On Rereading Flaubert

1.---:.' ,,_ . .,_ r-:.~:-· .. 1 I [. - .. ,... . I •• I r··' ... i' l' .• · -' '· ... ' ! '··..... , - r , ! : ,.. I.·. . ' .,. .·.... ' i I ' ....-_ .. '~ .. I ·"' • _. \ .... I ' ON .I_{EREADING FLAUBERT A. E. CARTER Q F the three great French novelists o_f _t~e nineteen~h c~ntury, _Flaubert has, suffered most from modern crrttclsm. · Despite fluctuatiOns, the Stendhal vogue, which began "vers 1880," continues undiminished; and Balzac's enormous defects are excused as the carelessness of a talent too I ' . richly gifted, too akin to the prodigal vigour of nature herself, to heed the .' . _ _ petty restraints of art. Madame Bovary, it is true, is still read, more · generally read, perhaps, than any one novel by either Stendhal or Balzac. ,- . But the dust of the library is heavy on Salammbo, on La Tentation de Saint- ' Antoine, on L'Education sentimenta.le. If it we~e not for Madame B~vary, who but the specialist wou_ld know much more than the name ·of Gustave Flaubert? His first novel is still considered one of the five or six masterpieces of nineteenth-century fiction. But apart fro,m that fact his position is not much better than Prevoses or Lac~os's. He has become a one-book _author. When one considers the enthusiasm his work evoked a bare forty or fifty years ago, this is neglect indeed. To the· men. of the eighties and nineties, to Walter Pater and Guy de Maupassant, Flaubert was the master 'of style, the impeccable artist who had given to fiction the polish anq beauty. until then reserved for verse. These very qualities, doubtless, have something to do with the decline of his popularity; for they are more likely to· irritate than to please us today. Weare ·prone to dislike a well-written book simply because it is .well written. The careful paragraph· and the polished phrase strike. us as artificial, and we fty-Jike the dog from the_·uncork_ ed scent-bott~e. Whether .this attitude is justified or not is a matter of opinion. However, the fact remains that most:attacks on Flaubert are directed-against the very qualities that were once so much admired. Andre Malraux calls his .books "beaux romans paralyses"; Fran~ois Ma~riac blames his exclusive devotion to art; Andre Gide sets him eighth in a Jist of favourite noveJists (actually preferring Furetiere, Fromentin, and Madame de laFayette); 'Sartre sneers at the "bourgeois" comfort of his life at Croisset and blames his indifference to the White .Terror.of 1871; Valery is deliber'!-tely irreverent. After reading such criticisms, one inevitably asks · . wheth~r the novels of Flaubert havJ e any value at all. - . , It is impossible, indeed, to deny. their defects. Ori some of its premises contemporary criticism is certainly justified. . Flaubert's literary achievement is marred by failure, and failure of no uncertain ·kind. Balzac's errors are in part at least the result of hasty production. ··There is some .ex ~use for overlooking the~. But Flaubert was never hounded by necessity; he had time and money at his cli~posal: when he failed~ he failed deliberately. Pitying an author bec_ ause pove.rty forces him to hasty publication is a commonplace of criticism; but tho~e whose hard fate drives them prema- ·· 182 -. ~ . I 'i , , .. , I .·--ON REREADING FLAUBERT I • ' ' ~ ~ r.'. I, . I I i ' i· ) I. I'· ·... I 183 ,· _ turely into the printer's hands may take consolation-and warning-from the example of Flaubert. .... He spent five years on Salammba, twenty on La·· Tentation de Saint-Antoine; : and few hasty deliveries have produced works so disappointing. 'Both ~ere fashioned with love and patience; into both he put all hisliterary enthusiasm, his passion for high colour and lyric prose. The results are all but unreadable: tedious accumulations of bric:...a-brac, only occasionally.relieved by a bit of clever description. The. spectacle .of that brilliant intelligence, gifted as it was with an ~lmost unsurpassed skill . in detecting the fine shades of vulgar prejudice and moral blindness, wasting its efforts on the manufacture of such gaudy paste, is one of the strangest·in literature. And the famous style: everyone knows the agonies it cost the "solitaire de Croisset"; everyone has read of his struggles...