‎... با نزدیکانه‌ترین رازگویی‌ها همیشه محدودیت‌هایی است که از شرم بیجا، یا ظرافت، یا ترحم است. نزد دیگری یا خودت به ورطه‌هایی، منجلاب‌هایی برمی‌خوری که از پیش رفتن بازت می‌دارند؛ گو این‌که این را هم می‌دانی که اگر پیش بروی آن یکی درکت نمی‌کند؛ بیان دقیق آنچه بخواهی دشوار است و از همین روست که بندرت می‌توان با کسی تماماً یکی شد.

Flaubert was Kafka's favorite author, and A Sentimental Education his favorite novel. After rereading this book, I think I can understand why. Flaubert's "story of a young man" is the story of a rather witless protagonist and his almost indistinguishable set of friends and lovers, each immersed in her or his illusions, each almost equally stupid (in the phenomenological sense). There is indeed a "sentimental" romance at its heart, which is more or less a disappointment stretching from the first page to the last. There's no redemption; no meaning.

I had to fight myself to finish this book. It wasn't until almost the last sentence of Part II that it captured me. By the end I was delighted with this tale in which nothing really happens, in which no one accomplishes anything – all captured in Flaubert's perfect prose. Here we are at the very end (spoiler alert):

They'd both been failures, the one who'd dreamed of Love and the one who'd dreamed of Power. How had it come about?

"Perhaps it was lack of perseverance?" said Frédéric.

"For you maybe. For me it was the other way round, I was too rigid, I didn't take into account a hundred and one smaller things that are more crucial than all the rest. I was too logical and you were too sentimental."

Then they blamed it on their bad luck, the circumstances, the times in which they'd been born.

The future of such hapless characters is not, as I'd imagined, in Proust (for example) but in Kafka and Beckett.

برای هر تکه‌ی این یادگارهای مقدّس که شکل تن او را به خود می‌گیرند.
«—Vraiment! mais avec moi? bien sûr?»

THIS BOOK. Some of the most consistently astonishing prose I've read - whether decadent all-night parties, violent street battles, or intimate scenes of friendship and love. Exquisite construction + moments of gut-punch emotion. A vibrant and still-modern book about illusions, youth, politics, failure. The artistic equivalent of a $200,000 bottle of wine. Surely one of the greatest novels ever written.

A "sentimental education" means your first love, and if Frédéric’s not careful he isn’t going to learn shit from it. He’s an aimless, pointless little man, slowly failing to do anything whatsoever with his life. He’s in love with his friend’s wife, and you sortof wish they'd bang just so we'd all have something to watch.

“The story or the plot of a novel is quite indifferent to me,” though, Flaubert said. He wanted real life! He’s the champion of realism, the late 1800s movement away from moral lessons and towards the real world. It’s brilliant in Madame Bovary, his first novel. By the time he finished Sentimental Education 12 years later in 1862 he seems to have remembered something crucial about the real world: its plot is a fucking mess.

Frédéric hems and haws about Madame Arnoux, while having affairs with a trio of other women: a courtesan, the girl next door, a different friend’s wife. They have varying levels of intensity and consummation, from one to….maybe six? Frédéric doesn’t go all the way to ten. Will he get anything going with Madame Arnoux? Certainly not if he’s the one who has to do it. He can’t even get a job.

You hear “merciless” about Flaubert a lot, and I appreciate the mercilessness of this picture. There are a lot of dudes like Frédéric in the world, these Cabbage Patch AirPod holders, and Flaubert’s not going to let any of them get away with it.

But this is a book Henry James thought was boring. Called it “a curiosity for a literary museum.” Let that sink in for a minute, right? Henry James! If you're boring Henry James, you have a real problem. I couldn’t keep any of the male characters straight. The character arc is more like dropped spaghetti. And when Flaubert decided to write about the real world, he meant the real world, like not just what actually happens but what actually happened, and that means you’re getting the intricate details of the Insurrection of June 1848, which isn’t even France’s best revolution.

