Flaubert's Parrot

n  Is it splendid, or stupid, to take life seriously?n

When I began listening to this audiobook, I wasn't in the right state of mind, as I was distracted and couldn't concentrate, so I was about to give up on it. I'm glad that I stuck it out, because, it turned out to be brilliant, delightful, surprising, and altogether original. I shouldn't be surprised, after all, the previous six Barnes books I listened to this year were of the highest quality - always extremely eloquent.

I am awed by Barnes' brilliance and literary prowess. The way his mind works!!! How he takes some obscure fact - Flaubert's parrot and then constructs such an interesting book, part biography - part novel, a very interesting concoction that melds fact with fiction in a very original way.

It is mainly about Flaubert (I knew almost nothing about the famous French writer, although I promised myself that this is the year I finally read Madame Bovary). It's also about art, personality, fame, critics, and relationships.

All the biographical details about Flaubert's life are delivered via our narrator, a retired British doctor, who's a Flaubert amateur scholar. Many of the biographical entries are from correspondence to and from Flaubert or his journal entries.

I've come to the conclusion that more often than not we shouldn't know too much about geniuses or prestigious artists, scientists, writers etc. Their human selves are more often than not quite disappointing, with their human failings, proclivities and other unsavoury traits. How dare they?
It's probably my fault for putting people whose works/creations I admire on a pedestal. It should be interesting to find out how all the things I've learnt about Flaubert and Madame Bovary will affect/influence my reading of his masterpiece. I can't wait to find out for myself.

Anyway, I should stop my ramblings. If you're looking for proper, more articulate reviews, there are plenty on GR.

My love affair with Barnes continues and it stays interesting and challenging - but in a good kind of way.

NB: Richard Morant, the narrator of this audiobook, was excellent.

"Amar a humanidade significa tanto ou tão pouco como amar a chuva ou amar a Via Láctea. Você diz que ama a humanidade? Tem a certeza de que não está a deixar-se cair numa autoadmiração, a procurar aprovação, a certificar-se de que está no lado certo?"
(Página 164)

"É nos livros que as coisas nos são explicadas; na vida não são. Não me surpreende que algumas pessoas prefiram os livros. Os livros dão um sentido à vida."
(Página 216)


Imperdível para quem gosta:
de Barnes e de Flaubert,
de biografias e de romances,
de livros cativantes e singulares,
de aprender com prazer.

A fascinating novel/miscellany about understanding achieved through indirect approach, and about the entanglement of life and art. The narrator Geoffrey Braithwaite’s story comes to us only indirectly, through his scattershot ramble through the story of Flaubert. And he handles that the same way; there are chronologies and other bits of straightforward narrativizing, but otherwise he mostly gets at Flaubert indirectly through surveys and magpie collections of biographical minutiae: anecdotes, views on various subjects assembled and presented as epigrams, a catalogue of pets and symbolic animals in Flaubert’s life and work, a list of Flaubertian ironies, an account of his unwritten books, a description of what now stands at the site of Flaubert’s knocked-down home (a paper factory—as good a Flaubertian irony as any), and so on. The effect is the same: Braithwaite can’t quite face down the central emotional trauma of his own life, but neither, for different reasons, can he make full contact with the nineteenth-century literary figure whose life and work are his emotional shield.

At one point Braithwaite considers whether you can get a proper sense of wholes from careful study of fragments: “A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel” (141). But the natural gap here between Braithwaite and Barnes, the gentle touches of dramatic irony in the latter’s portrayal of the former’s troubled psyche, suggests a deep suspicion of that serene faith in the symmetry and knowability of fragmentary things. So much of the book works this way. Consider the chapter “The Case Against,” which is an account of the ideal politics, ethics and sensibilities for writers in general that takes the form of a series of indictments of Flaubert in particular, followed by defenses provided by Braithwaite in the role of Flaubert’s “attorney.” To defend Flaubert against these charges is to indirectly give fuller expression of the charges themselves and to reciprocally indict the culture that would dismiss Flaubert according to such small-minded ideas about writing and life.

There are certain minor but unignorable problems arising from all this, especially with Braithwaite’s characterization. Distraction and obsession with Flaubert means there is some characterological spade-work here that doesn’t get done because to do so would involve Braithwaite looking squarely at himself and his life: why, to take just one example, is this retired physician so knowledgeable about nineteenth-century French literature, so equipped for sound historicist and biographical criticism as to make a great deal of this purported novel (clever trick of Barnes’s here) a kind of idiosyncratic, veiled scholarly monograph? Is he just an unusually professionalized amateur? How and why? Like almost everything about Braithwaite’s life, with one poignant exception that emerges in due course—and even there—we can’t quite know.

