It almost seems as if, in our day, the time were past when the novelist
would sit calmly down before a large sheet of white paper some fine
day, and, without further preparation, begin the execution of his work
of fiction.
Flaubert, at all events, has introduced a method which places poetic
production very nearly on a scientific basis. It was his wont to pass
whole weeks in the libraries, that he; might gain light on some single
point in his subject; and he would devote hours to a careful study
of a mass of engravings, in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of
the costumes or bearing of a former generation. In the course of his
preparatory studies for "Salammbô," he read ninety-eight volumes of
ancient and modern literature, and undertook, besides, a journey to
Tunis, in view of studying the landscapes and monuments of ancient
Carthage. Indeed, even in order to paint phantastic landscapes, such as
those in "La Légende de St. Julien," he visited regions calculated to
give him an impression similar to that of which he had dreamed.
As soon as he had sketched the plan for a book, he began to seek
reliable facts for each separate chapter; each had its own individual
outline, which must be gradually filled in. He read through the entire
collection of the "Charivari" from the time of Louis Philippe to the
latest date, in order to supply the literary Bohemian, Hussonet, in
"L'éducation sentimentale," with witticisms in the style of his period.
He made a study of not less than one hundred and seven works, in order
to be able to write the thirty pages on agriculture in "Bouvard et
Pécuchet." His excerpts for this last novel, if printed, would fill no
less than five octavo volumes.
During all these preliminary studies he apparently lost sight, for
a time, of his novel, and merely kept in view the desire to increase
his knowledge. His fondness for accumulating information was almost as
intense as that for fashioning the psychic contents of his work, or
rather it gradually became so.
If we take a survey of his productions, in chronologic order, we shall
find an ever plainer transfer of the centre of gravity from the poetic
to the scientific element; in other words, from the human, psychologic
element to historic, technical, and scientific externalities, which
fill an unwarranted amount of space. Flaubert was always in danger of
becoming a tedious author, and grew more and more prolix as time went
on.
He was actuated by a belief--in my estimation a correct one--that the
writer of fiction in our day cannot be a mere writer for amusement,
or a _maître de plaisir._ He felt that the ship of poesy, without
scientific ballast, ran great risk of being capsized. It was soon
proved, too, that with this ballast it sailed better, more securely,
and with a prouder bearing. By degrees, however, as his development
progressed, the passion for overcoming difficulties took complete
possession of him; he wanted to carry the heaviest loads, the largest
stones he could find, until gradually his vessel became freighted with
so enormous a cargo that it grew too heavy, sank too far into the
water, and was stranded. His last novel is little else than a wearisome
series of abstracts from a couple of dozen different scientific
discoveries and technical methods. As a work of fiction it is scarcely
readable, and is only interesting psychologically as a consistent and
definite expression of a remarkable personalty and of an erroneous
æsthetic standpoint.
The general tendency to the study of externals is not peculiar to
Flaubert; it characterizes the entire group of creative minds to which
he belongs. It sprang from a justifiable aversion to the rationalistic
conception of man as an abstract rational being, and from the bias
of our age toward determinism, which aimed at explaining the psychic
life of the individual from climatic, national, psychological and
physiological causes. This endeavor is found in various phases in the
most noted of the contemporaries and fellow-countrymen of Flaubert;
in his friend and teacher, Théophile Gautier, in Renan, in Taine, and
in the Goncourt brothers. Different as these minds are, they have
in common this very modern stamp, and, moreover, nearly all of them
possess, also, the no less modern quality of displaying too decidedly
marked traces in their artistically executed works of the labor that
lies behind these and the pains with which they were created, often
producing an extremely distressing impression of being over-freighted.
Renan, to whom this is less applicable than to the others, not
infrequently portrays matters which lie wholly beyond his framework.
Gautier is, perhaps, the only one of these great artists from whose
brain word and image seem to flow without constraint, and even he was
rarely without the dictionary and the encyclopædia in his hand.
With Flaubert the encyclopædia gradually supplants the emotions.
Gautier, as years passed, grew to be less of a poet and more of a
picturesque delineator. Flaubert, with the lapse of years, became ever
more and more of a savant and a collector.
If we cast a glance over his entire literary production, from its first
beginning until its close, we shall find that the human element, which
originally bubbled over and fructified everything, gradually ebbed,
withdrew, and left behind it only the arid, stony soil of historic or
scientific fact.
