One usually means by “style,” the fashion in which each individual writer presents his thought. Style would then be different according as the man, brilliant or sombre, abundant or concise, followed his own temperament. Gustave Flaubert thought that the personality of the author should disappear in the originality of the book, and that the originality of the book should not come from the singularity of style.
For he did not consider “styles” as a series of moulds each of which carries the particular mark of a writer and in which he runs all of his ideas; but he believed in style, that is to say, in a unique, absolute manner for expressing a thing in all its colour and all its intensity.
For him it was the work itself. Just as among beings, the blood nourishes the flesh and even determines the contour and external appearance, following its race and family, so, for him, the foundation in a work imposed the expression with a fatality, unique and true; also the measure, rhythm, and all the lines of the form.
He did not understand that foundation could exist without form, nor form without foundation. The style, then, became the being, the impersonal being, so to speak; and imprinted only its qualities upon the quality of the thought and the power of vision.
Possessed by the absolute belief that there existed only one way of expressing a thing, one word to use, one adjective to qualify it and one verb to give it life, he gave himself superhuman labor to discoyer, in each phrase, that word, that epithet and that verb. Thus, he believed in a mysterious harmony of expression, and, when a correct term did not seem to him euphonious, he would seek another with an invincible patience, certain that he had not found the true, the unique.
Writing, then, was for him a formidable thing, full of torment, peril and fatigue. He would seat himself at his table with a fear of and a desire for this loved but torturing work. He would remain there for hours, immovable, vexed by his frightful labour, fearful of this colossus, patient and careful as one who would build a pyramid of a child’s marbles.
Sunk in his oak armchair with its high back, his head drawn down between his shoulders, he would look steadily at his paper with his blue eye, whose small pupil seemed like a black dot always in motion. A light cap of silk, such as ecclesiastics wear, covering the top of his head, allowed long locks of hair to escape, which fell down and spread out upon his back. A large dressing-gown, of brown cloth, enveloped him entirely; and his red face, cut by a heavy moustache, white at the drooping ends, appeared swollen under a furious rush of blood. His eyes, shaded by great, sombre brows, ran along the lines, digging out words, overturning phrases, consulting the physiognomy of the assembled letters, spying the effect as a hunter eyes his game.
Then he would begin to write, slowly, stopping often, beginning again, erasing, writing across words, filling the margins, and intervening spaces, blackening twenty pages to finish one, and, under the heavy effort of his thought, whining meantime like a sawyer.
Sometimes, throwing the quill which he held in his hand into a large Oriental tin plate filled with goose-quills carefully sharpened, he would take up the sheet of paper, raise it to a level with his eyes and, leaning upon his elbow, would declaim in a sharp, high voice. He would listen to the rhythm of his prose, stop as if seizing a passing cadence, place the commas with exact knowledge, like the halting-places in a long journey.
“A phrase is likely to live,” he would say, “when it corresponds to all the necessities of respiration. I know that a phrase is good when it can be read very loud.”
“Phrases badly written,” he writes in a preface to the Last Songs of Louis Bouilhet, “will not submit to this test; they oppress the chest, strain the cords of the heart, and are thus found outside the conditions of life.”
A thousand occupations besieged him at the same time, taking possession of him; but that certain attitude of desperation always remained fixed in his mind: “Among all expressions, all turns, all forms, there is but one expression, one turn, one form for expressing what I have to say.”
And with cheek inflated, neck congested, brow reddened, and muscles stretched like those of an athlete in a struggle, he would fight desperately for an idea, for a word, seizing them and coupling them in spite of themselves, holding them together in an indissoluble fashion by the power of his will, grasping the thought and subjugating it little by little, with fatigue and almost superhuman effort, encaging it like a captive beast, in solid and precise form.
