George Steiner brought me here που λέμε και στο χωριό, όταν αναλύοντας το φαντασιακό του 19ου αιώνα στη Δύση ανέφερε την Σαλαμπώ ως παράδειγμα της φρίκης και του θανάτου που λάνθανε κάτω από την ευμάρεια και την αισιοδοξία που τα τεχνολογικά επιτεύγματα έφεραν στον ευρωπαϊκό χώρο εκείνη τη περίοδο.

Και πράγματι το αίμα ρέει άφθονο σε αυτό το ιστορικό μυθιστόρημα του Φλωμπέρ, προϊόν κοπιώδους μελέτης και συγγραφής. Στρατιωτικοί ελιγμοί, φονικές μάχες, δολοπλοκίες και στο βάθος ένας τραγικός έρωτας συνθέτουν το πλαίσιο του βιβλίου με τη γραφή του Φλωμπέρ να κάνει την αφήγηση κινηματογραφική.

Ο Μαρτιν πρέπει να το χει διαβάσει και 10 φορές :)

“Al diablo la arqueología”, decía Flaubert sobre esta novela. Su pretensión de ficción arrollaba no solo esta ciencia sino la propia Historia, según algunos críticos de la época. Pero Flaubert no estaba ahí, él ya había pasado la barrera del tiempo y quería dejar su propio tiempo (1862), al que consideraba deplorable, para sumergirse en el pasado a través de la antigua Cartago y la Primera Guerra Púnica, específicamente la guerra de los Mercenarios, quienes se sublevaron contra Cartago por no haber recibido el pago prometido. Pero su prosa abundante y a veces hasta cruda podría llevarle a ser, en realidad, un adelantado a su tiempo.

Y es que esta “novela” fue considerada un fracaso en su tiempo. Flaubert venía ya de una polémica con Madame Bovary, y parecería, por lo que dicen las cartas y réplicas incluidas en este volumen, que debía dedicarse a defender su obra con extensas explicaciones de su fidelidad e infidelidad histórica en esta obra a la que se le acusaba de no ser una novela o, menos aún, una novela histórica. Lo cierto es que al leerla con ojos actuales, nada de esos grandes detalles importa, pues lo que realmente sobresale de Salambó es su estilo. Un estilo que sería el opuesto total a Madame Bovary, lleno de pomposidad, a veces rimbombacia, excesivo, altamente descriptivo y exquisito. Y eso también se le reprochó, pero en la Francia del siglo XIX. Hoy podemos leer esta obra sin ver en realidad ninguna petulancia, y entenderla como una ficción con base histórica (no en vano Flaubert se dedicó cinco años a investigar sus fuentes, sobre todo Polibio) que introduce un ritmo innovador en el relato histórico y novelado. Este ritmo que parecería ralentizar la acción, en realidad es el motor de la acción, que está revestido de imágenes salidas de un imaginario literario-histórico documental, el cual el autor toma de los autores e historiadores clásicos griegos y latinos, pero que los hace pasar por el filtro de su propia imaginación.

Y es así como se construye Salambó. Casi a partir de una anécdota histórica que es atravesada por la ficción en forma de una historia de amor. Amor trunco. Vencedores y vencidos. Salambó es la hija (ficticia) de Amílcar (líder cartaginés), de quien Mato (líder de los mercenarios) se enamora y ella, al parecer también le corresponde. Pero todo esto en medio del barullo producido por la inminente guerra y el despliegue extravagante de los ejércitos y soldados (incluidos camellos, elefantes y caballos) y la verdadera carnicería que se desata, la cual es descrita con puntillosidad por Flaubert, misma que contiene imágenes casi parecidas a las de una película de terror actual, o de body horror. El robo del velo de Tanit (la diosa protectora de Cartago) por parte de Mato, desatará una empresa paralela a la guerra. Finalmente, la diosa del velo robado decidirá el destino de los protagonistas.

Una novela con una prosa finamente trabajada (no en vano Flaubert quería morir y luego vivir mientras la escribía), deslumbrante, que quizás no ha sido valorada en su real dimensión (no lo fue en su tiempo, aunque ahora ha crecido en valor). La he leído por ser una de las inspiraciones de Cârtârescu para escribir su novela Theodoros, lo cual es evidente al leerla, pues las descripciones de las batallas, la prosa y el ritmo en sí tienen mucho que ver, aunque, como con todas sus influencias, Cârtârescu toma una parte de este estilo y lo amplía y combina con su propia pluma. Exactamente lo mismo que hizo Flaubert con todas sus influencias greco-latinas. Y así es como crece la literatura.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree...