This isn’t France’s best novel about idle rich idiots fucking each other’s spouses, either. That’s Dangerous Liaisons by a mile. This one has its moments, but mostly it feels as aimless as Frédéric. As aimless as real life, even, and if I wanted that I wouldn’t be reading a book, would I?

Best book I read in April 2021

“Yo había creído, cuando llegó la Revolución, que seríamos felices. ¿Se acuerda usted qué hermoso era aquello? ¡Qué bien se respiraba! Pero estamos peor que nunca.”

Esta novela me ha sorprendido mucho. Por una parte, porque hallé en ella más de lo que pensaba encontrarme. Y es que en cada sinopsis que leo casi siempre dice lo mismo: el interés amoroso que persigue Frédéric Moreau, un estudiante de primer año de derecho, hacia la señora Arnoux, una mujer casada, a quien conoce en una embarcación y de quien se enamora instantáneamente; y es verdad, ese es el hilo principal de la novela, pero en parte.

Yo diría que alrededor de la mitad del libro se centra en mostrarnos la situación política, social, y en algunos casos económica y cultural, en la que se encontraba Francia en el periodo en que se desarrolla la obra (desde 1840 hasta la Revolución de 1848 y unos cuantos años posteriores).
Me atrevo a decir, bajo mi punto de vista, que la historia de amor de nuestro protagonista es una excusa para hilar una crítica social, siendo más específico, a la sociedad parisina de dicha época. Una excusa perfecta, en mi opinión, porque cumple con la función de hacer un símil con la realidad que se vivía en esos momentos.

También se tocan puntos que conciernen a la educación superior y la postura de los estudiantes, por ejemplo, la huelga estudiantil, que si me pongo a pensar, los motivos que la provocaban no varían mucho a los que se dan en la actualidad.

Además, Frédéric se encuentra conviviendo entre dos mundos: por un lado hacia ciertas personas que conoce a través del banquero Dambreuse, individuos de la clase privilegiada y con buenas oportunidades; por otro lado, su grupo de amigos y conocidos, en especial Deslauriers, Sénécal, y Hussonnet, quienes tienen un par de ideas que cuestionan la vida y costumbres de los grupos privilegiados y la burguesía.

No es una novela que se lea rápido, incluso en algunas partes me tomaba mi tiempo al leerlas porque tenía que buscar nombres, lugares o simplemente el contexto histórico en el que se estaba dando una situación específica.

Lo que vale totalmente la pena, y la razón por la que Flaubert está entre mis tres autores favoritos, es indudablemente la narrativa. Su manera de escribir, su vasto número de descripciones a través del libro, son en mi opinión, difíciles de superar y la mejor parte de toda la novela. Por ejemplo, en la edición que yo leí hay una página, la 127, en la que Frédéric describe su sentir hacia la señora Arnoux, y desde que leí eso presentí que muy probablemente se convertiría en una de mis mejores lecturas del año.

Asimismo, no puedo permitirme dejar de lado la tercera parte, la que para mí, es la mejor y por sí sola, es la que más nos sitúa en el contexto histórico que gira entorno a nuestros personajes; ahora, siendo más específico, el final del cuarto capítulo, y todo el capítulo cinco... me es imposible describir todo lo que me hicieron sentir, además del sabor agridulce y los ‘pelos de punta’ durante la lectura, pero desde Moby Dick que un par de capítulos no me impactaban tanto.

Por mencionar otro punto, el final me pareció totalmente redondo; no deja ningún hueco sin rellenar, ni siquiera la ‘cabeza de vaca’ (al leerlo sabrán a qué me refiero).

En general, creo que si amaste Madame Bovary, recomiendo leer esta novela (no se parece en nada en cuanto a trama, pero sí comparte similitudes en la escritura). Si no te gustó Madame Bovary —en especial por la manera de estar escrita—, o te fue indiferente, mejor pensarlo dos veces.

P.S. No cabe la menor duda de que tendré que reencontrarme con esta obra dentro de unos cuantos años.

