![[deco to the max]](mucha2.jpg)
Alphonse Mucha's 1896 version [full] [source] [AM bio]
[Up: Flaubert] MBov Salam SentimE StAnt 3Tales B&P [home]
"Do you know the sum total of my ambition? It's to have an intelligent, well-read man shut himself up with my book for four hours and to give him an orgy of historical hashish. That's all I want." --GF, Jan 1860 [ht173]
Alphonse Mucha's 1896 version [full] [source] [AM bio]
GF's main source was Polybius's 130BC Histories, Book I [etext] [pdf]
the title character is entirely GF's invention, rumored to be based on an acquaintance, Jeanne de Tourbey
1 franc in 1850 was equal to about $4 today
1821: 12Dec: Gustave Flaubert born in Rouen [map]
1856: Oct-Dec: Madame Bovary published serially
1856: Dec: sells MB to publisher for paltry 800 francs ($3200 today)
1857: Feb: obscenity trial (acquitted) [French]
1857: Mar-May: GF takes notes for Salammbo from 53 different works [ht157] Polybius, Appian, Diodorus Siculus, Isidorus, Cornelius Nepos, Pliny, Plutarch, Xenophon, Livy, Cahen's annotated Old Testament
"In order for a book to sweat truth, you have to be stuffed to the ears with your subject."
1857: Apr: MB published as book (6600 copies)
1857: early Oct: begins Salammbo under title 'Carthage' (changed in Nov to "Salammbô, roman carthaginois")
1857: 24Nov: "...just think what I've let myself in for: trying to resuscitate an entire civilisation about which we know nothing."
1857-1862: writing Salammbo
1858: 12Apr-Jun: scouts locations in North Africa (Constantine, Philippeville, Utica, Bizerte, Bardo, Djarkoub-el-Djedavi, Mez-el-Bab, Testour, Tugga, El Kef, Rieff) [map]
"I am not thinking at all about my novel. I am looking at the country, that's all, and having a great time... I know Carthage thoroughly and at all hours of the day and night." [ht163]"I have been very chaste on this trip. But very gay, and glowing with health as strong as marble." [ht164]
1858: Jun: back in France
"What a stupid country France is!" [ht165]"Beauty must guide my pen, but all must be living and true!" [ht165]
"Carthage has to be entirely done over, or rather done from scratch." [ht165]
"I am sure that what I am writing will not be a success, and so much the better! ...I don't want to make a single concession anymore... Because, darn it all! you have to have a little fun before you croak!" [ht166]
"The future offers me nothing but an infinite series of words crossed out-- not a very amusing prospect." [ht167]
"I have to find a middle way between the overblown and the real... This one will not be a good book. No matter, so long as it makes me dream of great things!" [ht167]
1858: autumn: rereads and praises de Sade "the most amusing nonsense I've ever run across" [ht167] Goncourt calls GF "a glutton for depravity"
1859: Jan: Salammbo one-quarter complete [ht168]
"A book has never been anything for me but a way of living in a particular milieu." [ht168]"You will see me driving a hackney carriage before you see me writing for money." [ht168]
"...losing one ounce of sperm is more fatiguing than losing three liters of blood." [ht168]
"The impatience of men of letters to have their works printed, acted, known, praised is an astonishment to me, like a form of madness... I said fuck everything, and I continue to live like a Bedouin in my desert and my pride." [ht169]
1859: Aug: Salammbo one-third complete [ht169]
"I write the way one plays the violin, with no other purpose than to amuse myself..." [ht169]
1859: late Sep: "I'm in the midst of a battle of elephants" [ht170] to a friend whose wife was dying: "The only way not to suffer too much in such crises is to study oneself with the greatest intensity... Fasten onto an idea! Ideas are women who at least don't die and don't deceive you." [ht171]
"I write very slowly, because for me a book is a special way of living. In connection with a word or an idea, I do research, I let my mind wander, I go off into endless reveries." [ht171]
1860: Jul: "I am carrying two entire armies on my shoulders: 30,000 men on one side, 11,000 on the other..." [ht175]
1860: 29Nov: reaches Carthaginian fornication scene [ht176] "I have to make a man who thinks he's laying the moon screw a woman who thinks she's being laid by the sun."