But again, working by indirection, the novel gives us a great deal in the way Braithwaite is prepared to give it: in his imaginative elaborations on Flaubert’s story. “Louise Colet’s Version” is especially moving, and it sketches an invented but seemingly tenable counterpoint to the admiring view of Flaubert taken elsewhere in this book and throughout the culture in general. One senses the Flaubert story and the Braithwaite story converging, as the latter imagines Louise Colet’s unwritten side of things with all its emotional revelations and accusations of old Gustave because that is easier for Braithwaite emotionally than making direct, sustained eye contact with his own story. What is truly remarkable in "Louise’s" account is that it presents a Flaubert both seemingly impossible to love and yet deeply loved all the same. Working indirectly as elsewhere here, this amounts not just to self-accusation but to something self-redemptive as well.

O carte amuzantă, scrisă anume pentru fanii lui Flaubert (între care, firește, eu sînt cel mai mic și mai umil).

Evident, ficțiunea biografică a lui Julian Barnes nu urmează un fir cronologic strict, precum biografiile clasice (viața și opera). Totul depinde de voia și placul naratorului, medicul englez Geoffrey Braithwaite. Iar numitul medic, fan devotat al operei lui Flaubert, e un povestitor capricios, sare de la una la alta, fără a respecta pașii unui biograf academic. În definitiv, ce are a face papagalul apocrif de la Hotel Dieu cu fantomatica guvernantă a prozatorului, englezoaica Juliet Herbert?

Julian Barnes a realizat, deci, un puzzle biografic. Totul e riguros documentat. Dacă verifici un amănunt oarecare (cum e cu ochii doamnei Bovary, să spunem), observi imediat că Geoffrey Braithwaite nu minte niciodată cînd se referă la viața și opera lui Flaubert, deși minte adesea cînd se referă la sine. Firește, un profesor american cu numele de Ed Villiers nu există. Corespondența dintre Flaubert și misterioasa Juliet Herbert (dacă au schimbat scrisori) nu a fost distrusă de acest istoric puritan, ci de purul hazard.

Nu știu dacă genul literar al „bioficțiunii” (care nu e totuna cu biografia romanțată) a fost inventat de Julian Barnes. Știu însă precis că Papagalul lui Flaubert e o carte excelentă.

Și fiindcă am amintit de legendara guvernantă a prozatorului, n-ar fi rău să transcriu acest pasaj:

„Cîndva, la mijlocul anilor 1850, [Juliet Herbert] s-a angajat ca guvernantă a nepoatei lui Flaubert, Caroline, și a petrecut la Croisset un număr nedeterminat de ani. Ulterior, s-a întors la Londra. Flaubert îi scria, iar ea îi răspundea; din cînd în cînd, se vizitau chiar. Asta-i tot ce se cunoaște. Nu s-a păstrat nici măcar o singură epistolă din cele adresate ei, sau scrise de ea. Despre familia femeii, nu știm aproape nimic. Nu se știe nici măcar cum arăta. Nu ne-a parvenit nici o descriere a guvernantei și nici unul dintre prietenii lui Flaubert nu s-a gîndit să-i închine vreun rînd după moartea maestrului, cînd erau consemnate memoriile tuturor femeilor importante din viața lui”.

A very funny book which combines fiction and literary criticism in an ingenious manner. However, in one sense it is all one big in-joke about Flaubert, so the more one knows about "l'oncle Gustave," the better one will understand the humour.

A second reading has changed my impression of the novel somewhat. Although the previous statement still holds true, and it sparkles with wit and irony, it also has a darker underbelly, so to speak. This book seems to be about the different perspectives one can have on life and reality. Examples are taken from the life of Flaubert: the chronology of his life is presented first traditionally as a series of names, dates and factoids, then as a series of quotations from his writings. One of my favorite chapters discusses first the critical discussion of Emma Bovary's eyes by Flaubert's biographer Enid Starkey; this is contrasted by what Flaubert actually says on the subject in Madame Bovary. Another fascinating chapter retells the love affair between Flaubert and the poet Louise Colet from a reimagined Colet's point of view; Flaubert comes out with some of his shine removed at the end of this spirited monologue.

In a series of ramblings which seem random only on the surface, Barnes' witty yet eccentric doctor turned detective shows us an alternative way of reading life and literature. Existence can seem to be one way, but if you look at it from a different angle, or from someone else's perspective, you may discover things of which you had no idea before.