Flaubert said of "L'Education Sentimentale": "I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation; "sentimental" would be more accurate. It is a book of love, of passion; but of desire such as 'it can exist, i.e. inactive ". I find that this paragraph perfectly illustrates the book's idea, namely that Flaubert offers us a book of Passions through this story, and who says Passions also says Suffering.
Indeed, the author sets up a wide range of characters, each more passionate than the other, and this by their actions or their ambitions: whether it is the fiery and sublime Passion between Frédéric Moreau and Mme Arnoux - but also carnal love with Rosanette, or interested with Mme Dambreuse, which nonetheless both remain passionate loves -, or that of Deslauriers for his career and glory, that of Arnoux for Money and Beauty, that of Pilgrim for Art.
But, like the silent and impossible love between the hero and Madame Arnoux, we see that each individual's search for the ideal and happiness is in vain. Moreover, in the novel's last pages, Frédéric and Deslauriers dwell on their past and note their failure: "And they summed up their life. They both missed it, the one who had dreamed of love [ Frédéric], the one who dreamed of power [Deslauriers]."
Not having heard, a priori, that novel's praise by Flaubert, I opened this book with many apprehensions and the fear of being bored during this reading. But it does not. There is nothing in the end! Of course, there are many lengths, but I enjoyed this read despite that. Fans of Flaubert's style will certainly not be disappointed by "L 'Éducation Sentimentale."

The French word for sentiment is "sentiment" (san-tee-mon). So Flaubert is concerned essentially about what a young French man, presumably him, has learned about love and lust, affection and disaffection, friendship and betrayal, loyalty and disloyalty, admiration and disdain, and other sentiments. He writes precisely within the complex pixilist history of a turbulent political era for France as new liberal rights emerge versus the power of kings and their conservative bedfellows. There is blood in the streets of Paris and against this chaotic backdrop we find a macro-view of the turbulent Paris embedded with Flaubert's micro-view of his protagonist, Frederic Moreau. He is an intellectual who has made a complete hash of his love life as he falls into virtually every emotional trap available to a member of his gender. He seeks love affairs with beautiful, married women who admire but are unavailable to him. He seeks wealth through dangerous liaisons with influential, politically connected women who play him. He seeks the company of a woman of the streets who must be with other men in order to make her living. He is a negligent and unwilling father to a child. Despite his affluence and intellect, in matters of love Moreau is completely inept. He repeatedly surrenders to his emotions and loses control of his life. He conducts his personal life so idiotically that I found it difficult to respect Moreau: he is very nearly a complete idiot, in the literal sense of Dostoevsky, who suffers for the failures of his personal life and should. I sense that Flaubert wanted us to like Moreau and perhaps even view him heroically. Neither happened for me in my reading of this great literary masterwork. I do understand that Flaubert wants Moreau to seem all-too-human and find it credible that any man could be susceptible to the sentiments of Moreau. I also find credible that men make mistakes by giving all to the heart as do women. Certainly, as Flaubert reminds us in the title of his literary novel, the lessons of love are instructive despite their pain and etch upon our souls the scars of their teaching. We love and learn, don't we, when feeling drives us excessively to act without regard, foresight or respect for unintended consequences. Flaubert immerses this tale in the politics of his day and if you understand them, all the better. If you don't, then Flaubert wants to school you in them. On a grander scale the common sentiments of one man can be seen to be reflected in the evolution of a nation and its political life for better or worse. How to navigate as only one human within the mass of humanity of one's own civilization also leads Moreau into grand dilemmas that he can't win and traps from which he cannot entirely extricate himself. Again, this is the human condition and there is no better place to experience and observe it than in Paris in the mid-19th century. His view is epic in scope much like Balzac's "Human Comedy" another true literary masterpiece that I can't recommend highly enough. I respect Flaubert and have no doubt that he personally experienced the full range of human sentiment leading to the education reported so eloquently in this literary novel. I just didn't like Moreau although I understand him well. Perhaps, Moreau is like us in so many ways that some of us are incapable of admitting to admiring him. Perhaps, he is simply an anti-hero as Moreau is the penultimate Adam-afer-the-Fall. He is well schooled in the dangerous risks of sentiment but he just can't help himself and he creates so much total chaos in his life every time he succumbs to sentiment. Flaubert in the tone of the French seems so blase about his many colossal moral lapses. I understand Moreau only too well. I see much of myself in him and perhaps so will you. But if you think you can spare yourself by educating yourself in the painful lessons of sentiment of Frederic Moreau, you will be seriously challenged, if you lead a full life, to avoid sentiment as a ruling passion that guides you. If you can see something of yourself from your past in him, so much the better. At a minimum consider yourself well warned by Flaubert: our sentiments drive us to the brink of madness and may well push us over it. You may misunderstand your own sentiment to believe you can fully control it as, despite your best efforts to learn from it, sentiment defines both your character and your destiny. Read this great book.

