Madame Bovary (Modern Library)
Page 40
3 her blue eyes There has been much critical debate on why Flaubert gave Emma changeable eyes: earlier they are “brown” but seem black (this page), then “black in shadow and deep blue in daylight” (this page), and here simply “blue.” Flaubert was the least careless writer imaginable: it seems he is deliberately subverting a conventional part of any character description, but to what end? To make Emma yet more ungraspable, and therefore even closer to reality? That the gift Léon gives Emma changes from a “rug” or a “tablecloth” to a “coverlet” is more likely to be an oversight.
4 The Tower of Nesle La Tour de Nesle, a five-act melodrama of royal medieval adultery and murder by Alexandre Dumas (1802–70), first performed to enormous acclaim in 1832, it serves as an ironic counterpoint to Emma’s modern affair in a hotel room.
5 the dancing Marianne The local misnomer for a carving depicting Salomé (symbol of female seductiveness) dancing before her stepfather, Herod; Mariamne [sic] was Herod’s mother. Flaubert used the figure, who is shown walking on her hands, to depict Salomé in his short story Hérodias (1877).
6 It is all cast iron The original stone spire of Rouen cathedral having been destroyed by a lightning bolt in 1822.
7 the conveyance lumbered off The famous ensuing passage was cut by the Revue de Paris, who were praised at Flaubert’s trial for “lowering the coach’s blinds,” but criticized for still allowing us “into the bedroom.” It is possible to trace the carriage’s itinerary on an old map of Rouen. The railway station that features had only recently been opened (in 1843).
8 spur stones A rounded stone block set at the angles of buildings or the corners of archways to protect them from damage by wagon or carriage wheels.
9 Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis “Practice makes perfect, whatever you do.”
10 Conjugal … Love! The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Revealed (Le Tableau de l’amour conjugal) by Nicolas Venette was published in 1686: an enlightened, scientific approach to sex education, it ran through numerous editions. Flaubert thought it “inept.”
11 One evening … A line from Lamartine’s (see note) elegiac poem “Le Lac,” his most famous.
12 the odalisque bathing Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s painting La Grande Odalisque (1814) depicts a naked courtesan whose sensuous back has been anatomically elongated—with five extra vertebrae. The work’s overt eroticism caused a scandal. The pale woman of Barcelona reflects Romanticism’s attraction to all things Spanish, while the “Angel” was a familiar trope in romantic literature. Léon can only view his lover through current stereotypes.
13 bandeaux See earlier note.
14 A fair day’s heat … From a poem by the extraordinary proto-communist writer Rétif de la Bretonne (1734–1806).
15 Breda Street In English in the original text, referring to any street where prostitutes plied their trade—the actual Breda Street being situated in the once-bohemian area around Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (Paris, 9th arrondissement).
16 foot warmer A fur-lined box or bag for both feet.
17 crummy Early nineteenth-century slang for “fleshy” or “buxom,” the nearest equivalent to the original French “morceau.”
18 Yes In English in the original.
19 garus Elixir of Garus, tonic and digestive stimulant, made mainly from aloes, myrrh and saffron.
20 Cujas and Barthole Jacques Cujas (1522–90), French legal humanist; Bartole (1313–56), Italian lawyer and professor; both specialists in Roman law.
21 Steuben’s Esmeralda, with Potiphar by Schopin Esmeralda would be an engraving from the much-reproduced painting by Charles von Steuben (1788–1856), showing the scantily clad gipsy heroine of Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame cuddling her pet goat, Djali. Henri-Frédérick Schopin (1804–80) was the brother of Chopin: he painted no known image of Potiphar, whose wife attempted to trap Joseph by seduction. The notary’s choice of art (see also note to this page) is signaled as being conventionally bourgeois.
22 a residue of pride Flaubert wrote “un reste d’orgueil,” rendered correctly in the first edition—but in all subsequent editions as the curious “un geste [a gesture] d’orgueil.” I have restored what appears to be the correct version.
23 since God … prayer? Homais lumps together citations from Habakkuk (2:18), Philippians (4:19) and Matthew (7:32).
24 Holbach … Nicolas The atheist Baron d’Holbach’s Encyclopédie (1751–65) included Diderot, Voltaire and Montesquieu as contributors. Abbé Guenée’s Lettres de quelques juifs portugais, allemands et polonais à M. De Voltaire (1769) defended biblical truth. Auguste Nicolas’s Études philosophiques sur le christianisme (1845) offered a rational defense of Christianity which had considerable contemporary influence.
25 white dints In an earlier draft, this was the crueler and more graphic “scars of ringworm.”
26 done with it Flaubert paid close attention to a funeral he attended while working on this scene: “One must … profit from everything … I will perhaps find things there for my Bovary … I hope to make others cry with the tears of one man, to go on afterward to the chemistry of style” (Letter to Louise Colet, 6 June 1853).
27 Sta viator … calcas “Stay, traveler, you tread upon a wife worthy of love.”
28 Daylight filtered through the trellis “Des jours passaient par le treillis.” This is awkward (or highly poetic) French, likely to be misread as “days passed by [or through] the trellis.” An earlier draft has Charles sitting there “for such a long time” that “all the sorrows of his life revisited him … from the first day to the last,” contrasting with the precise “seven o’clock” of Berthe’s discovery. Sadly, the dappled effect of the misreading—possibly intended—cannot be reproduced in translation.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
ADAM THORPE was born in Paris in 1956. His first novel, Ulverton, was published in 1992, and he has written nine others—most recently Flight—along with two collections of stories and six books of poetry. His translation of Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin will be published by Vintage UK in October 2013. He lives in France with his wife and family.