Whenever I come across the opening phrase of Coleridge's famous poem, the cadences transport me into his exotic creation instantly. The fabled general, Kubla Khan, appears before me sumptuously enthroned in his pleasure palace - and because I've read enough nineteenth century writers who've travelled a little to know they automatically associate the exotic with the erotic, I'm never surprised when a few lines later, Coleridge introduces an Abyssinian maid, a damsel with a dulcimer, the memory of whom remains with the poet long after both she and her song have disappeared.

C'était à Mégara faubourg de Carthage dans les jardins d'Hamilcar...

The opening line of Salammbô reminded me of Coleridge immediately - there's a similar sonority and cadence. I had no sooner read that first line than I was imagining Hamilcar's palace in Mégara as a splendiferous pleasure dome, and I was well primed for the arrival of a damsel with a dulcimer to the great military feast that is taking place in the pleasure gardens of the palace. As it turns out, the maid who promptly appears is Phoenician rather than Abyssinian, but Salammbô, daughter of General Hamilcar, is the embodiment of the erotic:
She advanced into the avenue of cypress, and walked slowly through the tables of the captains, who drew back somewhat as they watched her pass. Her hair, which was powdered with violet sand, and combined into the form of a tower, after the fashion of the Chanaanite maidens, added to her height. Tresses of pearls were fastened to her temples, and fell to the corners of her mouth, which was as rosy as a half-open pomegranate. On her breast was a collection of luminous stones, their variegation imitating the scales of the murena. Her arms were adorned with diamonds, and issued naked from her sleeveless tunic, which was starred with red flowers on a perfectly black ground. Between her ankles she wore a golden chainlet to regulate her steps, and her large dark purple mantle, cut of an unknown material, trailed behind her, making, as it were, at each step, a broad wave which followed her...No one as yet was acquainted with her. It was only known that she led a retired life, engaged in pious practices. Some soldiers had seen her in the night on the summit of her palace kneeling before the stars amid the eddyings from kindled perfuming-pans. It was the moon that had made her so pale, and there was something from the gods that enveloped her like a subtle vapour. Her eyes seemed to gaze far beyond terrestrial space. She bent her head as she walked, and in her right hand she carried a little ebony lyre...

Salammbô's story is set in the third century BC, in the city of Carthage, which is today a suburb of Tunis on the Mediterranean coast. The feast that is taking place in the opening scene has been arranged by the Carthaginians as a reward for the mercenary soldiers who aided the city in the Punic wars against the Romans. However, the mercenaries need to be paid for their services as well as fêted with food and drink, and the failure of Carthage to pay them results in the mercenaries besieging the city. The seige is complicated by the fact that one of the mercenary leaders became entranced with Salammbô as she walked among them at the feast. The memory of the maid remains with him long after she and her lyre have disappeared from his sight.

Flaubert had visited Tunis and read Polybius' Histories as well as everything else he could find about the Punic wars, so the bones of this story are true and accurate; there really was a conflict between the mercenaries and the city, and it was long and bloody. What Flaubert does is to dramatise it in his own sumptuous style. His language is very visual, and like Coleridge, it sometimes seems as if he might have been under the influence of some powerful opiate while composing the episodes of the story. I imagined him writing this book in his isolated study in Normandy - a modern-day Saint Anthony in the desert, constantly beset by tortured and exotic visions. It wasn't hard to imagine him as Saint Anthony because Flaubert's first adult work was a dramatization of the temptations visited on the third century hermit in which the young author listed every imaginable vision that the unfortunate saint might have dreamt up - and there are definite parallels between the two books, especially in the detail of the descriptions. Flaubert writes as if he were an orientalist painter such as Ingres or Chassériau - his words convey the same heady atmosphere as their paintings. But I wasn't tempted to find images to match his descriptions - as I was while reading L'éducation sentimentale. In fact, I've looked at several paintings depicting Salammbô, including the one on the cover of the French edition, but none of them match the image I have of her from reading Flaubert's words. I'm finally convinced of what Flaubert himself maintained: the words should be enough.