Además de Dostievski (1821-1881), este año se cumplen 200 años del nacimiento de Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) y aprovechamos para reseñar una de las obras más celebradas del autor francés. El título sugiere un manual de comportamiento afectivo-amoroso-sentimental, sin embargo el relato contiene no solamente elementos de una novela romántica decimonónica, también contiene elementos de una novela histórica, incluso con anécdotas, personajes y episodios reales que se dieron en París en aquellas jornadas de 1848, durante las cuales la población francesa se rebeló contra la monarquía que entonces ostentaba Luis Felipe de Orleans (1773-1850) y que culminó con la formación de la Segunda República Francesa. Estas luchas inspiraron a otros países europeos para derrocar a sus monarquías.

La parte romántica la protagonizan el joven soñador Fréderic Moreau quien lo arriesga todo por conquistar a la señora Arnoux, en este proceso romántico se dan algunos encuentros y un sinnúmero de desencuentros. Para aligerar estos momentos de amargura y frustración, el joven Moreau encuentra consuelo en los brazos de Rosanette, mejor conocida como la Mariscala, y también sueña con otras tentativas románticas con la finalidad de escalar en la sociedad.

Envuelta por una densa atmósfera Flaubertiana, llena de luz y coronada con una especie de aureola poética, la novela se inicia en el año 1840 en París, abarcando varios lustros. El singular estilo del autor circula entre el realismo, el naturalismo y con un toque muy personal que podría tocar lo experimental. Flaubert fue contemporáneo de otros grandes escritores franceses del París del siglo XIX, sabiendo él tomar un lugar especial, constituyéndose en una especie de orfebre del lenguaje. Se dice que era tan perfeccionista que podía tardar varias horas en redondear una sola frase o en escoger la palabra adecuada para quedar satisfecho del todo.

La parte histórica es intensa y emotiva ya que Flaubert sabe describir con exaltación todo el contexto y el ambiente que flotaba en aquel París de 1848 hasta hacérnoslo sentir con viveza. A través de sus personajes, como el socialista Sénécal, el honorable banquero Dambreusse, el bohemio Hussonnet, el abogado Deslauries, el pintor Pellerin, el ciudadano Regimbart y muchos más nos transmite las ideas republicanas enfrentadas a muerte contra las monárquicas. Una vez más presenciamos la eterna lucha social en donde los revolucionarios buscan cambiar el orden de las cosas y los conservadores buscan que todo permanezca igual para seguir siendo los beneficiarios del orden social, todo esto contado con la maestría de Gustave Flaubert.

En medio de estas luchas paralelas, las románticas y las sociales, se desarrolla magníficamente la novela. Sólo un pero en mi edición: la traducción pudo haber estado mejor, leerla en francés debe ser un manjar de los dioses.

Me: I don't like Flaubert.

The Chorus: What?!? What Else? Do you park in handicapped spaces? Do you not wash your hands after using the rest room? Do you chew with your mouth full? Snap your chewing gum? Do you refuse to do the Wave at sporting events? Do you ride in the passing lane even when you're not passing? Did you seriously not watch even a minute of the Kavanaugh Senate hearing? Do you laugh out loud at The Onion? Do you think it's possible the Second Amendment may be read too broadly by some? Do you stop watching Sports Center during the NBA season? Have you ever had more than 12 items in your basket in an express check-out line? DID YOU, SIR, VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP???

Me: I just don't like Flaubert.

