Works of Gustave Flaubert

Front matter

Vol. 1: Madame Bovary

Vol. 2: Madame Bovary

Vol. 3: Salammbô

Madame Bovary

Copyright, 1904, by M. WALTER DUNNE

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

APPENDIX

Biographical Preface

Gustave Flaubert was born at Rouen, December 12, 1821. His father was a physician, who later became chief surgeon in the Hôtel Dieu of that city, and his mother, Anne-Justine-Caroline Fleuriot, was of Norman extraction.

Fourth of a family of six children, as a child Flaubert exhibited marked fondness for stories, and, with his favourite sister, Caroline, would invent them for pastime. As a youth, he was exceedingly handsome, tall, broad -shouldered and athletic, of independent turn of mind, fond of study, and caring little for the luxuries of life. He attended the college of Rouen, but showed no marked characteristic save a pronounced taste for history. After graduating, he went to Paris to read law, at the École de Droit. At this time disease, the nature of which he always endeavored to conceal from the world, attacked him and compelled a return to Rouen. The complaint, as revealed after his death by Maxime Ducamp, was epilepsy, and the constant fear of suffering an attack in public led Flaubert to live the life of a recluse.

The death of his father occurring at this critical period, Flaubert abandoned the study of law, which he had begun only in obedience to the formally expressed wish of his family. Having a comfortable income, he turned his thoughts to literature, and from that time all other work was distasteful. He read and wrote incessantly, although at this period he never completed anything. Among his papers were found several fragments written between his eighteenth and twentieth years. Some bear the stamp of his individuality, if not in the substance, which is romantic,—at least in the form, which is peculiarly lucid and concise,—for instance, the slight, romantic, autobiographic sketch entitled Novembre.

Flaubert wrote neither for money nor for fame. To him, art was religion, and to it he sacrificed his life. Perfection of style was his goal; and unremitting devotion to his ideal slew him. That he was never satisfied with what he wrote, his letters show; and all who knew him marvelled at his laborious and pathetic application to his work. He settled first in Croisset, near Rouen, with his family, but shortly afterwards went to Brittany with Maxime Ducamp. On his return he planned La Tentation de Saint Antoine, which grew out of a fragmentary sketch entitled Smarh (a mediæval Mystery, the manuscript tells us), written in early youth. La Tentation proved a source of labor, for he never ceased revising it until it appeared in book form in 1874. In 1847, he wrote a modern play, entitled Le Candidat, produced in 1874 at the Vaudeville. It was not his first dramatic effort, as he had already written a sort of lyric fairy-play, Le Château des Cœurs, which was published in his Œuvres Posthumes.

In 1849 Flaubert visited Greece, Egypt, and Syria, again accompanied by his friend Maxime Ducamp. After his return he planned a book of impressions similar to Par les Champs et par les Grèves, which was the result of the trip to Brittany; but the beginning only was achieved. Still he gathered many data for his future great novel, Salammbô. The year 1851 found him back in Croisset, working at La Tentation de Saint Antoine, which he dropped suddenly, when half finished, for an entirely different subject—Madame Bovary, a novel of provincial life, published first in 1857 in the Revue de Paris. For this Flaubert was prosecuted, on the charge of offending against public morals, but was acquitted after the remarkable defense offered by Maître Senard.

Flaubert’s fame dates from Madame Bovary, which was much discussed by press and public. Many, including his friend, Maxime Ducamp, condemned it, but Sainte-Beuve gave it his decisive and courageous approval. It was generally considered, however, as the starting point of a new phase in letters, frankly realistic, and intent on understanding and expressing everything. Such success might have influenced Flaubert’s artistic inclinations but did not, for while Madame Bovary was appearing in the Revue de Paris, the Artiste was publishing fragments of La Tentation de Saint Antoine.

In 1858 Flaubert went to Tunis, visited the site of ancient Carthage, and four years afterwards wrote Salammbô, a marvellous reconstitution, more than half intuitive, of a civilisation practically unrecorded in history. This extraordinary book did not call forth the enthusiasm that greeted Madame Bovary. Flaubert, in whom correctness of detail was a passion, was condemned, even by Sainte-Beuve, for choosing from all history a civilisation of which so little is known. The author replied, and a lengthy controversy ensued, but it was not a subject that could be settled definitely in one way or another.

