Memoirs of a Madman and November

by Gustave Flaubert

  He was a man who inclined to pretentiousness and rambling speeches, in which he indulged in an excessive use of epithets.

  Surveyed from these heights, the earth vanishes, as do all the prizes for which people struggle on its surface. There are also sufferings from the heights of which a person seems to be nothing and yet despises everything else; when these sufferings don’t kill you, suicide alone can deliver you from them. He did not kill himself, but went on living.

  Carnival time came; he took no pleasure in it. He did everything at the wrong time; funerals almost aroused his merriment, and the theatre made him feel gloomy; he kept imagining that there was a throng of elegantly attired skeletons, with their gloves, their muffs and their feather hats, leaning out of their boxes, gazing at each other through their opera glasses, putting on airs and graces, and staring at each other with empty eyes; in the pit he saw, gleaming under the light of the candelabras, a throng of white skulls packed closely together. He heard men rush down the stairs, laughing; they were going off with women.

  A memory from his youth flashed through his head; he thought of X—, that village to which he had one day walked, and which he himself describes in what you have just read; he wished to see it again before he died, as he felt his strength ebbing. He put money in his pocket, picked up his coat and set off straight away. The last days of carnival, that year, had fallen at the start of February; it was still very chilly, the roads were frozen, the carriage bowled along; he sat in the coupé, not sleeping, but enjoying the sensation of being swept along to that sea that he would gaze on again; he watched the postilion’s reins, lit up by the lantern on the roof, as they swayed in the air and flicked on the steaming cruppers of the horses; the sky was pure and the stars were shining as on the finest summer nights.

  Around ten o’clock in the morning, he got off at Y— and from there made his way on foot to X—; he walked quickly, this time – indeed, he ran along to keep warm. The ditches were filled with ice, the trees, still bare, were red at the tips of their branches, the fallen leaves, that had rotted in the rain, formed a great black-and-steel-grey layer, which covered the foot of the forest trees. The sky was a hazy white, and sunless. He noticed that the road signs had been overturned; at one place they had been felling wood since he had last passed that way. He hurried along, in haste to arrive. Finally the terrain started to slope downwards; at this point he took a familiar path across the fields, and soon he saw, in the distance, the sea. He stopped; he could hear it beating against the shore and roaring on the horizon, in altum; he could smell a salty tang, wafted to him on the cold winter breeze; his heart beat faster.

  A new house had been built at the entrance to the village, and two or three others had been demolished.

  The boats were out at sea, the quay was deserted, everyone was staying at home; long icicles, which the children call the kings’ candles, were hanging from the eaves and gutters, the shop signs of the grocer and the tavern-keeper creaked and groaned on their iron supports, the sea was rising and sweeping in over the pebbles, with a noise of chains and sobs.

  After he had breakfasted (and he was surprised not to be hungry), he went for a walk along the beach. The wind was singing through the air, the slender rushes growing in the dunes were whistling as they furiously tossed and swayed, flecks of foam flew from the shore and blew in over the sand, and sometimes a gust of wind would carry them up into the clouds.

  Night came – or rather that long twilight that precedes it on the gloomiest days of the year; thick snowflakes fell from the sky and melted into the waves, but they lingered for a long time on the beach, spattering it with great silver tears.

  He saw, in one place, an old boat half-buried in the sand; it might have foundered there twenty years previously. Sea fennel had grown in it, and polyps and mussels clung to its green, decaying planks; he loved this boat, and walked right round it, touching it in different places, and gazed at it with a singular intensity, the way one gazes at a corpse.

  A hundred paces further on, there was a little place in the hollow of a rock, where he had often gone to sit and spend hour after wonderful hour doing nothing – he would take a book and not read it, he would settle down there all by himself, lying on his back, to gaze at the blue of the sky between the white walls of the vertical rocks; it was here that he had dreamt his sweetest dreams, it was here that he had most enjoyed listening to the mew of the gulls, and the sea wrack had dangled down and shaken over him the pearls of its hair; it was here that he saw the ships’ sails dip beneath the horizon, and the sun, for him, had been warmer here than in any other place on earth.

  He went back and there it was; but others had taken possession of it, since, as he mechanically rooted around in the ground with his foot, he unearthed a broken bottle and a knife. People had had a party here, no doubt; they’d come here with ladies, they’d had a picnic, they’d been laughing and joking. “Oh God,” he said to himself, “isn’t there anywhere on earth that we have loved enough, and where we have lived enough, for it to belong to us until we die, and that nobody else can ever set eye on?”

  So he made his way back up the ravine, where he had so often kicked the stones down; sometimes indeed he had deliberately flung them down, to hear them bash against the walls of the rocks and rouse a solitary echo in response. On the plateau overlooking the cliff, the air became sharper, he saw the moon rising opposite, in a patch of blue, dark sky; under the moon, on the left, there was a little star.

  He was weeping – was it from cold or sadness? His heart was bursting, he needed to talk to someone. He went into a tavern, where he had sometimes gone for a beer, and asked for a cigar; he could not refrain from saying to the young woman serving him, “I’ve been here before.” She replied, “Oh! But it’s not in season now, m’sieur, it’s not in season,” and she gave him his change.

