Barnes, Flaubert Part Three - 2003-10-05

Barnes compiles a Flaubert-style dictionary for his book. Milan Kundera, another famous admirer of Flaubert, has also done this somewhere, and generally, creating a specific dictionary for a writer, regardless of whether those words are used in their writing or not, is an interesting and useful task. Definitions and names by Barnes: Flaubert, Gustave: a recluse in Croatia. The first modern novelist. The father of realism, the butcher of romanticism. The bridge connecting Balzac to Joyce, the herald of Proust. A bear in a cave. A bourgeois who despised bourgeoisie... someone who had no interest in titles yet gained the most. Someone who said, "Honor makes a man dishonorable; titles degrade, and becoming employed by another makes one foolish." (p. 154-155) Jean-Paul Sartre: spent ten years writing "The Family Idiot" L’idiot de la famille, while he could have written Maoist pamphlets. A kind of higher-level Louis Colet, who constantly disturbed Gustave, who only wanted to be left alone. Moral of the story: it is better to waste one’s old age than to do nothing. (same place) Letters: Follow André Gide and read Flaubert's collected letters as his masterpiece. Follow Sartre and read them as a complete example of free association on the pre-Freudian psychology chair. Then, follow the path of your own nose. (p. 156) Realism: Was Gustave a neo-realist? He always publicly denied this: "Because I hated realism, I wrote Madame Bovary." Galileo also publicly denied the Earth's rotation around the sun. Prostitutes: a requirement for getting syphilis in the 19th century, without which no one could claim genius. Among the holders of this red badge of courage: Flaubert, Daudet, Maupassant, Jules de Goncourt, Baudelaire, and many others. (p.158) "Being sad is a defect." Flaubert 1878 p. 161 "Worse than not living with those you love is the torture of living with those you do not love." "Joy is in imagination, not in joyful action... The truth about writing a work can be known even before putting a word on paper. The truth of life can only be understood when it no longer matters in the issue." p. 169 I do not know how many of Flaubert's letters have been translated into Persian, but it is a collection of great value and readability for many people and artists. "Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry... Everything you create or build from yourself is true. Rest assured. Without a doubt, my poor Bovary is suffering and shedding tears in twenty villages in France." (letter to Colet August 14, 1853) "(On her sister's deathbed) My eyes are as dry as a piece of marble. It is strange how sorrow in the story opens and fills my existence with feeling, while real sorrow in my heart remains hard and bitter and turns into a piece of crystal as soon as it appears." From a letter to Maxim de Camp, March 15, 1846 "They say I truly loved that woman (Madame Schlesinger). No, that is not true, I did not love her. Only when I wrote her letters, with that capacity I have for creating feelings in myself through the pen, only then did I take the subject seriously, only when I wrote.