Notes:

1. A beautiful book. Highly readable and gratifying. Too much description, but that was a convention of Flaubert’s day. The book is full of history, the abortive Revolution of 1848, the rise and fall of the French Second Republic and so on. The story of Frederic Moreau himself is the faux-biographical thread that ties it all together.

2. The Alhambra sequence here is reminiscent in the phantasmagoric “Nighttown” chapter in Ulysses. James Joyce knew Sentimental Education well. A later costume ball echoes the Alhambra scene, and it’s just as wild, just as frenetic. In other ways, in how it deals with the tribulations of Frederic’s desire, the book reminds me of Knut Hamsun’s Pan. At one point he’s running between three women — not unlike the protagonist of Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s Enemies: A Love Story. Love is mad.

3. Frederic Moreau has been pining away for years for Madame Arnoux, the wife of a wealthy gallerist. He earns his law license but after five years gives up. He admits that Madame Arnoux is unattainable. Much disappointment arises from his low income. He cannot remain on the same playing field as the Arnouxs if he is poor. He moves back to his mother’s house in the provinces. He takes walks with a four-year-old girl. His hygiene starts to go. He loses touch with his Paris friends, especially Deslauriers, with whom he had shared boyhood dreams. But then, when all hope is lost, he receives an enormous inheritance from his sourpuss uncle. Everything changes, so he feels.

Yet Madame Arnoux is out of his reach. She’s a good woman. He’ll never have her. He presses on making strange plans to further ingratiate himself and make him look even more pathetic. M. Arnoux starts borrowing money from Frederic. Strangely, our hero traipses about with the husband, the man he’s trying to cuckold, and is a witness to some of his extramarital affairs. Meanwhile Frederic remains a virgin. They’re being nothing to indicate he’s ever had a woman. Interestingly other characters can claim relationships with available women.

4. This novel uses Paris in the same way Woody Allen uses New York in his films. Here’s one colorful passage. It occurs when Frederic, flush with his legacy, is returning to Paris impatient to see Madame Arnoux.

“They stopped a good while at the city gate, for it was blocked by poultry-farmers, carriers, and a flock of sheep. The sentry, his hood thrown back, walked up and down in front of his box to keep warm. The toll-clerk clambered on to the top of the coach, and a fanfare on a coronet rang out. They went down the boulevard at a brisk trot with swingle-bars rattling and traces flying. The thong of the long whip crackled in the damp air. The guard gave his ringing shout: ‘Look sharp there! Hullo!’ And crossing-sweepers stood aside, passersby jumped out of the way, and mud splashed against the windows. They passed wagons, carriages, and omnibuses, and finally reached the iron gate of the Jardin des Plantes.” (p. 115)

When Frederic returns to Paris he finds the Arnouxs in reduced circumstances. All the luxury and grandeur have gone. The husband‘s gallery has failed and he now lives with his family above his pottery shop; this as opposed to his former gallery “just beyond the rue Monmartre,” the family home in rue de Choiseul, and the country place in Saint-Cloud. Madame Arnoux is dressed with a simplicity Frederic has never seen before.

5. At times Flaubert’s description becomes cloying in its excess; a writer today could suffice with ten percent of it, if that. These descriptive flights are the only bits where one feels oneself slogging through.

6. This novel was published in 1869 and one thing is clear, capitalism has not changed, except perhaps in the variety of its cons. Frederic’s position in uneasy; he is at heart not social, and yet he is condemned to negotiate so-called high society. He’s such a timid little man. Everyone’s robbing him blind. When failed bomber Sénécal is released from Sainte-Pélagie for lack of evidence, Dusardiers gives a party in his flat to celebrate; it’s here that Flaubert eviscerates the socialist, ostensibly pro-Republic, mindset. The monarchists don’t come out much better; everyone gets it in the neck.

So eventually, at a restaurant, Madame Armoux’s honor is besmirched; Frederick throws a plate at Viscount Cisy, the besmircher, and a particularly hilarious duel ensues in the Bois de Boulogne. The duel is called with off when Cisy faints under pressure and accidentally cuts himself with the knife with which he was to have fought Frederic. Too funny. When Madame Arnoux learns about the duel she realizes she loves Frederic. They then enter upon a difficult platonic friendship; difficult because of their physical lust for each other. And who hasn’t at some time in life been in such a fix, forswearing sex for friendship? It’s utter torture.

