French novelist Gustave Flaubert created a sensation with his very first novel, Madame Bovary, published in 1857. Clinical in tone, it related the life and death of an adulteress in unsparing detail. Flaubert was tried for immorality (and eventually) acquitted. He can also claim to have changed the course of literature.
He was born in 1821, the son of a doctor. As a child, he became enthralled by Romanticism (which he later disowned) and wrote plays that were performed on the family dinner table. His parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but he was able to devote himself entirely to literature after suffering an epileptic attack when he was 25.
Although he cultivated an image of a misanthropic hermit who lived with his mother, Flaubert maintained several passionate relationships and was widely traveled. His love letters to Louise Colet are some of the greatest of the genre. With friends, he embarked on a three-month walking tour of Brittany. In 1849, he toured the Middle East, where he indulged his appetite for antiquity and sexual adventures with both sexes.
Flaubert spent five years writing Bovary, most of it in search of what he called “le mot juste” (the right word). Flaubert was a meticulous writer. He wrote like doctors operate. One false move--or in his case, “mot”--could spell disaster. “Nowhere in my book must the author express his emotions or his opinions,” he said. Instead, Flaubert achieved his effects through a relentless accumulation of detail.
This led to Flaubert being called a "realist." But although he inspired the works of fellow realists like Guy de Maupassant and Emile Zola, he also had a flair for the fantastic. Salaambo (1862) is set in Ancient Carthage, and includes some delicious descriptions. Dig this treasure trove:
“I have nothing to keep me going but a sort of permanent rage, which weeps at times from impotence, but which is constant,” he said, sounding a bit like a 19th Century Trent Reznor. “To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”
As well as revolting against Romanticism, Flaubert also despised the bourgeoisie (middle classes) that prospered in France during the 19th century. (He was particularly annoyed when they installed Napoleon III as emperor, although that didn’t stop the shameless social climber from befriending a princess who was a fan.) Both religion and the Enlightenment which inspired our own founding fathers were pretty far down on the list, too. Flaubert was a bit of a snob.
He had his share of disappointments. Everything that followed Bovary was measured against it. His one attempt at being a dramatist provoked the inevitable riot. His niece’s profligate husband bankrupted him. His last book, Bouvard et Pecuchet, was a kind of encyclopedia of stupidity that baffled most everyone who read what he had finished before his death in 1880.
His final legacy was Three Tales, published in 1877, from which “A Simple Heart” is taken. He wrote “A Simple Heart” for his friend George Sand after her son had died. “"I want to move,” he said, “to bring tears to the tender-hearted; I am tender-hearted myself." Did he succeed? Is that what this most contrary of writers really wanted? That’s for you to answer.
He was born in 1821, the son of a doctor. As a child, he became enthralled by Romanticism (which he later disowned) and wrote plays that were performed on the family dinner table. His parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but he was able to devote himself entirely to literature after suffering an epileptic attack when he was 25.
Although he cultivated an image of a misanthropic hermit who lived with his mother, Flaubert maintained several passionate relationships and was widely traveled. His love letters to Louise Colet are some of the greatest of the genre. With friends, he embarked on a three-month walking tour of Brittany. In 1849, he toured the Middle East, where he indulged his appetite for antiquity and sexual adventures with both sexes.
Flaubert spent five years writing Bovary, most of it in search of what he called “le mot juste” (the right word). Flaubert was a meticulous writer. He wrote like doctors operate. One false move--or in his case, “mot”--could spell disaster. “Nowhere in my book must the author express his emotions or his opinions,” he said. Instead, Flaubert achieved his effects through a relentless accumulation of detail.
This led to Flaubert being called a "realist." But although he inspired the works of fellow realists like Guy de Maupassant and Emile Zola, he also had a flair for the fantastic. Salaambo (1862) is set in Ancient Carthage, and includes some delicious descriptions. Dig this treasure trove:
“There were callaides shot away from the mountains with slings, carbuncles formed by the urine of the lynx, glossopetrae which had fallen from the moon, tyanos, diamonds, sandastra, beryls, with the three kinds of rubies, the four kinds of sapphires, and the twelve kinds of emeralds.”Could Flaubert name the twelve kinds of emeralds? Probably. For him, each novel began with scrupulous research. He was enthralled by reading (like his heroine Madame Bovary, of whom he once said, “Bovary, c’est moi.”). And he cultivated art as a fortification against what he called the stupidity of the world.
“I have nothing to keep me going but a sort of permanent rage, which weeps at times from impotence, but which is constant,” he said, sounding a bit like a 19th Century Trent Reznor. “To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”
As well as revolting against Romanticism, Flaubert also despised the bourgeoisie (middle classes) that prospered in France during the 19th century. (He was particularly annoyed when they installed Napoleon III as emperor, although that didn’t stop the shameless social climber from befriending a princess who was a fan.) Both religion and the Enlightenment which inspired our own founding fathers were pretty far down on the list, too. Flaubert was a bit of a snob.
He had his share of disappointments. Everything that followed Bovary was measured against it. His one attempt at being a dramatist provoked the inevitable riot. His niece’s profligate husband bankrupted him. His last book, Bouvard et Pecuchet, was a kind of encyclopedia of stupidity that baffled most everyone who read what he had finished before his death in 1880.
His final legacy was Three Tales, published in 1877, from which “A Simple Heart” is taken. He wrote “A Simple Heart” for his friend George Sand after her son had died. “"I want to move,” he said, “to bring tears to the tender-hearted; I am tender-hearted myself." Did he succeed? Is that what this most contrary of writers really wanted? That’s for you to answer.
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