In L’Education Sentimentale, roman d’un jeune homme, published in 1869, Flaubert returns momentarily to the style which brought him such rapid and deserved celebrity. In 1877 appeared Trois Contes, three short stories written in the impersonal style of Salammbô, contrasting strangely with La Legende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier and Herodias, wherein Flaubert shows himself supreme in the art of word-painting.

Death came to him on May 8, 1880, as he was writing the last chapters of a new work, Bouvard et Pecuchet, which was published in part after he died and later appeared in book form (1881).

At the age of twenty-five, Flaubert met the only woman who in any way entered his sentimental life. She was an author, the wife of Lucien Colet, and the “Madame X” of the Correspondence. Their friendship lasted eight years and ended unpleasantly, Flaubert being too absorbed by his worship for art to let passion sway him.

He remained unmarried because his love for his mother and family made calls upon him that he would not neglect. He was indifferent to women, treated them with paternal indulgence, and often avowed that “woman is the undoing of the just.” Yet a warm friendship existed between him and George Sand, and many of his letters are addressed to her, touching upon various questions in art, literature, and politics.

The misanthropy which haunted Flaubert, of which so much has been said, was not innate, but was acquired through the constant contemplation of human folly. It was natural for him to be cheerful and kind-hearted, and of his generosity and disinterestedness not enough can be said. At the close of his life financial difficulties assailed him, for he had given a great part of his fortune to the support of a niece, restricting his own expenses and living as modestly as possible. In 1879, M. Jules Ferry, then Minister of Public Instruction, offered him a place in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, but the appointment was not confirmed.

Flaubert’s method of production was slow and laborious. Sometimes weeks were required to write a few pages, for he accumulated masses of notes and, it must be said, so much erudition as at times to impede action. He thought no toil too great, did it but aid him in his pursuit of literary perfection, and when the work that called for such expenditure of strength and thought was finished, he looked for no reward save that of a satisfied soul. Alien to business wisdom, he believed that to set a price upon his work disparaged it.

In Flaubert, a Romanticist and a Naturalist at first were blended. But the latter tendency was fostered and acknowledged, while the former was repressed. He was an ardent advocate of the impersonal in art, declaring that an author should not in a page, a line, or a word, express the smallest part of an opinion. To him a writer was a mirror, but a mirror that reflected life while adding that divine effulgence which is Art. Of him a French Romanticist still living says:

“Imagination was espoused by Unremitting-Toil-in-Faith and bore Flaubert. France fed the child, but Art stepped in and gave him to the Nations as a Beacon for the worshippers of Truth-in-Letters-and-in-Life.”

The city of Rouen reared a monument to Flaubert’s memory, but on the spot where he breathed his last are reared the chimneys and the buildings of a factory, a tribute—possibly unconscious—to reality in life.

Before writing Madame Bovary Flaubert had tested himself, and an idea of the scope and variety of his ideas may be gained from the following list of inedited and unfinished fragments:

HISTORICAL

The Death of the Duc de Guise, 1835. Norman Chronicle of the Tenth Century, 1836. Two Hands on a Crown, or, During the Fifteenth Century, 1836. Essay on the Struggle between Priesthood and Empire, 1838. Rome and the Cæsars, 1839.

TRAVELS

Various notes on Travels to the Pyrenean Mountains, Corsica, Spain and the Orient, from 1840 to 1850.

TALES AND NOVELS

The Plague in Florence, 1836. Rage and Impotence, 1836. The Society Woman, fantastic verses, 1836. Bibliomania, 1836. An Exquisite Perfume, or, The Buffoons, 1836. Dreams of the Infernal Regions, 1837. Passion and Chastity, 1837. The Funeral of Dr. Mathurin, or, During the XVth Century, 1839. Frenzy and Death, 1843. Sentimental Education (not the novel published under same title). 1843.

PLAYS

Louis XI, Drama, 1838. Discovery of Vaccination, a parody of tragic style; one act only was written.

CRITICISMS

On Romantic Literature in France.