7. It’s impressive how adroitly Flaubert incorporates the 1848 Revolution — also known as the February Revolution it ended the July Monarchy and led to the brief French Second Republic — into the narrative. It corroborates for the most part what I had recently read in Pages from the Goncourt Journals. The revolution begins, however, on the very day Frederic was to have taken Madame Arnoux to a love nest he had designed presumptuously without her consent. She never shows. Frederic is humiliated and angry. In something like retaliation he picks up the Marshall, a prostitute, and takes her to the love nest prepared for Madam Arnoux. This is Frederic’s first sexual experience; he is 28 or 29.

8. We watch Frederic enter the Imperial palace as it’s vandalized by the “common people.” Frederic is encouraged to stand for office by M. Dambreuse, an arch monarchist who hopes to control him in that role. Frederic prepares a speech and goes to deliver it at a ribald meeting. He steps up to speak and is called an aristocrat by his erstwhile friend, Sénécal, a sociopathic “revolutionary” who has him booed into the street. It’s hard to know what the gathering’s true purpose is since it’s such a zoo. For example, before Frederic is sent away, “A man in a cassock, with crinkly hair and a peevish expression, had already put up his hand. He mumbled that his name was Ducretot, and that he was a priest and an agronomist, the author of a work entitled Manure. He was advised to join a horticultural society.” (p. 329)

9. The street names and place names and palace names of Flaubert‘s day have for the most part not changed and can be easily looked up, but then many nineteeth century books are “illustrated” for us in this way.

10. The coda is lovely.

On reviendra sur L'Éducation sentimentale, on en comprendra l'étonnante profondeur, dans la monotonie apparente. Je le dis encore, il n'y a pas dans notre littérature une œuvre qui ait à ce degré le son de la vérité, pas une qui offre un magasin plus vaste de documents humains. Et de là, l'intérêt constant, l'inépuisable émotion, le charme douloureux de cette lecture. Nous ne sommes peut-être encore que quelques-uns qui connaissons cette source, et c'est pourquoi je la signale à toute notre jeunesse. On aime la vérité en lisant un pareil livre, on en comprend la force, on se dit qu'elle seule existe et qu'elle seule fait le génie.
tttttEmile Zola Le Voltaire, 9 décembre 1879


"Here the form and method are the same as in Madame Bovary; the studied skill, the science, the accumulation of material, are even more striking; but the book is in a single word a dead one. Madame Bovary was spontaneous and sincere; but to read its successor is, to the finer sense, like masticating ashes and sawdust. L'Education Sentimentale is elaborately and massively dreary. That a novel should have a certain charm seems to us the most rudimentary of principles, and there is no more charm in this laborious monument to a treacherous ideal than there is interest in a heap of gravel."
ttttttHenry James – French Poets and Novelists (1904)