From this formidable labour was born for him an extreme respect for literature and for the phrase. The moment that he had constructed a phrase, with so much difficulty and torture, he would not admit that a word of it could be changed. When he read to his friends the story entitled A Simple Soul, they made some remarks and criticisms upon a passage of ten lines, in which the old maid ends by confounding her parrot with the Holy Spirit. The idea would appear too subtle for a peasant’s mind. Flaubert listened, reflected, and recognised that the observation was just. But a sudden anguish seized him: “You are right,” said he, “only — in that case I must change my phrase.”
That same evening, however, he put himself to the task; he passed the night in changing ten words, scratching and erasing twenty sheets of paper and in the end changed nothing, not having been able to construct another phrase whose harmony appeared to satisfy him.
At the beginning of the same story, the last word of a new paragraph, serving for the subject of the next following, could but make place for an ambiguity. This defect was pointed out to him; he recognized it, forced himself to modify the sense, and, not succeeding in producing the cadence that he wished, he cried out discouraged: “So much the worse for the sense; rhythm before everything!”
That question of rhythm in prose sent him forth into passionate dissertations, at times: “In verse,” he would say, “the poet has fixed rules. He has measure, caesura, rhyme, and a quantity of practical indications making a science of the trade. In prose, a profound sentiment of rhythm is necessary, of fugitive rhythm, without rules, without certainty, an inborn quality, and with that a power of reasoning, the artistic sense infinitely more subtle and more keen, in order to change at any instant the movement, the color, the style, to follow the things one wishes to say. When one knows how to handle this fluid thing which is called French prose, when one knows the exact value of words, and when one knows how to modify that value according to the place he gives it, when one knows how to put all the interest of a page to one line, put one idea in relief among a hundred others, and this uniquely by the choice and position of the terms which express it; when one knows how to strike with a word, with a single word placed in a certain fashion, as one strikes with an arm; when one knows how to overturn a soul, to fill it suddenly with joy or fear, enthusiasm, chagrin, or anger, by simply putting an adjective under the eye of the reader, one is truly an artist, the most superior of artists, a true prose-writer.”
He had for the great French writers a frantic admiration. Entire chapters of the masters he knew by heart, and would declaim them in a resounding voice, intoxicated by the prose, giving special sounds to the words, scanning, modulating, singing the phrases. Some clauses fascinated him; he would repeat them a hundred times, always astonished at their exactness, and declaring: “One must be a man of genius to find adjectives like that.”
No one had a greater respect and love for his art, or sentiment for the literary dignity, than Gustave Flaubert. A single passion, love for literature, filled his life, even to his last day. He loved it furiously, in a unique, absolute fashion.
Nearly always, an artist conceals some secret ambition foreign to his art. It is often glory that he pursues, that radiant glory which places us, while we are yet living, in an apotheosis, which turns heads, brings down applause and captivates the hearts of women.
To please the ladies! This is also the desire of nearly all. To be all-powerful through talent, in Paris, in the world, an exceptional being, admired, praised, loved, who can cull at will, almost, these fruits of the living flesh of which w
e are ahungered! To enter, especially where one is preceded by renown, respect and adoration, and see all eyes fixed upon him, and all smiles turned towards himself. It is this that they seek who give themselves up to this strange and difficult trade, this trade of reproducing and interpreting nature by artificial means.
Others have sought money, perhaps for itself, perhaps for the satisfaction it gives: the luxury of existence and the delicacies of the table.
Gustave Flaubert loved letters in an absolute fashion, so absolute that in his soul filled with this love, there was no place for any other ambition.
Never had he any other interest, any other desire; it was almost impossible for him to talk of anything else. His mind, possessed by literary occupations, always returned to them, and he declared useless all those things which interest the people of the world.
He lived alone nearly all the year, worked without respite, without interruption. An indefatigable reader, his repose was in his books, and he possessed an entire library of notes taken from the volumes in which he had dug. Besides, his memory was marvellous; he could recall a chapter, page, or paragraph where he had found a little detail in an unknown work, five or ten years before. He also knew an incalculable number of facts.