MISCELLANY

Quidquid volueris? A psychological study, 1837. Agony (Sceptical Thoughts), 1838. Art and Commerce, 1839. Several nameless sketches.

Unfortunately, nearly all the works of Flaubert’s youth were mere sketches, laid aside by him. Their publication would have added nothing to his fame. Still, the loss of some would have been deplorable, to wit, such gems as Novembre, The Dance of Death, Rabelais, and the travels, Over Strand and Field. These sketches will be found in this edition.

Critical Introduction

Domi mansit, lanam fecit: “He remained at home and wrote,” is the first thing that should be said of Gustave Flaubert. This trait, which he shares with many of the writers of his generation,—Renan, Taine, Leconte de Lisle and Dumas fils,—distinguishes them and distinguishes him from those of the preceding generation, who voluntarily sought inspiration in disorder and agitation,—Balzac and George Sand, for instance (to speak only of romance writers), and the elder Dumas or Eugene Suë. Flaubert, indeed, had no “outward life;” he lived only for his art.

A second trait of his character, and of his genius as a writer, is that of seeing in his art only the art itself—and art alone, without the mingling of any vision of fortune or success. A competency,—which he had inherited from the great surgeon, his father,—and moderate tastes, infinitely more bourgeois than his literature,—permitted him to shun the great stumbling-block of the professional man of letters, which, in our day, and doubtless in the United States as well as in France, is the temptation to coin money with the pen. Never was writer more disinterested than Flaubert; and the story is that Madame Bovary brought him 300 francs—in debts.

A third trait, which helps not only to characterise but to individualise him, is his subordination not only of his own existence, but of life in general, to his conception of art. It is not enough to say that he lived for his art: he saw nothing in the world or in life but material for that art,—Hostis quid aliud quam perpetua materia gloriæ?—and if it be true that others have died of their ambition, it could literally be said of Flaubert that he was killed by his art.

It is this point that I should like to bring out in this Introduction,—where we need not speak of his Norman origin, or (as his friend Ducamp has written in his Literary Souvenirs with a disagreeable persistence, and so uselessly!) of his nervousness and epilepsy; of his loves or his friendships, but solely of his work. We know, in fact, to-day, that if all such details are made clear in the biography of a great writer, in no way do they explain his work. The author of Gil Blas, Alain René Lesage, was a Breton, like the author of Atala; the Corneille brothers had almost nothing in common. Of all our great writers, the one nearest, perhaps, to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who died a victim to delirium from persecution, was Madame Sand, who had, without doubt, the sanest and best balanced temperament.

Other writers have sought,—for instance, our great classical authors, Pascal, Bossuet and perhaps Corneille,—to influence the thought of their time; some, like Molière, La Fontaine, and La Bruyère, to correct customs. Others still,—such as our romantic writers, Hugo or De Musset,—desired only to express their personal conception of the world and of life. And then Balzac, whose object,—almost scientific,—was to make a “natural history,” a study and description, of the social species, as an animal or vegetable species is described in zoology or botany. Gustave Flaubert attempted only to work out his art, for and through the love of art. Very early in life, as we clearly see from his correspondence, his consideration for art was not even that of a social but of a sacred function, in which the artist was the priest. We hear sometimes, in metaphor and not without irony, of the “priesthood” of the artist and the “worship” of art. These expressions must be taken literally in Flaubert’s case. He was cloistered in his art as a monk in his convent or by his discipline; and he truly lived only in meditation upon that art, as a Mystic in contemplation of the perfections of his God. Nothing outside of art truly interested him, neither science, nor things political or religious, nor men, nor women, nor anything in the world; and if, sometimes, it was his duty to occupy himself with them, it was never in a degree greater than could benefit his art. “The accidents of the world”—this is his own expression—appeared to him only as things permitted for the sake of description, so much so that his own existence, even, seemed to him to have no other excuse.

