The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters | Page 7

farther than that towards wiping out the distinction
between Flaubert's "romantic" and his "realistic" works; and by the
same stroke what is illusory in the pretensions of the realists, namely,
their aspiration to an "impersonal art."
If we were seeking to prove that an author can put NOTHING BUT
HIMSELF into his art, we should ask for no more impressive illustions
than precisely, Madame Bovary and Salammbo. These two
masterpieces disclose to reflection, no less patently than the works of
George Sand, their purpose and their meaning. And that purpose and
meaning are not a whit less personal to Flaubert than the purpose and
meaning of Indiana, let us say, are personal to George Sand. The
"meaning" of Madame Bovary and Salammbo is, broadly speaking,
Flaubert's sense of the significance--or, rather, of the insignificance--of
human life; and the "purpose" of the books is to express it. The most
lyrical of idealists can do no more to reveal herself.

The demonstration afforded by a comparison of Salammbo and
Madame Bovary is particularly striking because the subject-matters are
superficially so unlike. But take any characteristic series of pictures or
incidents from Salammbo: take the passing of the children through the
fire to Moloch, or the description of the leprous Hanno, or the physical
surrender of the priestess to her country's enemy, or the following
picture of the crucified lion:
"They were marching through a wide defile, hedged in by two chains of
reddish hillocks, when a nauseous odor struck their nostrils, and they
believed that they saw something extraordinary at the top of a carob
tree; a lion's head stood up above the foliage.
"Running towards it, they found a lion attached to a cross by its four
limbs, like a criminal; his enormous muzzle hung to his breast, and his
forepaws, half concealed beneath the abundance of his mane, were
widely spread apart, like a bird's wings in flight; under the tightly
drawn skin, his ribs severally protruded and his hind legs were nailed
together, but were slightly drawn up; black blood had trickled through
the hairs, and collected in stalactites at the end of his tail, which hung
straight down the length of the cross. The soldiers crowded around the
beast, diverting themselves by calling him 'Consul!' and 'Citizen of
Rome!' and threw pebbles into his eyes to scatter the swarming gnats."
And now take any characteristic series of pictures or incidents from
Madame Bovary: take Bovary's bungling and gruesome operations on
the club-footed ostler's leg, with the entire village clustering agape;
take the picture of the eyeless, idiotic beggar on the road to Rouen; or
the scene in which Emma offers herself for three thousand francs to
Rodolphe; or the following bit, only a bit, from the detailed account of
the heroine's last hours, after the arsenical poisoning:
"Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her
mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of
her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind
of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to
disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders
had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her knees, and
then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Charles that infinite
masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her.
"The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the

river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Monsieur
Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily and Homais' pen
was scratching over the paper."
In these two detached pictures--the one from a so-called "romantic," the
other from a so-called "realistic" book--one readily observes the
likeness in the subjects, which are of a ghastly repulsiveness; the same
minuteness of observation--e.g., the lion's hind legs "slightly drawn
up," the woman's thumbs "bent into the palms of her hands"; the same
careful notation of effect on the several senses; the same rhetorical
heightening--e.g., the "stalactites at the end of his tail," the web in the
woman's eyes "as if spiders had spun it over"; and finally, that
celebrated detachment, that air as of a medical examiner, recording the
results of an autopsy. What can we know of such an author? All, or
nearly all, that he knew of himself, provided we will searchingly ask
ourselves what sort of mind is steadily attracted to the painting of such
pictures, to the representation of such incidents, and what sort of mind
expresses a lifetime of brooding on the significance of life in two such
books as Madame Bovary and Salammbo.
At its first appearance, Madame Bovary was prosecuted, though
unsuccessfully, as offensive to public morals.