Is it possible to agree with both Henry James and Emile Zola’s evaluations of L'Éducation sentimentale? I quote the conflicting opinions of two great novelists about Flaubert’s work to express my own ambivalence towards a remarkable, but often frustrating novel.
It’s easy enough to rate and review books that one either likes or dislikes. But how does one deal with a work that is beautifully written, meticulously structured, intriguing and sometimes enchanting, while at the same time off-putting and infuriating? At the heart of the matter is the novel’s protagonist, Frédéric Moreau.
L'Éducation sentimentale is often referred to as a bildungsroman. Typically, such novels are coming of age stories focused on the psychological and moral development of the protagonist. Protagonists in this genre are almost always dynamic. However, Frédéric Moreau’s character is flat, static or negative; he doesn’t improve with age, he just gets older. The novel begins in 1840, when he is eighteen, and ends almost thirty years later. From beginning to end, Frédéric remains obsessed with Mme Arnoux, an older married woman he meets by chance encounter on a steamboat.
Frédéric is egotistical in the extreme. The most irritating example of Frédéric’s personality is his fixation on Mme Arnoux. His years-long obsession is infuriating, but consistent with his Narcissistic personality. For much of the novel, she's an idée fixe buzzing around like a fly in Frédéric's brain. However, Flaubert shows great skill in slowly revealing the real woman behind Frédéric mental construct.
Frédéric is a young man of good family (his maternal grandfather was a count). The family fortune is reduced following his father’s death in a duel. A fortuitous inheritance from an uncle allows Frédéric to pursue a life of idleness and pleasure in Paris. He becomes the quintessential flaneur of the period, a type from Flaubert’s generation that the author mocks throughout the novel. Having failed his law school examination, Frédéric dabbles in art and politics, talks about entering the diplomatic service, and so forth. He parrots the opinions of others without having any firm convictions or principles of his own. His main occupations in life involve the furnishing and decoration of a lavish Paris apartment, wearing the most fashionable clothes, eating, drinking, attending the theater, the racecourse, parties and balls and of course chasing women. He also enters into M. Arnoux’s circle of friends for the main purpose of gaining access to Mme Arnoux.
M. Arnoux is a philandering dilletante, a painter turned art dealer and publisher of a magazine devoted to the arts. When that business fails, he switches to pottery manufacturing, and in the end, following lawsuits and bankruptcy, he peddles religious objects. His coterie is a mixed bag of mediocrities, sycophants and poseurs. Frédéric retains his own small clique from his Latin Quarter student days including Hussonnet, a shifty Bohemian journalist; de Cisy, an empty-headed, foppish aristocrat, and Dussadier, an honest, Republican working man who seems out of place in this group.
Charles Deslauriers is Frédéric’s BFF and important enough to the storyline to be considered a second protagonist. But as with all the relationships in the novel, there is something warped and twisted in the friendship. Charles is the son of an abusive ex-Captain in Napoleon’s army. An ambitious social-climber, Charles attaches himself to Frédéric like a limpet, calculating that the friendship will provide openings to a higher social sphere. Unlike Frédéric, Charles succeeds in law school, but he grows frustrated when his legal career doesn’t take off as he expected. As France moves towards revolution, Charles associates with radicals while envying the upper-class, including his best friend. Among other things, Charles desires Frédéric’s women, including the illusive Mme Arnoux, whom he wrongly assumes is Frédéric’s mistress. As a consequence of his envy, Charles is not above stabbing his pal in the back on more than one occasion.
The novel contains much period detail, including compelling scenes from the 1848 Revolution based on Flaubert’s first-hand experience. There is plenty of sharp social and political satire although much of the dark humor will be lost on readers unfamiliar with the history. There is also a beautifully written romantic interlude in which Frédéric and his mistress, the popular courtesan Rosannete, journey to Fontainebleau to temporarily escape the turmoil in Paris.
Most of the novel’s action ends in 1852 with the fall of the Second Republic and the rise of the Second Empire under Napoleon III. The last two brief chapters reveal the fate of the characters over a period of fifteen years.
The final chapter contains a dialogue between Frédéric and Charles that sums up the novel; it’s a story of failure.
“They had both failed in their objects the one who dreamed only of love, and the other of power. What was the reason of this?
“’Tis perhaps on account of not having taken up the proper line,” said Frederick. “In your case that may be so. I, on the contrary, have sinned through excess of rectitude, without giving due weight to a thousand secondary things more important than any. I had too much logic, and you too much sentiment.” Then they blamed luck, circumstances, the epoch at which they were born.”
This summation I believe provides the reasoning behind Henry James’s critique when he called the novel “dead” and stated “there is no more charm in this laborious monument to a treacherous ideal than there is interest in a heap of gravel.”
Is the novel without a “certain charm” as James said? Zola, who approved of the novel provided an answer. He referred to the novel’s “charme douloureux”, a painful charm. I believe Zola gave Flaubert credit for his commitment to truth and a realistic portrayal of wasted lives. I agree with Zola on that account. But I also agree with James; the “painful charm” of this novel can be “elaborately and massively dreary.”