Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot

HERBERT, JULIET

‘Miss Juliet’. The ethics of English governesses abroad in the mid-nineteenth century have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention.

IRONY

The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity. Flaubert’s fiction poses the question: Does irony preclude sympathy? There is no entry for ironie in his Dictionary. This is perhaps intended to be ironic.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Spent ten years writing L’Idiot de la famille when he could have been writing Maoist tracts. A highbrow Louise Colet, constantly pestering Gustave, who wanted only to be left alone. Conclude: ‘It is better to waste your old age than to do nothing at all with it.’

KUCHUK HANEM

A litmus test. Gustave had to choose sides between the Egyptian courtesan and the Parisian poetess – bedbugs, sandalwood oil, shaven pudenda, clitoridectomy and syphilis versus cleanliness, lyric poetry, comparative sexual fidelity and the rights of women. He found the issue finely balanced.

LETTERS

Follow Gide, and call the Letters Flaubert’s masterpiece. Follow Sartre, and call them a perfect example of free-association from a pre-Freudian couch. Then follow your nose.

MME FLAUBERT

Gustave’s gaoler, confidante, nurse, patient, banker and critic. She said: ‘Your mania for sentences has dried up your heart.’ He found the remark ‘sublime’. Cf. George Sand.

NORMANDY

Always wet. Inhabited by a sly, proud, taciturn people. Put your head on one side and remark, ‘Of course, we must never forget that Flaubert came from Normandy.’

ORIENT

The crucible in which Madame Bovary was fired. Flaubert left Europe a Romantic, and returned from the Orient a Realist. Cf. Kuchuk Hanem.

PRUSSIANS

Vandals in white gloves, clock-thieves who know Sanskrit. More horrifying than cannibals or Communards. When the Prussians withdrew from Croisset, the house had to be fumigated.

QUIXOTE, DON

Was Gustave an Old Romantic? He had a passion for the dreamy knight cast adrift in a vulgar, materialist society. ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi’ is an allusion to Cervantes’ reply when asked on his deathbed for the source of his famous hero. Cf. Transvestism.

REALISM

Was Gustave a New Realist? He always publicly denied the label: ‘It was because I hated realism that I wrote Madame Bovary .’ Galileo publicly denied that the earth went round the sun.

SAND, GEORGE

Optimist, socialist, humanitarian. Despised until met, loved thereafter. Gustave’s second mother. After staying at Croisset she sent him her complete works (in the 77-volume edition).

TRANSVESTISM

Gustave in young manhood: ‘There are days when one longs to be a woman.’ Gustave in maturity: ‘ Madame Bovary, c’est moi .’ When one of his doctors called him ‘an hysterical old woman’, he judged the observation ‘profound’.

USA

Flaubert’s references to the Land of Liberty are sparing. Of the future he wrote: ‘It will be utilitarian, militaristic, American and Catholic – very Catholic.’ He probably preferred the Capitol to the Vatican.

VOLTAIRE

What did the great nineteenth-century sceptic think of the great eighteenth-century sceptic? Was Flaubert the Voltaire of his age? Was Voltaire the Flaubert of his age? ‘ Histoire de l’esprit humain, histoire de la sottise humaine .’ Which of them said that?

WHORES

Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius. Wearers of the red badge of courage include Flaubert, Daudet, Maupassant, Jules de Goncourt, Baudelaire, etc. Were there any writers unafflicted by it? If so, they were probably homosexual.

XYLOPHONE

There is no record of Flaubert ever having heard the xylophone. Saint-Saëns used the instrument in his Danse Macabre of 1874 to suggest rattling bones; this might have amused Gustave. Perhaps he heard the glockenspiel in Switzerland.

YVETOT

‘See Yvetot and die.’ If asked the source of this little-known epigram, smile mysteriously and remain silent.

ZOLA, EMILE

Is the great writer responsible for his disciples? Who chooses whom? If they call you Master, can you afford to despise their work? On the other hand, are they sincere in their praise? Who needs whom more: the disciple the master, or the master the disciple? Discuss without concluding.

This is a pure story, whatever you may think.

When she dies, you are not at first surprised. Part of love is preparing for death. You feel confirmed in your love when she dies. You got it right. This is part of it all.

Afterwards comes the madness. And then the loneliness: not the spectacular solitude you had anticipated, not the interesting martyrdom of widowhood, but just loneliness. You expect something almost geological – vertigo in a shelving canyon – but it’s not like that; it’s just misery as regular as a job. What do we doctors say? I’m deeply sorry, Mrs Blank; there will of course be a period of mourning but rest assured you will come out of it; two of these each evening, I would suggest; perhaps a new interest, Mrs Blank; car maintenance, formation dancing?; don’t worry, six months will see you back on the roundabout; come and see me again any time; oh nurse, when she calls, just give her this repeat will you, no I don’t need to see her, well it’s not her that’s dead is it, look on the bright side. What did she say her name was?

And then it happens to you. There’s no glory in it. Mourning is full of time; nothing but time. