renoir), German-1937 (Pola Negri as Emma), Argentina-1947 (Ricardo Galache as GF), US-1949 (James Mason as GF, Jennifer Jones as Emma), German-1969, French-tv-1974, UK-miniseries-1975, Russian-1989 (impressionistic), French-1991 (Claude Chabrol-dir, Isabelle Huppert as Emma), Hindi-1992, UK-tv-2000

'sombre story of Hamilcar's daughter Salammbo, an entirely fictitious character, against the authentic historical background of the revolt of the mercenaries against Carthage in 240­237 BC' [cite]

French: etext, ditto, multipage

English: PGut txt, BlackMask

Amazon: paper, hard

tribute: Flash

Movie: Spanish-1960

"Well, all right, why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile. Uh, like what? Okay. Um, for me... oh, I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... um... and Willie Mays, and, um, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, and um... Louie Armstrong's recording of 'Potatohead Blues'... um, Swedish movies, naturally... 'Sentimental Education' by Flaubert... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um, those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne... the crabs at Sam Wo's... Tracy's [Mariel Hemingway's] face..." --Woody Allen, 'Manhattan' [cite]

GF's 1844 novel with this title is an entirely different work [French film]

French: etext, multipage, hypertext-ch1, extracts; manuscripts

English: info, quote

crit: timeline, Chastain, Bourdieu, intro, pdf; characters

Amazon: paper, tr-Parmee, French

Miniseries: French-1973

French: etext

Amazon: paper, tapes, French

French: etext, ditto

English: PGut txt, BlackMask, Bibliomania

Amazon: paper, French

Movie: Italy-1978

French: etext

English: PGut txt, BlackMask

Movie: French-tv-1985

inspired by Rouen stained-glass window: links [French w/pic] ditto [pending?]

French: etext, ditto

"...the world forms a whole, all whose parts have an influence on one another, like the different organs of a single body. It is interesting to understand the affinities and antipathies implanted in everything by Nature, and then to put them into play. In this way one might be able to modify laws that appear to be unchangeable..."

French: 1874 [ditto]; 1856 [ditto]; 1849 [ditto]; 1839 (Smarh) [ditto]

annotated bilingual: partial

translators: Lafcadio Hearn; M Walter Dunn (1904)

crit: Villiers-French [tr], notes

Amazon: paper, hard, French

French: etext, 1pg, extracts

tributes: Java projects

Amazon: paper, French

TV: Czech-miniseries-1972, French-1989

"a collection of platitudes which would be 'the historical glorification of everything generally approved.' It would he said, for instance, show that 'in literature, mediocrity, being within the reach of everyone, is alone legitimate and that consequently every kind of originality must be denounced as dangerous, ridiculous etc.' The work would, he said, be 'raucous and ironic' and would lead to the great modern idea of equality, demonstrating 'everything one should say if one is to be considered a decent and likeable member of society.'" [Byatt]

French: multi, pdf, 1pg-incomplete, multi-incomplete

English: etext, w/typos, ditto, pdf&flash

crit: categories

tributes: economics, Internet

Amazon: paper-Wall, paper-Barzun

French: links

Louise Colet: [French]

from Egypt: [Amazon]

George Sand: PGut txt, BlackMask [Amazon]

contemporaries: etexts-French

1955 film with GF played by Robert Manuel [IMDb]
1982 about de Maupassant [IMDb]

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.