In "Madame Bovary" all is yet life. The descriptions are infrequent
and brief. Even the description of Rouen, the birthplace of the author,
which occurs in the part where Emma journeys in the diligence from
Yonville to meet Léon, is given in a very few lines, and is, moreover,
enlivened by the account of the dizziness that ascends to Emma from
this throbbing mass of thousands of existences, as though the fumes of
the passions she attributed to them had been wafted toward her. The
direct description of the city, the picturesque point, gives place
at once to the psychologic analysis of the impression the great city
makes upon the main character of the book,--a tendency which becomes
more and more rare with Flaubert. In "Salammbô," the previous study and
all that is purely descriptive must necessarily assert themselves more
vigorously. There are long passages of this work which would be far
more likely to lead us to think we were reading a scrap of the history
of ancient warfare, or some archæologic treatise, than a novel, and
which, therefore, are exceedingly tedious. Nevertheless, "Salammbô" was
rich in purely human themes and delineations. Read, by way of example,
the chapter that tells about how the priests resolve to propitiate
Moloch through the sacrifice of the first-born son of each house; how
some of them knock at the door of Hamilcar, and how he strives to
rescue his little son Hannibal. The state of public sentiment here
represented by Flaubert is precisely what must have existed in a
Tunic city the moment such a wholesale slaughter of the innocents was
commanded, and this single incident stands forth from the background of
this sentiment in a manner never to be forgotten. Hamilcar rushes into
his daughter's room, grasps Hannibal with one hand, and with the other
a cord that is lying on the floor, binds the boy hand and foot, thrusts
what still remains of the cord into his mouth for a gag, and hides him
under the bed. Then he claps his hands, and calls for a slave child of
eight or nine years of age, with black hair and protruding brow. There
is brought to him a poor, wasted, yet at the same time bloated child,
whose skin is as gray as the cloth about its loins. Hamilcar is in
despair. How would it be possible to make this child pass for Hannibal?
But the minutes are precious, and, in spite of his repugnance, the
proud Suffet begins to wash, to rub, and to anoint the wretched
slave child. He attires it in a purple robe, which he fastens at the
shoulders with diamond clasps, and the little fellow laughs, delighted
with all this splendor, and skips about the room with joy. Hamilcar
leads the child away with him. When, with feigned anguish, he is giving
it up to the priests in the court below, there appears, between the
ivory pillars on the third floor of the house, a pale, wretchedly clad,
dreadful looking man, with outstretched arms. "My child!" he cries.
"He is the foster-father of the boy," Hamilcar hastens to say; and, as
though to make the parting brief, he pushes the priests from the door.
When they are gone, he sends the slave the best that his kitchen can
afford,--meat, beans, and conserves. The old man, who for a long time
has not tasted a morsel of food, pounces upon the bounteous supply,
and devours it amid tears. Coming home in the evening, Hamilcar finds
the slave, surfeited and half-intoxicated, lying asleep on the marble
floor of the great hall, through the crevices of whose dome a flood of
moonlight streams. Hamilcar gazes at him, and something akin to pity
stirs within his soul. With the tip of his foot he pushes a rug under
the slumberer's head.
Here is the essence of human universality extracted from a specific
Carthaginian situation.
"Salammbô," as already intimated, created not a little sensation, but
was none the less of a disappointment to the reading world and the
critics. People did not share the author's fondness for colossal and
tropical themes; they did not enjoy wading through long descriptions of
antique catapults, battering-rams and sieges, and they begged Flaubert
to write a new "romance de passion," a love story.
Toward the close of the year 1869, he finally yielded to their
solicitations by issuing his novel "L'éducation sentimentale," his
most characteristic and most profound work, which, however, met with
a decided failure. From this time forth he experienced nothing but
literary defeats. The public favor which had been cooled by "Salammbô,"
now wholly forsook him.
The new novel was a new style of book altogether. The almost
untranslatable title (the approximate meaning being "The education of
the heart") is not a correct one; for no one and nothing is educated
throughout the work. The novel treats, to be sure, of an emotional
life; but it deals rather with the gradual drilling and final
extirpation of the emotion of love than with any development of the
latter. It might more justly be called, "The illusion of love and its
eradication." It is one of Flaubert's main efforts to distil absolute
nothing in the form of pure illusion out of all the aspirations and
pursuits of ordinary, every-day human life. In "Salammbô" everything
revolves about a sacred veil of the goddess Tanit, known as Zaimpf.
This veil is radiant and light; the city from which it is stolen goes
to ruin; the mortal who wears it is invulnerable as long as he is
enveloped in it; but whoever has once been shrouded in it is sure to
perish. Illusion is like this veil. It is as radiant as the sun and as
light as the air; it imparts the security of the somnambulist, and it
consumes as surely as a Nessos robe.