  That evening he wanted to go out again; he went to lie in a hollow used by hunters to shoot wild ducks. He saw for a moment the image of the moon floating up and down on the waves and twisting on the sea’s surface, like a great serpent; then on every side of the sky, the clouds piled up again, and everything went black. In the darkness, dim waves rose and fell, overtaking one another and booming like a hundred cannon; a sort of rhythm turned this noise into a terrible melody, and the shore, shaking under the crash of the waves, replied to the echoing full tide.

  He reflected for a moment whether it wouldn’t be better to make an end of it; no one would see him, there would be no one to rescue him, in three minutes he would be dead. But then, thanks to a complete change-around that is common at such moments, life seemed to smile on him again, his existence in Paris struck him as attractive, with a great future ahead; he saw his good old work room, and all the tranquil days he would still be able to spend there. And yet, the voices of the abyss were calling to him, the waves were opening like a grave, ready to close over him at once and envelop him in their liquid folds…

  He felt afraid and went back to his lodgings; all night long he heard the wind whistling, and it filled him with terror; he lit a huge fire and warmed himself up, positively roasting his legs.

  He had reached his journey’s end. Back home, he found his windows white with hoar frost, in the fireplace the coal had gone out, his clothes were still on the bed just where he had left them, the ink had dried in the inkwell, and the walls were cold and dripping.

  He said to himself, “Why didn’t I stay back there?” and he thought bitterly of the joy with which he had set out.

  Summer returned, and it made him no happier. Sometimes, however, he would go out to the Pont des Arts, and watch the trees in the Tuileries swaying, and the rays of the setting sun lighting the sky crimson, passing through the Arc de Triomphe as through a rainbow.

  Finally, last December, he died, but slowly, little by little, by mere dint of thinking, without any organ being affected, the way one dies of sadness – which will appear rather difficult to people who have suffered a great deal; but you have to put up w
ith it in a novel, for love of the marvellous.

  He recommended that they carry out an autopsy as he was afraid of being buried alive; but he strictly forbade them to embalm him.

  – 25th October 1842

  Note on the Texts

  This translation is based on the texts found in the Pléiade edition of Flaubert’s Œuvres complètes, vol. I, ed. by Claudine Gothot-Mersch and Guy Sagnes (Paris: Gallimard, 2001).

  Notes

  p. 9, earth: Where this translation reads “earth” in the phrase “to that earth of ice”, there is a word missing in Flaubert’s original text.

  p. 12, houris: Houris are the virgins of the Muslim paradise, promised as wives to true believers in the Koran. Here, simply, a beautiful woman.

  p. 17, I devoured… aflame with enthusiasm: Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) and The Giaour (1813), like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, feature melancholy, alienated or lovelorn young protagonists.

  p. 30, how right Molière was to compare her to a bowl of soup: Molière makes this comparison in Act II, Sc. 3 of his L’École des femmes (1662).

  p. 41, Antony: Antony is the name of a typically romantic hero, and the protagonist of the 1831 play of the same name by Alexandre Dumas père (1802–70).

  p. 41, as Marot says… fresh and bright: Clément Marot (1496–1544) was a French poet who enjoyed great popularity in the sixteenth century. This quotation is taken from the first two lines of his epigram 104, entitled ‘Du beau tétin’.

  p. 45, Lovelace: Lovelace is the handsome, dashing rake in Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novel, Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady (1748). Lovelace initially courts Arabella Harlowe, but later transfers his affections to her younger sister, Clarissa. The comparison enhances the notion of Flaubert’s madman as prematurely jaded roué.

  p. 51, Carlists: Carlism was a Spanish counter-revolutionary movement originating in support of Don Carlos, the brother of King Fernando VII. It was adopted in France to describe the supporters of the reactionary French King, Charles X, who derived much of his support from the traditionalist Catholic clergy.

  p. 65, Barcelona: It is uncertain how much Flaubert knew about Barcelona at the time of his writing ‘Bibliomania’. His “Place Royale” certainly has an equivalent in the Plaça Reial, but his “barrière des Arabes” or “Gate of Arabs” is more problematic. He might have the Catalan barrì (“district”) in mind, but unlike other Spanish cities, Barcelona has no Moorish Quarter.

  p. 65, Hoffmann: E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) was a German novelist and music critic, whose tales, in particular, are famed for their grotesque and bizarre elements.

  p. 68, Chronicle of Turpin: The Chronique de Turpin is a book that does exist, and, in 1835, a new edition reproducing the text of 1527 was published in Paris. It is not known whether Flaubert knew of the work when writing this story.

  p. 79, to indulge… Montaigne: Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) was one of Flaubert’s favourite authors. This quotation is from the Essays, Book II, Chapter 3, where Montaigne writes, “If to philosophize is to doubt, as they say, then to indulge in foolery and fantastication – as I do – must be an even better way of doubting.”

  p. 95, the sorrow of René… strong enough for anything: René was the hero of Chateaubriand’s story of the same name (first published separately in 1805). A gloomy young man who ended his days among the Indians of North America, René epitomized romantic world-weariness; Werther, the hero of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), suffered from unrequited love and committed suicide.

