Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert

by Gustave Flaubert

  This life is so rich in visions and imaginings, that they finally obscure the real world altogether, and receive in passing through this medium a reflected colouring in addition to their own. “I always see the antithesis of things; the sight of a child inevitably suggests to my mind the thought of old age; the sight of a cradle, the idea of the grave. When I look at my wife, I think of myself as her skeleton. That is why scenes of happiness sadden me, while sad things leave me indifferent. I weep so much internally in my own soul, that my tears cannot flow outwardly as well; things that I read of in a book agitate me much more than any actually existing sorrows.” Here we encounter a distinguishing trait of the majority of natures that are gifted with strong artistic temperaments. “The more oppressed I feel, the more melancholy and highly strung and prone to tears and to give myself over to a sense of imaginary suffering, so much the more do my real feelings remain dry and hard and dead within my heart; they are crystallized within it.” This is the mental attitude described by Pushkin:

  “In vain did I appeal to the emotions within me, With unmoved ears I heard the breath of Death, And all unmoved I gazed on her. So that is what I loved with flaming soul, With such intensity of passion, With so great anguish and agony of love, With such torment and unreason! Where is now pain and where is love? Alas, for the poor credulous shade in my soul! For the sweet memory of days for ever passed I can now find neither tears nor reproaches.”

  This condition of incomprehensible indifference towards the beloved one, this despair arising not out of grief, but as a result of his own coldness, of his lack of commiseration and pity was all too familiar to Flaubert; and according to his custom, he boldly proceeds to analyse this trait, which it is the one endeavour of most other artists to conceal, not only from others, but even from themselves, regarding it mistakenly as a form of egoism that is entirely in conflict with Nature. He describes his feelings at the grave of his dearly loved sister: “I was as cold as the grave-stone, and only terribly bored.” What does he do at the moment when an ordinary man, forgetful of all else, would give himself up entirely to his grief? With pitiless curiosity, “himself catching nothing of their emotions,” he analyzes them “like an artist.” “This melancholy occupation alleviated my grief remarkably,” he writes to a friend, “perhaps you will regard me as utterly heartless if I confess to you that my present sorrow” (that is to say the grief experienced at the death of his sister) “does not strike me as the heaviest lot that I have ever had to endure. At times when there was apparently nothing to be sad about, it has been my fate to be much sadder.” A little further on comes a long discourse upon the Infinite, upon Nirvana, — a discourse in which the author gives utterance to much inspired poetry, but to very little simple human sorrow.

  In the letter in which Flaubert describes the funeral of a friend of his childhood, his æsthetic cult of sadness reaches a still higher plane of meditativeness. “On the body of the departed there appeared the signs of a terrible transformation; we hid the corpse in a double shroud. So covered, he looked like an Egyptian mummy enveloped in the bandages of the tomb, and I cannot describe the feelings of joy and freedom which I experienced at sight of him at that moment. There was a white mist over everything, the forest trees stood out against the sky, and the funeral lights were still shining in the pallor of the dawning day; the birds were twittering, and I recalled a verse of his poem: ‘He flies away like a winged bird to meet the rising sun in the pine wood,’ or, to put it better, I heard his voice uttering these words and the whole day long they haunted me with their enchantment. They placed him in the ante-chamber, the doors were left ajar, and the cool morning air penetrated into the room, mingled with a refreshing rain, which had just then begun to fall.... My soul was filled with emotions, till then unknown, and upon it there flamed forth like summer lightning such thoughts as I can never repeat again: a thousand recollections of the dead were wafted to me on the fumes of the incense, in the chords of the music.” ... And here the artist, in the midst of his æsthetic abstraction, converts his genuine grief into a thing of beauty, so that in his enlightened view the death of his beloved friend not only causes him no pang, or suffering, but, on the contrary, gives him a mystic resignation, incomprehensible to ordinary men, an ecstasy that is foreign to and removed from life, a joy that is entirely impersonal.

  During his sojourn in Jerusalem, Flaubert paid a visit to the lepers. Here is the account of his impressions: “This place (that is the plot of land set aside for those who are afflicted with leprosy) is situated outside the town, near a marsh, whence a host of crows and vultures arose and took their flight at our approach. The poor sufferers, both women and men (in all about a dozen persons) lie all huddled together in a heap. They have no covering on their heads, and there is no distinction of sex. Their bodies are covered with putrefying scars, and they have sombre cavities in place of noses. I was forced to put on my eye-glasses in order to discover what was hanging to the ends of their arms. Were they hands, or were they some greenish-looking rags? They were hands! (There is a prize for colourists!) A sick man was dragging himself to the water’s edge to drink some water. Through his mouth, which yawned black and empty of the gums, that seemingly had been burned away, the palate was clearly visible. A rattle sounded in his throat as he dragged the limbs of his dead-white body towards us. And all around us reigned tranquil Nature, the ripples of the stream, the green of the trees, all bubbling over with the abundance of sap and youth, and the coolness of the shadows beneath the scorching sun.” This extract is taken from no novel, in which a poet might force himself to be objective, but from a traveller’s notes, from a letter to a friend, wherein the author has no kind of motive for concealing the subjective character of his emotions. And yet in spite of this, except for the two rather common-place epithets of “poor wretches” (pauvres misérables), there is not a single touch of pity, not even a suggestion of compassion.

