Brief Lives: Gustave Flaubert
2010; Oxford University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/fs/knq221
ISSN1468-2931
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Poetry
ResumoThis is a delightfully exuberant little book. Although Andrew Brown acknowledges that he has drawn heavily on previous biographies of Flaubert, particularly those by Victor Brombert, Frederick Brown, and Geoffrey Wall, his contribution to the genre is very different. The brief opening chapter, ‘The Spire’, already indicates an idiosyncratic approach: the slow and controversial construction of the cast-iron flèche of Rouen Cathedral is used as a metaphor for the fusion in Flaubert's work of ancient and modern, political and personal, the absurd and the aspiring. Thereafter Brown moves deftly through Flaubert's life, always with an intelligent eye for the quirky detail, of which there are many. Although the narrative follows a broadly chronological path, it makes enticing detours: the chapter on ‘Childhood’, for example, offers a glimpse of Flaubert drilling his National Guardsmen on the banks of the Seine during the Franco-Prussian War, and ‘School’ weaves in references to Le Candidat and Le Château des cœurs. Throughout, intriguing asides add to the rich texture. We learn, for instance, that Tolstoy visited Paris during the trial of Madame Bovary but ‘took little notice’ (p. 115), and that Maurice Schlésinger once ‘earned the gratitude of Beethoven (and the right to publish piano sonatas 30–32) by procuring for him a decent veal chop’ (p. 46). Information is conveyed with the lightest of touches. The chapter entitled ‘1848’ deals with its subject in a single paragraph, while ‘Ruin’ encapsulates Flaubert's financial plight in a mere eight lines. The wider context is adroitly illuminated by tiny details: we glimpse Flaubert in Istanbul hearing of Balzac's death and dining with Baudelaire's mother; we see Louise Colet in her sixties provoking street riots in Marseille with an incendiary speech; we learn that Flaubert is buried in the same Rouen cemetery as Marcel Duchamp. Flaubert's work and its critical reception receive as engaging a treatment as his life. There are passages on Madame Bovary's many reincarnations in twentieth- and twenty-first-century film and fiction and on its interpretation by foreign cultures (Brown has interesting things to say about Chinese and Farsi translations); Kafka's view of L'Éducation sentimentale sits alongside Woody Allen's; and here too is Salammbô: Battle for Carthage, a computer game by Dreamcatcher Interactive. Brown writes with admirable clarity and panache, and his ability to fit an extraordinary amount of material into the limited format of this series is a triumph. Designed to instruire et plaire rather than serve as a scholarly reference work (all quotations, including many from Flaubert's Correspondance, are in English, no sources are given, there is no index and only the sketchiest of bibliographies), Brief Lives: Gustave Flaubert provides a wonderful introduction to Flaubert's life and work and should send novices rushing off to read his novels. A delight for Flaubert enthusiasts and a must for undergraduate reading-lists.
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