  p. 102, a dreadful deity… over their bellies: A reference to the Juggernaut, the image of the god Krishna that was carried on an enormous cart under whose wheels his devotees are said to have thrown themselves.

  p. 140, Paul and Virginie… Catherine II: Paul et Virginie (one of Emma Bovary’s favourite novels), by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), was first published separately in 1789; it is set on an idyllically described island of Mauritius, and Paul and Virginie, who are brought up there together almost as brother and sister, fall in love. Les Crimes des reines de France depuis le commencement de la monarchie jusqu’à Marie-Antoinette, was published anonymously in 1791 and details the crimes of queens: Messalina (17–48 AD) was the debauched wife of the Roman emperor Claudius; Theodora (c.500–48) the lascivious consort of the Byzantine emperor Justinian; Marguerite of Burgundy (1290–1315) the allegedly adulterous wife of King Louis, who had her strangled; Mary Stuart (1542–87) the somewhat fickle Queen of Scots, who may have connived in the murder of her husband Lord Darnley; and Catherine II (the Great) (1729–96), Empress of Russia and also rather free with her favours. The two works are presumably being used by Flaubert to foreground the themes of feminine innocence (Virginie is so modest that she drowns at sea, refusing to allow a sailor to carry her to shore since it will mean taking off her clothes) versus feminine experience.

  p. 165, André Chénier… Talma than Napoleon: André Chénier (1762–94), often considered the best French poet of the eighteenth century, was guillotined during the Terror. François-Joseph Talma (1763–1826) was a great tragic actor admired by, among others, Napoleon.

  Extra Material

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  Gustave Flaubert’s

  Memoirs of a Madman

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  November

  Gustave Flaubert’s Life

  Gustave Flaubert was born on 12th December 1821, in Rouen, one of the most thriving industrial and cultural centres of France, and the administrative capital of Normandy. His father, Achille-Cléophas, was director and senior doctor of the Hôtel-Dieu, the major hospital of the city, where he and his family occupied a wing provided for the residential use of senior staff. Flaubert was born here, as his brother – also named Achille – had been almost nine years previously, and his sister Caroline would be two and a half years later. Flaubert always had a protective and loving relationship towards Caroline, and he was devastated when she died at the age of twenty-one. In addition, there had been a sister who died in infancy in 1818 and a brother who died aged eight months in 1819, as well as a further brother who was born in 1819 but died in 1822, just a few months after Flaubert’s birth. Achille the son later succeeded his father as director and senior doctor of the Hôtel-Dieu.

  Achille-Cléophas Flaubert and his wife, Anne-Justine (née Fleuriot), had throughout their married life made numerous astute purchases of land in the surrounding region. This land was let out to tenant farmers, so that, by the time their children were born, Flaubert’s parents were among the most wealthy and respected families of the entire district.

  Flaubert recounts in some of his adult letters how his parents – perhaps believing that he too would become a doctor – made no attempt to prevent him or Caroline from roaming through the hospital and watching patients who were severely ill, or even from entering the morgue and being present at the dissection of corpses. Furthermore, Flaubert was taken to visit the local mental asylum at the age of six or seven, and recalls later seeing the lunatics chained to the wall, screaming and tearing at their naked flesh. He wrote: “These are good impressions to have when young: they make a man of you.” One wonders whether he was being ironical. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his massive unfinished study of the novelist, tries to prove that Flaubert did indeed have all kinds of psychological problems dating from his childhood.

  Flaubert claims to have been very late in learning to read, something that apparently caused severe concern to his family. He was already, however, prone to thinking deeply, making up tales and listening to elderly neighbours reading stories aloud, including Don Quixote in French translation. He also loved attending the theatre with his parents. However, when he finally did overcome this apparent mental resistance to reading, around the age of eight or nine, he began to devour literature, and also to write letters which already displayed a facility for observation and literary expression; from that moment on he would dispatch thousands of mi
ssives to friends, and these reveal his innermost thoughts on life, philosophy, the purpose of culture and the art of writing. By the age of ten he was already creating dramatic sketches, which he, Caroline and his friends would put on at a makeshift theatre in their hospital residence.

  Just after his tenth birthday, Flaubert was sent to be a boarding pupil at the local Collège Royal, a fee-paying grammar school – it was the custom for children of the educated classes to board at these institutions, even if their home was very near. He remained there till just past his eighteenth birthday, frequently winning prizes for such subjects as French grammar, translation into Latin, geography, history, philosophy and overall excellence in his studies. His schoolmates were enthusiastic readers of the latest French Romantic writers, principally Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine, Musset and Vigny – all supporters of social and political reform, making the school a hotbed of agitation as these young men tried to emulate their heroes. In addition, during the later years of Flaubert’s schooling, Balzac began to produce the first volumes of his vast series of realist novels and stories, and Flaubert voraciously consumed these too. He also loved Shakespeare, Homer and Cervantes, admiring what he saw as their objectivity, their ability to cover the whole of human life without passing judgement on any character or taking sides on any issue.