F is for Flaubert

                                     F is for Flaubert

The son of a physician, Flaubert (1821 – 1880) was hyper-aware of the skull beneath the skin. Among his five well-crafted novels, Madame Bovary is the best known. Flaubert kept a diary of human follies, which he saw as rampant among the middle class; his novel Bouvard and Pécuchet recounts the commission of folly after folly by two hapless adventurers. There is plenty of folly in Madame Bovary too, but with a difference: Flaubert strongly identified with Emma Bovary, the novel's main character, and famously stated, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." ("I am Madame Bovary.")

A writer's writer (as well as a reader's writer), Flaubert became France's preeminent Realist as a result of his precision, that is, his emphasis on using "le mot juste" ("just the right word"). Flaubert's realism extended well beyond verbal verisimilitude, however. In Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education, Flaubert captured the spirit of his time, putting a new twist on middle class aspirations. Flaubert saw these aspirations in retrospect, colored by disillusionment and philosophical pessimism. Perhaps in keeping with his characters' ultimate mood of disillusionment, Flaubert is a master of irony. Readers can enjoy the author's wit, and the irony inherent in many situations he depicts, as an effective way of keeping the human suffering he exposes comfortably at bay.   

              Following is an oft-quoted passage in French and English.
         

“Mais c’était surtout aux heures des repas qu’elle n’en pouvait plus, dans cette petite salle au rez-de-chaussée, avec le poêle qui fumait, la porte qui criait, les murs qui suintaient, les pavés humides ; toute l’amertume de l’existence, lui semblait servie sur son assiette, et, à la fumée du bouilli, il montait du fond de son âme comme d’autres bouffées d’affadissement. Charles était long à manger; elle grignotait quelques noisettes, ou bien, appuyée du coude, s’amusait, avec la pointe de son couteau, à faire des raies sur la toile cirée.” 

“But it was at meal-times that life seemed especially unbearable, down there in that little ground-floor dining-room with its smoking stove, its creaking door, its sweating walls, and its damp floors. It seemed as though all the bitterness of existence was served up to her on her plate and that with the fumes of the stew there rose up from her inmost being all manner of other sickly exhalations. Charles was a slow eater; she would nibble a few nuts or, leaning on her elbow, beguile the time by making little lines on the shiny table-cover with the point of her knife.”

–– Madame Bovary