  IV

  “I am not a Christian” (je ne suis pas Chrétien), says Flaubert in a letter to Georges Sand. The French Revolution was, in his opinion, unsuccessful, because it was too intimately bound up with the idea of religious pity. The idea of equality, on which is based the essence of the democracy of to-day, is a contradiction of all the principles of equity. See what a preponderating influence is given at this day to grace. Emotion is everything, justice nothing. “We are degenerating owing to our superfluity of indulgence and of compassion, and to our moral drought.” “I am convinced,” he remarks, “that the poor envy the rich, and that the rich fear the poor; it will be so for ever — and vain it is to preach the Gospel of Love.”

  Flaubert tries to justify his instinctive antipathy to the idea of brotherhood by the assertion that this idea is always found to be in irreconcilable contradiction to the principle of equity. “I hate democracy (in the sense at least in which the word is accepted in France), that is to say the magnifying of grace to the detriment of justice, the negation of right — in a word, the anti-social principle (l’anti-sociabilité).” “The gift of grace (within the province of theology) is the negation of justice; what right has a man to demand any change in the execution of the law?” Yet he hardly believes in this principle himself, and only enunciates it in order to have an argument with which to refute the idea of brotherhood. At least this is what he says, in a moment of complete frankness, in a letter to an old friend: “Human justice seems to me the most unstable thing in the whole world. The sight of a man daring to judge his neighbour would send me into convulsions of laughter if it did not arouse my disgust and pity, and if I were not at the present moment” (he was at that time engaged in studying for the law) “obliged to study a system of absurdities, by virtue of which men consider that they acquire the right to judge. I know of nothing so absurd as law, except, perhaps, the study of it.” In another letter he confesses that he never could understand the abstract and dry conception of duty, and that “it did not seem to him to be inherent in the nature of mankind (il ne me paraît pas inhér
ent aux entrailles humaines).” Evidently, then he believes as little in the idea of justice as he does in that of fraternity. As a matter of fact, he has no moral ideal.

  “There is only one thing in the world that I really value, and that is beautiful verse; an elegant, harmonious, melodious style; the warmth of the sun; a picturesque landscape; moonlight nights; antique statues, and the character in a profile.... I am a fatalist, in fact, like a Mahometan, and I believe that all that we do for the progress of humanity is of no use. As to this idea of progress, I am mentally incapable of grasping such nebulous and dreary conceptions. All the nonsense talked on this subject simply bores me beyond endurance.... I cherish a deep respect for the ancient form of tyranny, for to me it is the finest expression of humanity that has ever been made manifest.” “I have few convictions,” he writes to Georges Sand, “but one of those I have I cherish firmly — it is the conviction that the masses are always composed of idiots. And yet one may not consider the masses as stupid, because within them is concealed the seed of an incalculable fecundity (d’une fécondité incalculable).”

  Flaubert makes a half-jesting attempt to contrast the doctrines of the socialists with his own ideas of the political order of the future. “The only logical conclusion is an administration consisting of mandarins, if only these mandarins be possessed of some knowledge, and if possible, even considerable knowledge. The mass of the people will thus always remain as minors, and will always hold the lowest place in the hierarchy of the social orders, seeing that it is composed of unlimited numbers.... In this lawful aristocracy of the present time is our whole salvation.” ... “Humanity represents nothing new. Its irremediable worthlessness filled my soul even in my early youth with bitterness. And that is why I now experience no disappointment. I am convinced that the crowd, the common herd will always be odious.... Until the time comes when men shall submit to set up mandarins, and shall have substituted for the Roman Pope an Academy of Sciences, until that time comes, all politics, and all society even to its deepest roots, must be merely a collection of revolting lies (de blagues écœurantes.)” Nevertheless in his novel “Bouvard et Pécuchet” Flaubert makes every effort to destroy faith even in the strength of the principles of science, and to prove that modern science is as impermanent a structure, as contradictory and superstitious a system as was the theology of the Middle Ages. To his disbelief in science Flaubert, moreover, is constantly giving utterance: thus, for instance, when he comes upon the Positivism of Comte, he finds this system “unbearably stupid” (c’est assommant de bêtise).

  V

  We have thus seen that Flaubert’s attempt to reach a compromise with regard to the preponderating tendency of the age did not succeed; of his views respecting the structure of society, the only true one is his insight into the lower classes of the people. “However well you may feed the animal man, however thickly you gild his stable, even though you give him the softest and most luxurious litter, still he will ever remain a beast. The only progress upon which one can count is the effort to make the beast less of a cannibal. But as to raising the level of his ideas, or inspiring the masses with a broader conception of God, I seriously doubt whether this can ever be achieved.”

