Flaubert et moi

Actually this is about the redemptive aspect of literature.

Set in 1843, Flaubert‘s character rode the psycho-somatic roller-coaster. The result: Madame Bovary set him apart from his Romantic contemporaries. He started the school of Realism even though he never admitted it. Bovary got married, Bovary got bored, Bovary had an affair and a brush with death but recovered just to fall into the arms of another man.  Finally, bankruptcy and death. But Bovary wasn’t the character. It’s Flaubert’s attempt at depicting French country side and country living of his time (Like Roger Altman‘s films, the place is the main character).

In fact, some critics overheard him said, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”.

Feeling hemmed in and enveloped by a flat country side which to others  might be heaven – wife of a country doctor  etc…but to our character, it’s an oppression.

She longed for the return of the glamorous “Gastby type”.

Flaubert held up the mirror to show us ourselves, the mirage we invented and dreams projected (which essentially our shadows in the cave).

I had no preconception before reading that piece of art.

Having finished it, I still have no post-conception of it.

It just was. Human nature.

The illusion of a better find around the bend, of Moore’s Law that keeps multiplying to infinity . This is antithetic to Flaubert who was known for his dis-taste of machine.

I wish I could read it in French.

But the English version is Flaubert enough. I understand more about escapism, nihilism and “the journey is a reward” .

The illusion that one can control and change destiny.

As fate would have it, Bovary died a wretched lady and her doctor-husband stayed on in the very town she had detested.

Back then, in that setting, writers must be autocrats to afford deep researching of the characters and setting of a novel.

What would he do had he been born in this century?

Like Norman Mailer, he perhaps would stick with the typewriter and not Twitter.

Meanwhile, what would we do being born in early 1800?

We would die younger, hence the longing for escapism must have come sooner.

Would we want to switch places with them?

Are our qualities of life surpassing theirs?

How about the index of misery?

Perhaps Flaubert breathed cleaner air, but according to his character,

still oppressed and constricted.

The take-away from Madame Bovary is ” le mot juste“. Flaubert would read out loud, finding the right word that tickles the ears.

Again, I wish I could have read it in its original language.

One thing I appreciate about Vietnam: you can go to a bookstore, and buy translated books from Russia, France, America or South America.

Someone, somewhere in this “belong-to-bottom 15” of miserable index, is trying to look up le mot juste, to do justice to an author’s intent.

When they found it, they would not let go of it. So would I. Everything (word) has its place and time under the sun. Flaubert’s place has so far been secured in French literature . If Madame Bovary got digitized though. Flaubert would have hated it.