The greater part of his life he passed on his estate it Croisset, near Rouen. It was a pretty white house, of ancient style, on the bank of the Seine, in the midst of a magnificent garden which extended back and scaled, by steep roads, the great side of Canteleu. From some of the windows of his large study, could be seen the great ships coming up to Rouen, or going down to the sea, passing so near that they almost seemed to touch the walls with their yards. He loved to watch this mute movement of the vessels gliding along on the great river, going out to all the countries of which one dreams.
Often, leaving his table, he would go and frame his giant chest and his head, which was like one of an ancient Gaul, in one of the windows. On the left, the thousand steeples of Rouen outlined upon space their silhouettes and their carved profiles of stone; a little more to the right, the thousand chimneys of the Saint-Sever manufactories, vomited into the sky their festoons of smoke. The water-tower, as high as the highest of the pyramids of Egypt, looks from the other side of the water at the spire of the cathedral, the highest clock-tower in the world.
Opposite extended green fields where red and white cows were lying down or feeding and, still more to the right, a great forest upon the coast shuts off the horizon where flows the large, calm river, full of tree-covered islands, on its way to the sea, disappearing in the distance in the curve of an immense valley.
He loved this superb, tranquil landscape, which his eyes had looked upon since his infancy. He almost never descended to the garden, having a distaste for moving about. Sometimes, however, when a friend came to see him, he would walk with him along the great avenue of willows planted on the terrace, which seemed made for serious or tender conferences.
He pretended that Pascal had already been in that house, and that he had walked and talked and dreamed with him under those trees.
Three windows of his study opened on the garden and two on the river. The room was large, having no ornaments except books, a few portraits of friends and some souvenirs of his travels. There were the bodies of some little alligators, dried, the foot of a mummy (which a simple-minded domestic had blackened and polished like a boot), some amber beads from the Orient, a gilt Buddha dominating his great work-table and looking both divine and secular out of his motionless, long, yellow eyes; an admirable bust of Caroline Flaubert, Gustave’s sister, who died as a young woman, and on the floor beside a Turkish divan covered with cushions, a magnificent white bear skin.
He would set himself to work at nine or ten o’clock in the morning, stop long enough for breakfast, and immediately take up his labour again. He often slept an hour or two in the afternoon; but he was awake until three or four o’clock in the morning, accomplishing the best part of his task in the calm silence of the night, in the tranquillity of that great apartment, scarcely lighted by the two lamps with green shades. Mariners upon the river made use of “Monsieur Gustave’s” windows for a lighthouse.
There was in the country-side a sort of legend about him. They looked upon him as a brave man, a little queer, whose singular costumes astonished their eyes and their minds.
He was always clothed for work in large trousers, held by a silk cord, à la girdle, and an immense dressing-gown which reached the floor. This garment, which he adopted not for pose, but because of its ample comfort, was made of brown cloth in winter, and in summer of some light stuff having a white ground with bright-colored design. The citizens of Rouen, going to breakfast at the Bouille, on Sunday, returned cheated in their hopes when they could not see from the bridge of the steamboat the original of M. Flaubert’s portrait standing in his high window.
He took pleasure also in looking at the boats full of people. He would put up to his eyes an opera- glass that always lay on the edge of his table or the corner of the chimney-piece, and watch curiously all the faces turned towards him. Their ugliness amused him, their astonishment made him expand; he read the character, temperament, and stupidity of each one from his face.
Much has been said of his hatred of the common citizen, the bourgeois. He made this word bourgeois a synonym for stupidity and defined it thus: “I call anybody who thinks sordidly a bourgeois.” He had, then, nothing against the bourgeois class, but against a particular kind of stupidity that he met most often in that class. He had also perfect scorn for “good people.” But, finding himself less often in contact with the workman than with the people of the world, he suffered less from popular foolishness than from the worldly sort. That ignorance whence comes absolute beliefs, so-called immortal principles, all the conventions, all prejudice, the whole arsenal of commonplace, elegant opinions exasperated him. Instead of smiling, as very many do, at the universal silliness, at the intellectual inferiority of the greater number, he suffered horribly from it. When he went away from a drawing-room where mediocrity of talk had continued for an evening, he was cast down, weakened, as if he had been beaten unmercifully — was half-idiot himself, he affirmed — so much did he possess the faculty of penetrating another’s thoughts. Always vibrating and very impressionable, he likened himself to one flayed, who leaped from pain at the least contact; and human stupidity assuredly wounded him during his whole life, as great misfortunes of the intimate, secret kind, wound.