I'd like to have included more of his words in this review but I can't because half way through reading Salammbô, I mislaid it. I read the second half in English on an ereader - I couldn't find an electronic version in French. I was grateful to have been able to finish the book but at the same time, I regretted the switch of language - I much preferred reading Flaubert in French. His long sentences, full of successions of clauses, have a rhythm that must be a huge challenge for a translator. But it's also true that the second half of this book, mostly relating the series of battles between the Carthaginians and the mercenaries, is much more of a page turner than the first half so that it matters less to read it in another language. Just as the Carthaginians finally overpower the mercenaries, the plot finally overpowers the style. By the end, I was glad to have done with this very violent story, but sorry to have done with Flaubert. Now that I've finished Salammbô, I've nothing left to read but his letters.

Carthage holds a certain fascination for me, as a classics scholar, in that it was an empire of power, influence, and grand personalities--and yet the legacy Carthage has left to us, her history, her culture were deliberately erased, burned to the ground with nary a trace remaining, and then replaced with the politicized fictions of Rome, who destroyed her, followed in her footsteps, and replaced her. The shadow of Carthage looms large across the ancient world, but she is always a shadow: dark, unknowable, menacing, cloaked in rumor. Her real presence, her real character still remain unknown to us.

Some things we do know: that she was a colony of Phoenicians who became a power in their own right, the figures of Hanno the navigator, Hannibal the general, and some other greats, mostly sprung from the grand Barca line. Yet our knowledge is always filtered through Roman eyes, Roman words--to the point that the great Roman cultural epic, Virgil's Aeneid, personifies Carthage in the figure of Dido: the angry, jilted lover intent on preventing Rome's ever being born. In the end, warmongering Cato's oft-repeated line Carthago delenda est--'Carthage must be destroyed'--was followed to the letter.

In preparation for this book, the follow-up to his acknowledged masterpiece of psychological Realism, Madame Bovary, Flaubert spent months researching, burying himself in ancient histories, trying to recover the lost empire--even visiting its former site. One can see the fruits of his labors in the book's mostly delightful details--which at their best evoke the poetic list-making of Ovid or Milton--while at other times, they run to the banal, as a certain lengthy explanation of the difference between the catapult and the ballista.

There is definitely a sense that Flaubert is working more in the milieu of history here, not melodrama--which is unfortunate, because the story cries out to be told with pathos and character, to be sung. We're never allowed into the characters, psychologically--instead of seeing their thoughts develop toward the moment of decision, Flaubert sticks us with mere descriptions of what has happened. What a Shakespearean performance this might have been--full of contentious dialogues, arguments, coercions, seductions--I longed to see these grand figures strutting the stage, demonstrating their mastery, their force of personality, their depth of emotion. It's no wonder that luminaries like Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff tried to craft operas from the tale.

Without these passionate struggles, these subtle turns and manipulations, the entire melodrama grows ever more flat, preconceived, inevitable. Yet, as the author, himself wrote:
n  

"I would give the demi-ream of notes I've written during the last five months and the ninety-eight volumes I've read, to be, for only three seconds, really moved by the passion of my heroes."

n
Sometimes, alas, the work simply does not come together as we wish it might--as indeed we know that it can, for that is what draws an artist to the project in the first place: his sure knowledge that there is a story here worth telling, and the reader surely comes away with that same impression, that there is fertile ground here.

The bloody anecdotes--especially an early one about the crucifixion of a full-grown lion--are rife with opportunity for symbolism, for multilayered writing, if only it had all come together. If only. They do not work as pure history--Flaubert lacks that scholarly depth and breadth, for all his researches--but neither can he quite turn them to an artistic purpose.

In the end, the most interesting way to view the work--and indeed, likely the reason it failed--is as a grand piece of Orientalism. We do not quite get Carthage-as-Carthage, but neither do we get Carthage-as-France. Instead, we get a distancing, a view of Carthage as unknowable, as impossible to sympathize with--that same distance that the Orientalist stance was constructed to produce.

It is either fitting or ironic that we end up here, since in many ways, Carthage-by-way-of-Rome is the original example of the Orientalist posture: the foreign power is destroyed, conquered, converted, and then rewritten by the conqueror as self-justification. The voice of Carthage, its power and influence was so great that Rome had to reduce it, to transform it into something less threatening--even as Rome dutifully copied both the technology and the methods which Carthage established as the necessities of the first true maritime trade empire to dominate the Mediterranean.

Aeneas is not merely a snub to Carthage, after all--but also an attempt by Rome to rewrite Persian greatness into their empire, which was always more Cult of the God King than Rhetoric of the Demos--then, in the wake of the Renaissance and the Reconquista, the European powers once again take on the Roman cause and identity, intent on making an abused lover of Islam, which had so long dominated and loomed over them. For France, Algeria became the colonial site where they most fully explored the perverse decadence that is the ruler's right--at the same time blaming the natives for whatever was inflicted upon them, through the standard process of Orientalist distancing--a process we still use to this day, insisting that any group who cannot prevent themselves from being dominated must, in some way, be asking to be so dominated.

