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The unerring desire of possession can drive one to the extremities of human passion. The nauseous affliction its imprinting in the mind wildly displaces reason with the abject principle of resolute blindness that moves the beholder from the clear insights of logic to the sheer antipode form of its utmost extremity as the evil eye can turn the radiance of love into the most violent ray of hate, or of wanting to preserve life and its beauty into the bleakness of its own sudden death and of divine faith into the fanaticism of its own diabolical devotion, a point in fact that somehow crosses the irrational threshold in the behavior of man against himself and against his environment, elucidating the barbarity of his actions and his war against the luminescence of peace.
These polarities that exist are antecedent in unveiling the human drama of life, a summation of man's tribulations in all of history as it appears blatantly expedient in exterior form somewhat illogical in its senselessness, yet illustrates the veritable foundation of the evolving constitution of man. Gustave Flaubert is somewhat deftly inveighing upon this as a thematic setting of his historical novel that tells the story of Salammbô and of Matho, of his love and their brutal war as told in a seeming lyrical prose that captures the grandeur of Ancient Carthage amid the barbarity of their crusade written in a style of a truly Homeric epic.
Flaubert's approach in retelling the story of the Punic War is extensive in spite of the deemed shortness of the novel, packed with meticulously research materials on the onset and infused with the sophistication of Flaubert's verbatim arrangement, it visually relieves in vividness the grandeur of Ancient Carthage as it is embroiled with the vicious barbarity of the times. The narrative is engaging in its sweeping form, though at times it appears difficult to read especially without the guidance of some annotations and footnotes as background, which somehow contributes in hampering the reader's attention from the flow of the plot that appears even more challenging for those not familiar with the history of the antiquities.
This had actually necessitated me to pause and slowly read some passages several times to get to the clarity of visual needed to understand what Flaubert was meticulously describing, providing me more than an ample time to consult my Kindle's dictionary to check on some words no longer in usage, which somehow slowed down the process of my reading to a considerable degree, yet at the same time riveted with Flaubert's near perfect strokes of a narrative.
The narrative in its complex precision has the same tone of earthly obsession that emanates from the novel's characters as each is somehow thrown into their own pit of fervent passions, whether be it in love, war, or domination, depicting as if Flaubert himself, the writer and creator, shares this same intensity of passion that spills into his style like a blood thirsty mad man gone out of his wits, splitting this sensual obsession of man into its two categorical faces as a harbinger of something calamitous and an inspiration to the most perfect art form there is---as all woes of man are indeed to become its sheer source of enlightenment. ☾☯
These polarities that exist are antecedent in unveiling the human drama of life, a summation of man's tribulations in all of history as it appears blatantly expedient in exterior form somewhat illogical in its senselessness, yet illustrates the veritable foundation of the evolving constitution of man. Gustave Flaubert is somewhat deftly inveighing upon this as a thematic setting of his historical novel that tells the story of Salammbô and of Matho, of his love and their brutal war as told in a seeming lyrical prose that captures the grandeur of Ancient Carthage amid the barbarity of their crusade written in a style of a truly Homeric epic.
Flaubert's approach in retelling the story of the Punic War is extensive in spite of the deemed shortness of the novel, packed with meticulously research materials on the onset and infused with the sophistication of Flaubert's verbatim arrangement, it visually relieves in vividness the grandeur of Ancient Carthage as it is embroiled with the vicious barbarity of the times. The narrative is engaging in its sweeping form, though at times it appears difficult to read especially without the guidance of some annotations and footnotes as background, which somehow contributes in hampering the reader's attention from the flow of the plot that appears even more challenging for those not familiar with the history of the antiquities.
This had actually necessitated me to pause and slowly read some passages several times to get to the clarity of visual needed to understand what Flaubert was meticulously describing, providing me more than an ample time to consult my Kindle's dictionary to check on some words no longer in usage, which somehow slowed down the process of my reading to a considerable degree, yet at the same time riveted with Flaubert's near perfect strokes of a narrative.
The narrative in its complex precision has the same tone of earthly obsession that emanates from the novel's characters as each is somehow thrown into their own pit of fervent passions, whether be it in love, war, or domination, depicting as if Flaubert himself, the writer and creator, shares this same intensity of passion that spills into his style like a blood thirsty mad man gone out of his wits, splitting this sensual obsession of man into its two categorical faces as a harbinger of something calamitous and an inspiration to the most perfect art form there is---as all woes of man are indeed to become its sheer source of enlightenment. ☾☯
