GUSTAVE FLAUBERT OR THE SPLENDID CONJUNCTION OF DOCUMENTATION AND ARTISTIC MASTERY

Writing about a titan of world literature is no trivial undertaking. Gustave Flaubert, as the great pontiff of critical realism through his masterpiece Madame Bovary, has been analyzed and re-analyzed far beyond the spoken words and even into the vicinity of his unspoken thoughts. Albert Thibaudet, in his time, discussed the role of the imperfect tense and the present participle in securing the cadence of Flaubertian sentences. The critic Sainte-Beuve, despite his personal friendship with the great artist, did not hesitate to mention the moments of sadistic indulgence in Salammbô. Yet all those who have devoted attention to Flaubert’s oeuvre over the past century and a half have been captivated either by the perfection achieved in the gradation of action and the modulation of effects, or by the scarcely rivaled heights reached through his simple, elegant, and fluid style, in which—according to Vera Călin—“the visual dominates, for affective epithets are extremely rare, whereas optical ones occur with great frequency,” or by the abundant influences of the patriarch residing, though not cloistered, at Croisset on the Seine, influences that extend even into the work of the renowned Romanian compatriot Eugène Ionesco. Furthermore, within each of us who possesses even a minimal sense of the ridiculous lies an atavistic fear of uttering platitudes—that is, hackneyed statements that will make the know-it-alls frown or smile contemptuously when they cast their eyes upon the unworthy fruits of feverish meditations.

Yet great artists come to our aid precisely when our indecision and despair reach dizzying heights. After all, this is why they are great and generous toward sentient beings: to guide inquisitive souls toward the luminous clearing of beauty and truth! The key is not to surrender, but to return again and again through ever more attentive readings to the voice of the vast sea of wisdom and beauty emanating from the shell of the work. For it is to be believed that, eventually, the shell will open for our eyes and ears, and then we shall discover with the supreme joy of the seeker of the absolute that the voice of the sea continues its eternal call and lament, only this time issuing from our own soul and heart. Then we can be certain that we are on the right path—the narrow and steep road leading to the Golgotha of understanding, feeling, and universal human suffering, for it is well known: no one will ever truly know beauty and the ineffable delights of creation before being crucified by the base indifference of the many. Returning to Flaubert’s work, one must note his modest productivity in terms of the number of books written and literary genres tackled, especially when compared to, say, the overwhelming output of Balzac, the formidable artistic deployment of his great friend Victor Hugo, or even the achievements of his brilliant student Guy de Maupassant. If we take into account his literary attempts in childhood and adolescence (he was already improvising plays at the age of nine!) or if we mention only his lesser-known later dramatic experiments, then Flaubert’s major oeuvre consists of: Madame Bovary, Salammbô, Sentimental Education, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, three short stories, and the unfinished novel Bouvard and Pécuchet, interrupted by the apoplectic attack that claimed him on the morning of May 8, 1880 (he was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen, Normandy). This fact, once known, may encourage those among us who lack inclination for extensive and prolonged study but are determined to acquire a semblance of culture. Yet caution is needed! While Flaubert’s work may not boast quantity or scope, it is remarkable—and even unique—for its depth and quality. After all, is this not the essence of true culture? Many believe themselves called to art, producing terrifyingly vast outputs—hundreds of books or paintings—but few are truly chosen. To support this, consider three notable examples: Alexandre Dumas fils remains immortal in French literature through his celebrated The Lady of the Camellias; Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa entered the canon of Italian literature with his single, astonishing book The Leopard; and Mateiu I. Caragiale will remain an enduring landmark in Romanian literature through The Rakes of the Old Court. Flaubert’s oeuvre is happily complemented by his voluminous correspondence, which proves invaluable in elucidating his artistic concepts. We learn, for instance, that Flaubert championed impersonality in art and that his aesthetics are Cartesian in nature. Accordingly, reason must subordinate affective manifestations, and the writer’s duty is to present reality without intervening with personal sentiment that might influence the reader. As befits a classic of French literature—one of the most prodigious in all of human history—Gustave Flaubert’s work commands our attention through a set of traits that preserve its freshness and engage the reader with fundamental human concerns. Among these traits, the following stand out immediately: 1. The unity of Flaubert’s works; 2. The remarkable architectural and compositional balance of his books; 3. The author’s passion for history and the accurate rendering of reality; 4. Flaubert’s relentless efforts to perfect his style. Sentimental Education, composed in its first version between 1843–1845, is a novel of failure and social climbing in a world dominated by bourgeois mediocrity, with its detestable pursuits of comfort, tranquility, and adulterous pleasures—a generally petty and lukewarm existence that perfectly matches its characters’ moral and spiritual resources. Yet the author, imbued since adolescence with profound disdain for the odious bourgeois world, exacts artistic revenge by inserting into the narrative the vivid interlude of street battles during the 1848 revolution, scorching the bourgeois and disrupting their gray lives. Although the protagonist, Frédéric Moreau, participates to some extent, his engagement is largely formal; his energy is devoted to cultivating futile loves that drain both his time and finances, leaving him, by the end of the novel and his existence, to realize that he who had always dreamed of love—for example, his ethereal attachment to Madame Arnoux—has in fact squandered his life. Like the barbarian Mathô in Salammbô, Frédéric becomes interesting to readers through his obsessive pursuit of an impossible love in a phantom figure such as Madame Arnoux.

Flaubert’s early, somewhat rough style—excusable given his youth—recalls, through sentence haste and informational density, both Balzac and Hugo’s Les Misérables. Later works, notably Madame Bovary and Salammbô, eliminate all such expressive and conceptual shortcomings. In his masterpieces, Flaubert sought such harmony that he imposed upon himself constraints and stylistic rigor verging on mania. For him, synonyms were unacceptable; unwilling to repeat a word on the same page, he would sometimes spend hours searching for the precise term. (George PETROVAI, Sighetu Marmației, Romania)