وقتی کتابی را در لیست خوانده های گودریدزم وارد می کنم و به آن ستاره می دهم نگاهی هم به مطالبی که روی آن کتاب نوشته شده است می اندازم. برخی کتاب ها اقبال بلندتری برای دیده شدن دارند و افراد زیادی در موردشان صحبت کرده اند. طوطی فلوبر از آن دسته نبود. برای همین عزمم جزم شد که نوشته ای مرتبط با ذائقۀ خودم برای این کتاب بنویسم. مواجه شدنم با این کتاب تقریبا با فاصلۀ بلافصل از خواندن مادام بوواری بود. به گمانم پس ازخواندن مادام بوواری دوزی از خواندن آنچه در واکاوی فلوبر و کتاب هایش و روش زندگی اش گفته اند و حتی خواندن نامه هایش می تواند عیش مدام ما از دست رنج پنج ساله اش را تکمیل کند. طوطی فلوبرِ بارنز پس از عیش مدام یوسا گام بعدی من برای نزدیک تر شدن به دنیای گوستاو فلوبر نویسندۀ عجیب غریب فرانسوی بود. نویسنده ای عجیب که نویسنده ای عجیب تر در سال های آتی (جولین بارنز) تصمیم می گیرد در چیزی شبیه زندگی نامه او را به هم نسل های خودش معرفی کند. حال چرا گفتم چیزی شبیه زندگی نامه و نه خود آن به معنی دقیق کلمه؟ به این علت که بارنز با جهان بینی خودِ نویسنده اش ما را به فلوبر نزدیک می کند، او به جای اینکه با نگاهی خشک و مقرر و حوصله سربر اتفاقات زندگی فلوبر و افتخاراتش (!) را برایمان بازگو کند شخصیتی می آفریند که روایتگر مسیر خود از شناخت فلوبر است. همانقدر که در این کتاب با دنیای راوی کتاب که پزشک است و عاشق همسرش و درگیری های ذهنی اش آشنا می شویم با گوستاو فلوبر هم آشنا می شویم! خود بارنز از قول راوی اش دیدگاهش به زندگی نامه نویسی را به بهترین شکل در فصل سوم کتاب معرفی کرده است؛ در نوشتن زندگی نامه می توانید تورتان را در دریا می اندازید، تور پر می شود، شما آن را بالا می کشید و صیدتان را دسته بندی می کنید، برخی را به دریا باز می گردانید و برخی را انبار می کنید تا بعدا فیله کنید و بفروشید! طبق نظر بارنز اگر سعی کنید همۀ آنچه را که صید کرده اید استفاده کنید در نهایت محصول نهایی بیانی متبختر و باوقار از زندگیِ فرد مورد نظرتان است. فصل بندی های کتاب می تواند ما را با ذهن انتخاب گر بارنز برای انتخاب موضوعات یا همان صیدها آشنا کند. نامه های مکاتبه شده بین فلوبر و دوستانش و حقایق زندگی اش و درون مایۀ کتاب هایش همگی با سلیقۀ نویسنده ترکیب شده اند تا محصول نهایی تنها ارائۀ خشکی از زندگی فلوبر نباشد بلکه کمترین چیز شبیه به زندگی نامه باشد که درکنار آشنا شدن با فلوبر ما را با دیدگاه نویسنده نسبت به او آشنا می کند. خیر و شر و ارزش «چیز» ها آنگاه بر ما آشکار می شود که از زاویه دید افراد مختلف با این چیزها آشنا شویم!
پی نوشت: دو ترجمه از این کتاب در بازار هست. من ترجمۀ الهام نظری از نشر ماهی را بیشتر توصیه می کنم.

This is now among my Favorite novels.
And you don't need to admire or even have read Flaubert to appreciate it.
It's ingenious: composed of crisp and clear prose, clever, intelligent, literary.
With parrots, crab lice and a five-legged sheep.
Intriguing and at times hilarious -- a light-hearted novel with intellectual heft that's a party between the pages.
Julian Barnes, I bow to what you've done here.
More detailed review to come sometime -- or maybe this is It.


Thanks, Numidica!

I didn't realise that it was a semi- biography until I started reading it and I haven't actually as of yet read anything by Gustave Flaubert, but it was still interesting, I think Julian Barnes is a great writer and some of the stuff he says is amazing

'Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.'- that is from this book.

“We imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when that moment came, our lives- and time itself would speed up. How were we to know that ours lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted?”- from The Sense of an Ending- that was the first book I read by him and made me want to read more.
Yeah so in conclusion I wouldn't say that you have to be very interested or know much about Gustave Flaubert to read this book, but maybe knowing French would be something that would help you seeing as there is a lot of French sayings and such in the book.