He considered stupidity a little in the light of a personal enemy, tormenting him to the point of martyrdom; and he pursued it with fury, as a hunter follows his prey, attacking it from the lowest to the greatest brains. He had the subtle sense of a bloodhound for discovering it, and his rapid eye would fall upon it as it was concealing itself in the columns of a journal or even in the lines of a beautiful book. He would sometimes arrive at such a degree of exasperation from it that he wished to destroy the whole human race.
The misanthropy of his works comes from no other thing. The bitter savour found in them is only that continual discovery of mediocrity, of commonplaceness, of foolishness in all its forms. He makes a note of it on every page, in every paragraph, by a word, a simple design, by accenting a scene or a dialogue. He fills the intelligent reader with melancholy and r lakes him desolate by proving the folly of human life. The unexplained uneasiness that many people have had on opening the Sentimental Education, was onlythe unreasoned sensation of that eternal stupidity of bought shown openly in skulls.
He said sometimes that he ought to have called that book Dried Fruits, in order to make its meaning better comprehended. Each man reading it asked himself with uneasiness whether he were not one of those sad personages of that gloomy romance, so much that was intimate and rending did one find in each of the personal statements.
After an enumeration of his grim studies, he wrote one day: “And all this in the unique aim of sputtering upon my contemporaries the disgust they inspire in me! I shall finally tell my manner of thought
, exhale my resentment, vomit my hatred, expectorate my gall, purge my indignation.”
This scorn of the exalted idealist for the current stupidity and the customary commonplaceness was accompanied by a vehement admiration for superior people, whatever was their talent or their erudition. Never having loved anything but Thought, he respected it in all its manifestations; and his reading extended into books that would ordinarily seem most foreign to literary art. He became angry with a friendly journal when some one criticised M. Renan adversely in it: the name of Victor Hugo filled him with enthusiasm; his friends were such men as MM. Georges Pouchet and Berthelot; his salon in Paris was very curious.
He received there Sundays, from one o’clock until seven, in a very simple bachelor’s apartment on the fifth story. The walls were bare and the furniture modest, for he had a horror of the playthings of art.
As soon as a touch of the bell announced the first visitor, he would throw over his work-table (which was covered with scattered leaves of paper black with writing) a light cover of red silk that enveloped and concealed all the implements of his work, which were as sacred to him as the objects of divine service are to a priest. Then, as his domestic nearly always went out on Sunday, he would open the door himself.
The first comer was often Ivan Turgenief, whom he embraced as he would a brother. Larger still than Flaubert, the Russian romance writer loved the French romancer with an affection profound and rare. Affinity in talent, philosophy, and mind, similarity in tastes, in life and in dreams, a conformity in literary tendencies, in exalted idealism, in admiration and erudition, put so many points of contact between these two that on seeing each other they experienced perhaps a still greater joy of heart than joy of intelligence.
Turgenief would sink into an armchair and speak slowly, in a sweet voice, a little feeble and hesitating, which gave to anything he said a charm and an extreme interest. Flaubert would listen religiously, fixing upon the great white face of his friend his large blue eyes with their moving pupils, and respond in his sonorous voice, which came out like the sound of a clarion from under the moustache of an old Gallic warrior. Their conversation rarely touched upon current affairs and scarcely ever got far from literary history. Often Turgenief was laden with foreign books, and would make running translations of Goethe’s, Poushkin’s, or Swinburne’s poems.
Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert Page 556
