Three Tales made me forgive Flaubert for Madame Bovary, and it may perhaps even make me reread Madame Bovary someday. All three stories are wonderful.

squawk squawk i'm a parrot squawk squawk

Interessant, als Einblick in diese sehr andere Schreibidee des Autors.

As I age, it becomes clearer to me that Flaubert is my Northern Star*. Some may quibble with his emphasis on style; have fun with that. The man was unnaturally incapable of writing a sentence that doesn't curl my toes. Herein find three delightful examples of the Master working at the religious through very different lenses. "St. Julian" still taketh the fondue, however. Bear in mind I am someone predisposed to loathe the short form, but I prance and fawn over these tales.

Flaubert. Beckett. Pychon. Markson: these may very well constitute my personal Gospels.

(*it may not be coincidence that my daughter is called 'Gus' and/or 'Güst,' but one may never know.)

He hated her of course, but he knew that she would give him courage, and the spell she had laid on him in the past was not entirely broken.

I've 'read' this before and I've 'read' Madame Bovary before....but I read them, really, for the first time this year...one of my friends holds Flaubert in his personal pantheon and, in an intellectual way...ugh, I wanted to see what Flaubert did/ what makes him unique/ blah blah blah....well, I read this and I just know that it's one of the very best collections of novellas I've ever read, shorts whatever you want to call them...I was too drawn. in to notice the writing, which IS sort of the point...it is the quiet life of
Felicitè, the furious but faithful Julian, the machinations of Herodias....I didn't notice Flaubert at all. I have many images/ impressions that I will use as a sort of armor that I didn't have before; I pick them out of my brain and go "oh, yeah...fucking life is occasionally horrible but at least we all have our parrots and not much else matters."

With due respect monsieur Flaubert, mais non!
Jumping from one topic to the next almost on every paragraph and literary unrelated… non, non, non monsieur!

Chacun de ces contes est un joyau ciselé, mais je crois que ma préférence va à La légende de saint Julien l'Hospitalier. Flaubert dit s'être inspiré d'un vitrail pour raconter cette histoire, et c'est vraiment l'impression que j'ai ressentie à la lecture : un mélange exquis de simplicité et de sophistication, des couleurs transparentes qui appartiennent à la fois à notre monde et à un ailleurs. On peut créer des contes à toutes les époques.

την πρώτη ιστορία την έχω ξαναδιαβάσει. Νομίζω ήταν η καλύτερη από τις τρεις.

My first Flaubert and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The first story has a very surprising ending that Flaubert insisted wasn't ironic, though it could easily have been one of devastating irony, but was tender. I believe him. But in fact it can work on both levels equally. The second story is violent to the point of proto-surrealism, a blood-soaked fable about death and piety. The third story was my least favourite but still very notable. I am glad that I had finally read Flaubert and repaired a gap in my literary education.

My edition has the same cover, but is a hardbound wee thing from 1961/Penguin Classics. It was originally a paperback, and was converted to a more durable hardbound by(I assume) the library which now possesses it. A inter-library loan from(originally) Gorham State Teachers College here in Maine, now known as USM/University of Southern Maine. Time for something a bit more elevated, classics-wise.

1 - "A Simple Heart" - great story that's been movie-ized at least once. Typically detached and modern-sounding. Felicite' is a close cousin to the bewildered old peasant lady from the country fair in "Madame Bovary."

2 - "The Legend of St Julian Hospitator" - I realized pretty quickly that I'd read this one before. I have no more idea now that when I read it the first time what the point is. I suppose that the key to understanding(if such exists) lies in the very last line. It tosses a bit of a realist chill of the preceding craziness.

3 - "Herodias" - This one was pretty entertaining, if a bit of a confusing muddle to one who is not at all versed in Biblical/Middle East history around the time of Christ. An easy label for the genre this fits into is Biblical/historical fiction. It tells the story of how the title lady got revenge against John the Baptist for saying some nasty things about her. He was a mouthy, rabble-rousing fanatic, apparently. A sort of pre-Jesus figure. Overall a pungent picture of the political/cultural times in Jerusalem/Palestine about 10 B.C.E. give or take. The very last bit has that nice Flaubert ironic touch.

- An easy 4* for this one. No matter the overall literary value, Flaubert is just fun to read.

I was surprised at the number of biblical references in these stories though I probably shouldn’t have been given Flaubert’s time and place. He lived in a Catholic country during a religious era. I’ve read lots of contemporaneous Victorian fiction and though the Brits throw in many bible tie Flaubert out does them. In ‘A Simple Heart’ Felicite is goodness incarnate seeking only to love without seeming to need anything more than an other for which to care. She’ll even settle for inanimate objects as long as they evoke someone or something. ‘St. Julien’ was harder for me to enjoy. Apparently in order for him to become a saint he had to first be very, very bad. After enough blood is splashed about he realizes how wrong he’s been and becomes good through loving someone ‘despicable’. My favorite story of the three was ‘Herodias’. The Middle East of John the Baptist and his nemesis Salome’s time was just as tumultuous as today. The story felt immediate and alive.