It is that which explains the mixture of “romanticism,” “naturalism,” and I will add, of “classicism”—which has been pointed out more than once in Flaubert’s work. Madame Bovary is the masterpiece of naturalistic romance and has not been surpassed by the studies of Zola or the stories of De Maupassant. On the other hand, there is nothing in Hugo, even, more romantic than The Temptation of Saint Antony. But it is necessary to look for many things in romanticism; and the romanticism of Hugo, which was one of the delights of Flaubert, did not resemble that of De Musset, (Lord de Musset, as Flaubert called him) which he strongly disliked. What he loved in romanticism was the “colour,” and nothing but the colour. He loved the romanticism of the Orientals, of Hugo and Chateaubriand, that plastic romanticism, whose object is to substitute in literature “sensations of art” for the “expression of ideas,” or even of sentiments. It is precisely here that naturalism and romanticism—or at least French naturalism, which is very different from that of the Russians or the English—join hands. In the one case, as in the other, the attempt is made to “represent”—as he himself puts it; and when one represents nothing except the vulgar, the common, the mediocre, the everyday, commonplace, or grotesque, he is a “naturalist,” like the author of Madame Bovary; but one is a “romanticist” when, like the author of Salammbô, he makes this world vanish, and recreates a strange land filled with Byzantine or Carthaginian civilization, with its barbaric luxury, its splendour of corruption, immoderate appetites, and monstrous deities.

We have done wrong in considering Flaubert a naturalist impeded by his romanticism, or a romanticist impenitent, irritated with himself because of his tendency to naturalism. He was both naturalist and romanticist. And in both he was an artist, so much of an artist (I say this without fear of contradiction) that he saw nothing in his art but “representation,” the telling of the truth in all its depth and fidelity. Les Fileuses and La Reddition de Bréda are always by Velasquez; but the genius of the painter has nothing in common with the subject he has chosen or the circumstances that inspired him.

From this source proceeds that insensibility in Flaubert with which he has so often been reproached, not without reason, and which divides his naturalism from that of the author of Adam Bede or that of the author of Anna Karenina by an abyss. Honest, as a man, a good citizen, a good son, a good brother, a good friend, Flaubert was indifferent, as an artist, to all that did not belong to his art. “I believe that it is necessary to love nothing,” he has written somewhere, and even underscored it—that is to say, it is necessary to hover impartially above all objective points. And, in fact, as nothing passed before his eyes that he considered did not lie within the possibility of representation, he made it a law unto himself to look nothing in the face except from this point of view.

In this regard one may compare his attitude in the presence of his model to that of his contemporaries, Renan, for example, or Taine, in the presence of the object of their studies. With them also critical impartiality resembles not only indifference but insensibility. Not only have they refused to confound their emotions with their judgments, but their judgments have no value in their eyes except as they separate them from their emotions,—as they emancipate themselves from them or even place themselves in opposition to them. In like manner did Flaubert. The first condition of an exact representation of things is to dominate them; and in order to dominate them, is it not necessary to begin by detaching yourself from them? We see dimly through tears, and we are too much absorbed in that which gives us pleasure to be good judges of it. “An ideal society would be one where each individual performed his duty according to his ability. Now, then, I do my duty as best I can; I am forsakenNo one pities my misfortunes; those of others occupy their attention! I give to humanity what it gives to me—indifference!” Is not the link between Flaubert’s “indifference” and his conception of art evident here?

But Flaubert said besides: “Living does not concern me! It is only necessary to shun suffering.” Should we not change the name of this to “egotism” or “insensibility?” We might, indeed, did we not know that this egotism germinated in Flaubert as a means of discipline. The object of this discipline was to concentrate, for the profit of his art, those qualities or forces which the ordinary man dissipates in the pursuit of useless pleasures, or squanders in intensity of life.

We may take account at the same time of the nature of his pessimism. For there are many ways of being a pessimist, and Flaubert’s was not at all like that of Schopenhauer or Leopardi. His pessimism, real and sincere, proceeded neither from personally grievous experiences in life, as did that of the recluse of Recanati, nor from a philosophic or logical view of the conditions of existence in which humanity is placed, like the pessimism of the Frankfort philosopher. Flaubert was rather a victim of what Théophile Gautier, in his well-known Emaux et Camées, calls by the singularly happy name of “the Luminous Spleen of the Orient.” To tell the truth, what Flaubert could not pardon in humanity was that it did not make enough of art, and so his pessimism was a consequence of his æstheticism. “As lovers of the beautiful,” he tells us, “we are all outlaws! Humanity hates us; we do not serve it; we hate it because it wounds us! Let us love, then, in art, as the Mystics love their God; and let all pale before this love.”