The most extreme example of alienation and vilification crafted by the Romans against the Carthaginians is the Tophet--a site where, it was claimed, infants were sacrificed to the brutal gods as offerings to stave off defeat, disease, and blight. Flaubert repeats this accusation in the most florid and merciless way, as the blood-mad crowd gives up child after child to the mechanized maw of their titanic idol. Recent archaeological study suggests that the Tophet was used for interring the numerous stillbirths and victims of high infant mortality in the ancient world.

Though clearly influential on adventure writers like Haggard, Kipling, and Mundy, Flaubert does not quite achieve the rollicking pace that make those stories enjoyable. Neither can he deliver upon the wild personalities which might have carried the tale as a proper melodrama--the required psychological distance between himself as a French citizen and the necessarily depraved East is too vast a gulf for authorial sympathies to bridge. Neither can it quite be called a history--it is rather too close and personal, too invested in the blood and depravity for its own sake to maintain more objective judgment.

Perhaps Melville--if anyone--could have melded these disparate types of story, through extended symbolism and precisely-constructed moments into a tale that managed, ultimately, to hang together and surpass the mere sum of assembled parts. In the end Flaubert, despite his particular skills and the time he invested, could not.

You pass beneath the intimidating portcullis and enter the museum called Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert. It is an awesome edifice and you are duly awed. So ornate, so steeped in olden times and ancient ways, so stylish in its baroque Orientalism. The first gallery amazes you. It describes a feast for barbarians in the halcyon days of old Carthage. Such a feast, such sights to behold! A feast for the senses: your mind comes alive to witness the wonders there, the luscious imagery, the dreamy atmosphere, the foreboding and the mystery, all of the tiny, exquisite details. It feels so lush, so decadent. You imagine yourself there, in Carthage, eavesdropping on the magnetic barbarians and the dissolute Carthaginians, guessing at the troubles that will come, noting the tensions between that virile, unwashed horde and their greedy, sinister employers... they shall not be allies for long. There is war on the horizon! You see the virgin priestess Salammbô of Carthage and the men who are the architects of that great battle - the wily slave Spendius and the lovestruck commander Mathos. You will surely be enchanted by this museum and the many tales it has to tell.

At first, the pleasures remain. The details! The fabulous lushness of it all! But slowly, gradually... your opinions change. You find your enthusiasm waning, you become circumspect when considering this museum. Gallery after gallery details battle after battle. Atrocity after atrocity. You can scarcely take it all in. Names upon names, nations upon nations, weaponry and couture and religious ceremonies, the details, the details. Lists upon lists. You love lists but you find yourself losing focus. There is no human anchor there to keep you entranced; the priestess, the barbarians, the Carthaginians, all - save the Greek slave Spendius and the Carthaginian general Hamilcar - are frustratingly flimsy creations. Perhaps "flimsy" is not the right word... they are operatic creations but they are hollow, all gesture and bombast with no shading, no mystery. They are cartoonish figures. And so what you are left with are the lists of battles, of movements in the field. You are left with atrocities beyond belief, to men and to women alike. To children: oh, such a slaughter of children. To animals: mutilated elephants, crucified lions, the dog of a blind woman casually slain. The museum is an Ode to Atrocity, elaborate and winding, a new atrocity at every turn, atrocities that you have never imagined, vividly described, atrocities that no doubt took place many times in the annals of history. Can atrocity become boring? The lists, the atrocities... they begin to inspire fatigue.

You leave the museum with some relief. There is much to admire there, you do acknowledge that. It is an impressive achievement! But, eventually, a tedious one as well.

A Master at Work.

If the great Renaissance masters have literary counterparts (of any era), Flaubert takes a leading role as their equal within his own craft.

Having read Sentimental Education (but not Madame Bovary), I had no doubts about Flaubert's literary skill, but there was some latent skepticism about his ability to transfer it to the realm of historical fiction. Which is why, although I'm a fan of the genre, I put off reading Salambo as long as I did.

Flaubert's descriptions of mighty Carthage draw you in within the first two pages. You're not reading so much as observing, with Flaubert's expert eye, the detail on a beautifully vivid canvas. However, where the first chapter, "The Feast", offers somewhat classical renaissance fare reminiscent of a Veronese, "Moloch", and most chapters depicting siege or battle, offer the fury of Rubens along with the disquieting nature of Hieronymus Bosch.