I said that Flaubert believed in a passionate love which, although
never gratified, was capable of enduring throughout life. Such a love
he has depicted in the affection of Frédéric for Madame Arnoux. It is
utterly hopeless; utterly bashful; it is suppressed; it only finds vent
in certain unwise sacrifices for the husband of Madame Arnoux, and in
certain half-uttered Platonic assurances of mutual sympathy. Nor does
it lead to anything beyond a promise that is withdrawn by the lady, a
few attempts which fail, and finally, after the lapse of twenty years,
a fruitless confession and one single embrace, from which the lover
recoils in terror, as the object of his affections has, meanwhile,
grown old, and, with her white hair, inspires him with repugnance.
The peculiarity of this novel, in a still more striking way than in
"Madame Bovary," is that it has no hero, and is quite as devoid of
claims to a heroine. In the antiquated epithet "hero" lies the entire
traditional usage of old-fashioned poesy. For centuries authors had
paraded a hero before the public; he was characterized by his manly
strength and beauty, was grand in his virtues or his vices, and was in
every respect an example to be imitated or shunned. There had at length
arisen a poet who was willing to deal with a young man of the average
type, and who, without expressing either disapproval or regret, showed
how completely null and void was the life of such a young man, and
how disappointments were showered upon him. These were neither great
nor unusual disappointments; to be sure, there was nothing great or
unusual in the young man's experiences,--no, they were all those petty
disappointments that go to make up the sum of existence. A long chain
of petty disappointments, intermingled with a few great ones, is to
Flaubert the definition of human life. The charm of the book, however,
does not rest chiefly on the prevailing sentiment of its pages. Its
main charm to me is the graceful, chaste manner in which the pen is
wielded in passages descriptive of Frédéric's great love. This profound
comprehension of the young man's dreamy devotion denotes personal
experience. Nowhere has Flaubert written more directly from the depths
of his own soul and gained less from the five or six artificial souls
which he, in common with every critically disposed and critically
endowed nature, had the power to give himself.
Frédéric loves without any ulterior thought, without hope of reciprocal
affection, with a feeling that is akin to gratitude, with a positive
need of utter self-renunciation and complete self-sacrifice for the
sake of the object of his devotion, which is all the stronger because
it finds no requital. As the years pass, however, a feeling of a
similar nature develops in the breast of the woman whom he loves. It
is a settled thing between them that they can never belong to each
other; but their tastes, their judgment, is in harmony. "Often one of
them, listening to words of the other, would exclaim: 'I too!' and very
soon the other in turn would also cry: 'I too!' And they dream that
if Providence had so willed, their lives would have been filled with
love alone, 'something as sweet, as glittering, and as sublime as the
twinkling of the stars.'
"The greater part of their time was passed on the veranda in the
open air, while the trees, with their autumnal crowns of glory, were
spread in rich masses before them, gradually sloping up to the pale
horizon; or they sat in a pavilion at the end of the alley, whose sole
article of furniture was a sofa covered with gray linen. Black spots
defiled the mirror; the walls exhaled a mouldy odor; yet the two sat
undisturbed, chatting of themselves, of others, of anything whatsoever,
in a state of mutual rapture. Sometimes the sunbeams, working their way
through the Venetian blinds from the ceiling to the floor, formed the
strings of an enormous lyre."
This lyre, I am quite confident, was the genuine lyre of old, dating
from the days of the troubadours, and the days of Flaubert's youth. At
this point, it actually seems as though Flaubert had wakened it from
its slumbers.
"L'éducation sentimentale" appeared just as the empire was entering
upon the epoch of its last crisis. The book had but a moderate sale.
The press unanimously pronounced it tedious, and, of course, immoral.
The most painful thing of all to Flaubert was the long silence that
followed. The work of seven years seemed lost.
The cause of this was simply that the author had labored too hard. In
order to portray the Paris of the forties, he had studied old pictures
and old plans of the city, had reconstructed vanished streets, and had
searched through several thousand newspapers for references to public
speeches, and descriptions of street life and street fights. It had
been his desire to give an absolutely perfect picture of the times, and
he had made it too elaborate. The historic apparatus is most wearisome
in its effect. Flaubert's hatred of stupidity, as in so many other
instances, had led him too far. Even in his youth it had belonged to
the amusements he and Bouilhet had entered into together, to make as
faithful copies as possible of official speeches, of poems written for
special occasions, such as the dedication of a bell, or the burial of
a monarch, of festival addresses and popular orations of every kind.
Great quantities of such things were found after Bouilhet's death. In
"Madame Bovary" Flaubert had entertained himself by communicating the
entire speech of a _chef de bureau_ at the agricultural exposition,
with its feigned enthusiasm and stylistic naïveté; in this last work
he furnished _in extenso_ and, furthermore, in Spanish, a liberal
speech delivered by a "patriot from Barcelona," in the year 1848, at
an assemblage of the people in Paris. The speech is unsurpassed as an
example of the phraseology of freedom and progress; but both the speech
I and the entire assemblage before whom it is delivered, are out of
place owing to their very slight connection with the main personages
of the book. The picture of the times exceeds its proper limits: here,
as well as in "Salammbô," the pedestal has become too large for the
figure. Flaubert must undoubtedly have felt this himself, for while he
was still at work on "Salammbô" he wrote dejectedly to a friend: "The
study of costumes beguiles us to forget the soul. I would gladly give
the half-ream of paper I have been filling with notes for the past five
months, merely to feel truly moved for three seconds by the passions
of my characters." But he was unable to keep in the background his
descriptions of the surroundings of his theme and the general state
of public sentiment and conditions in the country and period where
the scenes were laid. We feel that his studies follow ever closer and
closer on the tracks of his imagination, precisely as the monster
Maanegarm (the moon-swallower) in Norse mythology pursues the moon, and
the poor moon is continually in danger of being devoured.
The three stories, "A Simple Heart," "The Legend of St. Julian the
Hospitable," and "Herodias" are a triology of master-works: a novel
of the day, a legend of the Middle Ages, and a picture of antiquity.
"Herodias" gives, in the style of "Salammbô," a gloomy, vigorous
portraiture of Palestine in the time of John the Baptist, from which
the inquisitive and gluttonous visage of Vitellius gleams upon the
reader as he gazes into the fading eyes of the decapitated head of
John. "The Legend of St. Julian" is a model of a regeneration of the
spirit of the Middle Ages. No monk has ever written a more genuine
Christian legend than has this freethinker. Nothing can be more
strictly legendary in style than the conclusion about the leprous
beggar who devours Julian's last morsel of bacon and last crumb of
bread, pollutes his plate and cup, and finally not content with
stretching himself upon Julian's couch, demands that Julian shall warm
him with his naked body; When the former prince, in the lowliness of
his heart, humbles himself to do as he is asked, the leper embraces
him with violence, and at the same moment the form of the leper is
transfigured: the eyes become as luminous as the stars, the hair as
long and glittering as the sunbeams, the breath as fragrant as roses.
The roof of the hut flies off, and Julian floats upward in the blue
ether, face to face with the Lord Jesus Christ, who bears him in his
arms to Heaven.
In "A Simple Heart," Flaubert has, so to say, related the history
of the old serving maid to whom the prize was awarded in "Madame
Bovary." It is a touching narrative of an old worn-out maid-servant,
who, forsaken by all, at length bestows the entire love of her heart
upon a parrot. She admires this parrot beyond all else in the world;
it seems to her, in her simplicity, to resemble the Holy Ghost as a
dove in the altar-painting of the village church, and gradually it
comes to occupy in her consciousness the place of the Holy Ghost. The
bird dies and she has it stuffed. In her dying hour, she sees it in
colossal size, with outspread wings, waiting to receive her and bear
her upward into Paradise. This is like a profoundly melancholy parody
on the conclusion of the legend. In one, as in the other, all is vision
and illusion. Owing to the frailty of our nature, our capacity for
being deceived, our need of consolation, and our readiness to sink into
despair,--Flaubert seems to say,--one straw will serve us quite as
well as another in our extremity.
These three stories met with no success whatever. In them study had
made one step forward at the cost of life. They contained scarcely any
conversations, scarcely any isolated remarks; they were rather tables
of contents than novels. People felt that the author had begun to
despise the poetic form proper. Furthermore, they contained too great
a display of erudition. The reader can readily conjecture how many
legends Flaubert must have read in order to reproduce their character
so accurately. But no attempt is made to place the result of this
erudition in perspective before the eyes of the modern reader. Not a
single path is hewn in the primitive forest of the legendary world; it
is a dense thicket, which wholly impedes the free course of the vision.
The story seems rather adapted to the public of the thirteenth century,
or to polished connoisseurs, than to ordinary modern readers.