These lines are dated 1853, before he had published anything. Therefore, Flaubert did not express himself thus because he was not successful. His self-love was not in question! No one had yet criticised or discussed him. But he felt that his ideal of art, an art which he could not renounce, was opposed to the ideal methods, if they are ideal, held by his contemporaries; and the vision of the combats that he must face at once exalted and exasperated him. His pessimism was of the élite, or rather the minority of one who feels himself, or at least believes himself to be, superior, and who, knowing well that he will always be in the minority, fears, and rightly too, that he will not be recognised. It is a form of pessimism less rare in our day than one would think, and Taine, among others, said practically the same thing when he averred that “one writes only for one or two hundred people in Europe, or in the world.” It may be that this is too individual a case! A more liberal estimate would be that we write for all those who can comprehend us; that style has for its first object the increase of such a number; and, after that, if there still be those who cannot comprehend us, no reason for despair exists on our part or on theirs.

Let us follow, now, the consequences of this principle in Flaubert’s work, and see successively all that his work means, and the dogma of art which proceeds from it.

At first you are tempted to believe that Flaubert’s work is diverse, though inconsiderable in volume; and, primarily do not see clearly the threads which unite the Education Sentimentale with the Tentation de Saint Antoine or Salammbô with Madame Bovary.

On the one side Christian Egypt, and on the other the France of 1848, Madame Arnoux, Rosanette, and Frederick Moreau, the Orleanist carnival, and the “underwood” of Fontainebleau. Here, Carthage, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Narr’ Havas, the Numidian hero, and Spendius, the Greek slave, the lions in bondage, the pomegranate trees which they sprinkled with silphium, the whole a strange and barbaric world; then Charles Bovary, the chemist Homais, his son Napoleon and his daughter Athalie, provincial life in the time of the Second Empire; bourgeois adultery, diligences and notaries’ clerks. Then again Herodias, Salome, Saint Jean-Baptiste, or Saint Julien l’Hospitalier, the middle ages and antiquity,—all, at first sight, seem far removed, one from the other. At first one must admire, in such a contrast of subjects and colors, the extraordinary skill, let us say the virtuosité, of the artist. But, if we look more closely, we shall not be slow to perceive that no work is more homogeneous than that of Flaubert, and that, in truth, the Education Sentimentale differs from Salammbô only as a Kermesse of Rubens, for example, or a Bacchante of Poussin differs from the apotheoses or the Church pictures of the painters themselves. The making is the same, and you immediately recognise the hand. The difference is in the choice of subjects, which is of no importance, since Flaubert is only attempting to “represent” something, and in the choice of material, when he is “representing,” he is no longer free. That is the reason why, if one seek for lessons in “naturalism” in Salammbô, he will find them, and will also find all the “romanticism” he seeks in the Education Sentimentale and in Madame Bovary.

From the other lessons that flow from this work, I find some in rhetoric, in art, in invention, in composition, and two or three of great import, eloquent in their bearing upon the history of contemporary French literature.

A master does not mingle or engage his personality in his subject; but, as a God creates from the height of his serenity, without passion, if without love, so the poet or the artist expands the thing he touches, and, on each occasion, brings to bear upon it all the faculties that are his by toil but not innate. Nothing is demanded of the workers, and they make no confessions or confidences. Literature and art are not, nor should be, the expression of men’s emotions, and still less the history of their lives. That is the reason why, while from reading René, for example, or Fraziella, Delphine, Corinne, Adolphe, Indiana, Volupté, or some of the romances of Balzac—La Muse du Departement, or Un Grand Homme de Province à Paris,—you could induct Balzac’s entire psychology, or Sainte-Beuve’s, or Madame Sand’s, Benjamin Constant’s, Madame de Staël’s or Chateaubriand’s, you would find in Madame Bovary or Salammbô nothing of Flaubert, except his temperament, his taste, and his ideals as an artist. Let us suppose another Flaubert, who did not live at Rouen, whose life is not that related in his correspondence, who was not the friend of Maxime Ducamp or of Louise Colet, and the Education Sentimentale or the Tentation de Saint Antoine would not be in the least different from what they are now, nor should we see one line of change to be made. This is a triumph in objective art. “I do not wish to consider art as an overflow of passion,” he wrote once, a little brutally. “I love my little niece as if she were my daughter, and I am sufficiently active in her behalf to prove that these are not empty phrases. But may I be flayed alive rather than exploit that kind of thing in style!” It has been but a short hundred years since, as he expressed it, romanticism “exploited its emotions in style,” and made art from the heart.