  In another letter he frankly admits that he has no faith, no principles of morality, no political ideals, and in this admission, wrung from the depths of his heart, the note of despair is already struck: “In the present day there seems to be as little possibility of establishing any new belief as of obtaining respect for the old faith. And so I seek and fail to find that one idea upon which all the rest should depend.” These few words throw a clearer light on the attitude of Flaubert during the latter years of his life than anything else. Formerly he had found this idea in his art, while now he assumes that there is another and higher basis, upon which art itself must rest; but to find this principle is beyond his power. He seeks forgetfulness in work, but work only brings exhaustion, and he is still more dissatisfied. He realises his singularity, and it draws him out of his objective attitude into that incomprehensible existence, the very conception of which he himself denies.

  The real tragedy of his position lies in the fact that he is alone in the midst of a strange and unknown world. And little by little his despair reaches its utmost limits: “Whenever I am without a book in my hand, or whenever I am not writing, such anguish seizes on me that I simply find myself on the verge of tears.” So he writes in a letter to Georges Sand. “It seems to me that I have literally turned into a fossil, and that I am deprived of all connection with the universe around me.” “A feeling of universal destruction and agony possesses me, and I am deathly sad.” “When I am tired out from my work, I grow anxious about myself. No one remembers me, I belong to another sphere. My professional friends are so little friendly to me.” “I pass whole weeks without exchanging a word with a single human creature, and at the end of the week I find it hard to recall any special day or any particular event during the course of that time. On Sundays I see my mother and niece, and that is all. A gathering of rats in the attic, that is my whole society. They make an infernal noise over my head, when the rain is not roaring, and the wind is not howling. The nights are blacker than coal, and a silence is all around me, infinite as in the desert. One’s senses are terribly sharpened in such surroundings, and my heart starts beating at the slightest sound.” “I am losing myself in the reminiscences of my youth, like an old man. Of life I ask nothing more, save a few sheets of paper that I may scratch ink upon. I feel as though I were wandering through an endless desert, wandering, not knowing whither; and that at one and the same time, I am the wanderer, and the camel, and the desert.” “One hope alone sustains me, that soon I shall be parted from life, and that I shall surely find no other existence that might be still more painful.... No, no! Enough of misery!”

  All his letters to Georges Sand are one weary restless martyr’s confession of the “disease of genius.” Sometimes a simple plaint bursts from him, and in it, through the impenetrable pride of the fighter, can be detected something soft and broken, as in the voice of a man who is over-tired. The fury of his enemies, the calumnies of his friends, the lack of understanding of his critics, no longer wounded his self-pride; he merely hated them. “All this avalanche of folly neither disturbs nor grieves me. Only one would prefer to inspire one’s fellow men with pleasant feelings.”

  Then finally, even his last consolation — his art — deserts him. “In vain I gather my strength; the work will not come, will not come. Everything disturbs and upsets me. In the presence of others I can still control myself, but when I am alone I often burst into such senseless, spasmodic tears that I think I am going to die from them.” In his declining years, when he can no longer turn to the past, and no longer correct his life, he asks himself the question: what if even that beauty, in the name of which he has destroyed his faith in God, in life, and in humanity, is as visionary and delusive as all else? What if his art, for the sake of which he had given up his life, his youth, and happiness, and love, should have abandoned him on the very edge of the grave?

  “The Shadow is enveloping me,” he says, as he realises that the end is at hand. This exclamation is as the cry of eternal anguish uttered before his death by another artist, Michael Angelo, the brother of Flaubert in his ideals and aims and genius:

  “Io parto a mano a mano, Crescemi ognor piu l’ombra, e il sol vien manco, E son presso a cadere, infermo e stanco.” “Inch by inch I sink, The shadows lengthen, the sun sinks down, And I am ready to depart, Broken and weary.”

  Death struck him down at his work-table, quite suddenly, like a thunder-bolt. Dropping his pen from his hand, he sank down lifeless, killed by his one great, single passion, the love of his art.

  Plato in one of his myths relates how the souls of men travel in chariots on winged steeds along the heavenly way; to some of whom it is given after a short time to approach that spot whence is visible the domain of Ideas; with yearning do they gaze aloft, and a few stray rays of
light fall deep down among them. Then, when these souls are re-incarnated, to return and suffer on earth, all that is best in the human heart appeals to them and touches them, as a reflection of some eternal light, as a confused remembrance of another world, into which it was granted them to peep for the space of a single moment.

  Surely there must have fallen upon the soul of Flaubert in the glorious sphere of the imagination a ray of beauty that was perhaps too bright.

  The French Texts

  MÉMOIRES D’UN FOU

  MADAME BOVARY

  SALAMMBÔ

  L'ÉDUCATION SENTIMENTALE

  BOUVARD ET PÉCUCHET

  TROIS CONTES

  LA TENTATION DE SAINT ANTOINE

  LE CANDIDAT

  LE CHATEAU DES CŒURS

  LE SEXE FAIBLE

  PAR LES CHAMPS ET PAR LES GREVES

  Le Cimetière Monumental de Rouen — Flaubert’s final resting place

  Flaubert’s grave