1861: 15Jan: "I have sworn to myself to finish it this year." [ht177]
1861: 06May: GF reads passages to Goncourts (their diary: 'inflated, melodramatic, declamatory, wallowing in bombast') [ht178]
1862: 02Jan: working on ch14 [ht178]
acknowledges publication of Hugo's Miserables as taking priority with public mindshare (but condemns it: "neither truth nor greatness... puppets... made of sugar candy... puerile" ht181)
1862: 20Apr: finishes Salammbo [ht180]
1862: Jun: refuses to allow illustrations "It was hardly worth the trouble using so much art to leave everything vague if some clod is going to come along and destroy my dream with his stupid precision." [ht183]
1862: summer: signs contract with Michel Levy at extremely unfavorable terms incl ten years of MB, all for 10k francs [ht184]
1862: 20Nov: Salammbo published (2000 copies)
reviews mixed. George Sand: 'as beautiful, as striking, as concise, as grandiose in its French prose as any fine poem known in any language' [ht188]
1862? dialog between EmmaB and Salammbo published in 'Le Journal amusant'
1862? satiric revue "Folammbo, or the Carthaginian Follies'
1863-1866: unfinished opera by 24yo Moussorgsky [cite]
1879: GF authorises Camille du Locle to write libretto
1880: Niccoloo Massa version premieres in Milan
1885: Debussy begins Salammbo [passim]
1890: 10Feb: premiere of Reyer's opera of Salammbo in Brussels
1892: Paris Opera revives Salammbo
Czech version by Karl Navratil
inspires Hebbel's Moloch?
sources: [overview] [website] [bio] [bio] World&I, bk-rev, ditto, ditto, short, Barron's, Bibliomania, short, Babelfished, quotes, philosophy, bibliog
French: website, timeline, ditto, etexts, ditto, works
other: Dutch
search: French
'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]
English: PGut txt, BlackMask pdf (M Walter Dunn?)
crit: historical, editions, French
Operas: inventory, summary, info, pix
background: HistToday, Beck, Watson
800 BC? Carthage built by Phoenicians (legendary Dido)
center for manufacture of purple dye
700-500 BC? Carthage is western capital of Phoenician colonies (Spain to Libya); competition with Greeks
480 BC: Greeks defeat Phoenicians at Himera in Sicily; Carthage abandons eastern trade until Alexander
310 BC: Carthage unexpectedly attacked by Agathocles of Syracuse, 500 noble children sacrificed?
264-241 BC: Carthage loses Sicily to Rome in First Punic War [map]
240-237 BC: Mercenaries' War [info]
219-201 BC: Hannibal defeated in Second Punic War [map]
146 BC: Carthage destroyed by Rome
130 BC: Polybius writes Histories
c40 AD: Claudius (future emperor) writes history of Carthage (lost)
"C'était à Mégara, faubourg de Carthage, dans les jardins d'Hamilcar..."
1. Le Festin (The Feast)
Drunken mercenaries pillage Hamilcar's palace and kill the sacred fish.
"Dead! All dead! No more will you come obedient to my voice as when, seated on the edge of the lake, I used to throw seeds of the watermelon into your mouths! The mystery of Tanith ranged in the depths of your eyes that were more limpid than the globules of rivers." And Salammbo called them by their names, which were those of the months-- "Siv! Sivan! Tammouz, Eloul, Tischri, Schebar! Ah! have pity on me, goddess!"
2. A Sicca (At Sicca)
Mercenaries agree to camp 100 miles away; Matho loves Salammbo
"No!" cried Matho. "She has nothing in common with the daughters of other men! Have you seen her great eyes beneath her great eyebrows, like suns beneath triumphal arches? Think: when she appeared all the torches grew pale. Her naked breast shone here and there through the diamonds of her necklace; behind her you perceived as it were the odour of a temple, and her whole being emitted something that was sweeter than wine and more terrible than death. She walked, however, and then she stopped."
Sicca: 100 miles sw of Carthage; aka Sicca Veneria, Shikka Benar, Shak Banaria, Le Kef, El Kef (visited by GF May 1858) [history]
3. Salammbô
4. Sous les Murs de Carthage (Beneath the walls of Carthage)
5. Tanit (Tanith)
6. Hannon (Hanno)
7. Hamilcar Barca
8. La Bataille Du Macar (The battle of the Macar/Macras)
9. En Campagne (In the field)
10. Le Serpent (The serpent)
11. Sous la Tente (Within the tent)
12. L'Aqueduc (The aqueduct)
13. Moloch
14. Le Defile de la Hache (The defile/pass of the hatchet/axe)
15. Mâtho
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