“Ah! strike upon the heart, ’tis there that genius lies!” But, for a whole generation, Madame Bovary, Salammbô and Education Sentimentale have been teaching the contrary. “The author in his work should be like God in the universe, everywhere present but nowhere visible. Art being second nature, the creator of this nature should act through analogous procedure. He must be felt in each atom, under every aspect, concealed but infinite; the effect upon the spectator should be a kind of amazement.” Furthermore, he remarks that this principle was the core of Greek art. I know not, or at least I do not recall, whether he had observed (as he should, since Anglo-Saxons have been quick to notice it) that this “principle” underlies the art of Shakespeare.

To realize this principle in work you must proceed scientifically, and, in this connection, we may notice that Flaubert’s idea is that of Leconte de Lisle in the preface to his Poèmes Antiques, and of Taine in his lectures upon L’Idéal dans l’art.

Romanticism had confounded the picturesque with the anecdotal; character with accident; colour with oddity. Han d’Islande, Notre-Dame de Paris and some romances of Balzac, the first and poorest, not signed with his name, may serve as an example. The classic writers on their side, had not always distinguished very profoundly the difference between the general and the universal, the principal and the accessory, the permanent and the superficial. We see this in the French comedies of the eighteenth century, even in some of Molière’s—in his L’Avare and his Le Misanthrope, for example. Flaubert believed that a means of terminating this conflict is to be found in method; and that is the reason why, if we confine ourselves wholly to the consideration of the medium in his works, we shall find the Tentation de Saint Antoine entirely romantic; while, as a retaliation, nothing is more classic than Madame Bovary.

The reason for this is, that in his subject, whatever it was, Carthaginian or low Norman, refined or bourgeois, modern or antique, he saw only the subject itself, with the eyes and after the manner of a naturalist, who is concerned only in knowing thoroughly the plant or the animal under observation. There is no sentiment in botany or in chemistry, and in them the desideratum is truth. Singleness of aim is the primary virtue in a savant. Things are what they are, and we demand of him that he show them to us as they are. We accuse him of lying if he disguises, weakens, alters or embellishes them.

Likewise the artist! His function is ever to “represent;” and in order to accomplish this, he should, like the savant, mirror only the facts. After this, what do the names “romanticism” or “classicism” signify? Their sole use is to indicate the side taken; they are, so to speak, an acknowledgment that the writer is adorning the occurrence he is about to represent. He may make it more universal or more characteristic than nature! But, inversely, if all art is concentrated upon the representation, what matters the subject? Is one animal or plant more interesting than another to the naturalist? Does a name matter? All demand the same attention. Art can make exception in its subjects no more than science.

If we ask in what consists the difference between science and art, on this basis, Flaubert, with Leconte de Lisle and with Taine, will tell us that it is in the beauty which communicates prestige to the work, or in the power of form.

“What I have just written might be taken for something of Paul de Kock’s, had I not given it a profoundly literary form,” wrote Flaubert, while he was at work on Madame Bovary; “but how, out of trivial dialogue, produce style? Yet it is absolutely necessary! It must be done!” He went further still, and persuaded himself that style had a value in itself, intrinsic and absolute, aside from the subject. In fact, if the subject had no importance of its own, and if there were no personal motives for choosing one subject rather than another, what reason would there be for writing Madame Bovary or Salammbô? One alone: and that to “make something out of nothing,” to produce a work of art from things of no import. For though everyone has some ideas, and everyone has had experience in some kind of life, it is given to few to be able to express their experience or their ideas in terms of beauty. This, precisely, is the goal of art.