The Soundtrack of Madame Bovary: Flaubert's Orchestration of Aural Imagery.
1973; Salisbury University; Volume: 1; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Critical Theory
ResumoLong recognized for its realistic if ambiguous portrait of romantic woman, Madame Bovary has also come to be considered fountainhead of modern experimentation with form in fiction. Even critic with deep reservations about its final import offers Madame Bovary as evidence that Flaubert was the greatest virtuoso who ever practised and the source of nearly every important technical advance made since middle of last century. ' Moreover, as if literary analysis alone could do justice to special effects achieved by Flaubert, various critics have been prompted to seek analogies for his methods in arts outside literature. Thus, his recurring symbolic images have been likened to musical leitmotifs of Wagner.2 His graphic descriptions of French provincial life have led to comparison with early Dutch painting. Mary McCarthy, for example, perhaps taking cue from Mario Praz, finds composition and lighting of early household scenes at Roualt's farm - with Emma sewing or tending kitchen fire - reminiscent of genre paintings of Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch.3 And combined with these rhythmical and highly pictorial qualities, focus and movement of certain scenes have irresistibly suggested art of film. Indeed, it has been increasingly pointed out that Flaubert may be said to have actually anticipated many of techniques of great film directors. As Joseph Frank has noted, famous country-fair scene in Madame Bovary - with its intercutting of three levels of action: crowd, orators, and Rodolphe wooing Emma - is essentially cinematic.4 Going beyond individual scenes, Harry Levin has provided copious illustration of Flaubert's cinematic manipulation of his material through use of various types of shots. 5 When, for example. Emma and Leon enter curtained cab outside cathedral, novelist, like mobile camera, draws back considerable distance and takes a rapid series of long-range shots, so that, instead of witnessing their embrace - we participate in tour of city of Rouen, prolonged and accelerated to metaphorical climax.6 And throughout novel, continues Levin. Flaubert chooses not merely right word but right thing and transforms nearly every object - like Charles's ridiculous hat. Emma's bridal bouquet, religious statue - into symbol through use of close-up.7 Even architectonics of novel are strikingly cinematic. While utilizing tripartite structure of stage drama for novel as whole, Flaubert does really adhere to confining theatrical divisions of acts and scenes but rather designs fluid series of filmlike sequences, giving shape to many of them by making social ritual pivot of action. Thus, wedding, ball, country fair, an evening at opera, and finally funeral - with mounting of each one showing true directorial finesse - give public dimension to crucial events of Emma's personal history. 8 Finally, there is another and rather neglected parallel to film that also proves illuminating: namely, Flaubert's exploitation of sound effects. Almost any page of Madame Bovary will show that novelist possessed strong auditory imagination as well as visual one. In very opening chapter we hear students laughing raucously at Charles's first stumbling words in class; we hear his father, cashiered army man. arrogantly clanking his spurs; we hear tolling of Angelus bell in counterpoint with snoring of tired old priest 9 Throughout novel there are sounds of footsteps, coughing, panting, sighing, singing, whistling, buzzing of flies, barking of dogs, trill of violin, drone of lathe, and so on. To be sure, such sounds can be found elsewhere in literature, but Flaubert goes far beyond usual description of what might be heard in any given localized milieu and discovers in world of sound another important dimension for art of fiction 10 His letter explaining what he intended in country-fair scene shows how very conscious he was of more subtle possibilities of sound effects. …
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