By the end of the book, the latter images dominate the pages. I recalled Homer's depiction of the battles in the Iliad but Flaubert's breadth of research and seemingly unending source material quickly surpassed these, both in quantity and quality, but also in their brutality.

It's not only the way Flaubert describes his scenes in such vivid tones that make Salambo a spectacular novel though. It's also his ability to depict the events that occurred thousands of years ago as, somehow, contemporary. Through Salambo, Hamilcar, Spendius, and Matho (and every other character), he demonstrates that human nature at its best - and worst - is entirely unchanged in its extreme volatility. The desires that drive us, our deepest fears, the blurred lines between wants and needs paint the story of humanity, no matter the context.

When I finally put the book down, I couldn't help noting that Flaubert, ever the artist, has also done the work of director, cinematographer, and set designer, and that this could be the most epic of cinematic epics. But, mere mortals cannot rise to the standards he has set.

When I finished the last page, i could not think at "The Story of the eye", the very daring novel of Georges Bataille. "Salammbô" is a very daring novel and the detailed informations and descriptions that Flaubert produces are sometimes very hard to take.
However, Bataille's book left me with a good feeling. Flaubert's novel showed me again how cruel is the man deep inside. Even if we are now inhibited by cultural development, the man is deep down a beast capable of more cruelty than the most cruel animal.
"Madam Bovary" is an asthonishing novel (oh Emma !!!!!). Here Flaubert challenged himself with a completely different thema and he succeded gloriously.
The love story is somehow intertwined but it is not the major plot in the story. However the few moments love are really tender and as the whole novel very lively presented.
The major characters in the story are the masses - the people of Karthago, the armies. The short sentences which are perfectly written by Flaubert create a very lively feeling and is the only way to describe such complex characters as a mass of people.

One star fell because the ending was too abrupt. After a very difficult long chapter about the battle over Karthago and sacrifices of children, the last two chapters were somehow too long. Like the climax haf been reached, the rest what followed was for me not of interest anymore. And after that the abrupt end. I wanted some sort of a better ending after this horror novel - but that is just me intoxicated with hollywood and netflix.

This is a great historical novel. but not for light-hearted, not for people who get easily engrossed.

"I would give the demi-ream of notes I've written during the last five months and the ninety-eight volumes I've read, to be, for only three seconds, really moved by the passion of my heroes."- Flaubert on writing Salammbo

Un autre chef-d’œuvre de Flaubert, amour, histoire et aventures, j'ai adoré ce livre.

I'm only half-way through this time, but this is one of the most excrutiating, unreadable 'great' novels ... partly due to Flaubert's triumph in stripping everything down to its material essence, avoiding all character psychology, and prompting all of us to ask why we are reading. It is essentially a prose poem that deals with a violent, decadent subject (3rd century Carthage) in a style that for the most part eschews psychology and heroics for multi-layered imagery. Cruelty and conquest are everywhere, but only as images, never as part of an enfolding 'tragic' or 'comic' mode of writing ...

Apparently this was his most financially successful book, and one can imagine readers of the time enjoying page after page of descriptions of unimaginable, vanished Carthage locales and finding themselves transported (i.e. Orientalism). If you are an admirer of Flaubert's ability to transform a static image into a perfect paragraph, then you will find much to appreciate here: soldiers dining on flamingos, monkey corpses falling from trees, crucified lions, etc ...

ترجمه احمد سمیعی گیلانی بسیار جالب بود

Quand tous les contemporains de Flaubert écrivent sur l’Égypte touchés par cet engouement qu’on appellera plus tard l’Égyptomanie (suite à la campagne de Bonaparte début 19ème), Flaubert décide d’écrire son seul et unique péplum sur Carthage la Grande.

Carthage (à côté de Tunis) était la capitale d’un des plus grands empires de l’antiquité. On s’attarde ici sur la période des guerres puniques au IIIs avant J-C. Comme elles sont peu documentées, ça laisse beaucoup de place à l’interprétation souvent très imagée de Flaubert.

Comment la beauté de la princesse Salammbô, fille du roi Hamilcar et sœur du futur roi Hannibal, a déchaîné la folie amoureuse des mercenaires barbares contre sa cité. Âme sensible s’abstenir, la torture, le meurtre, l’esclavage, la condition des femmes et la maltraitante animale sont de la partie (période historique qui veut malheureusement ça…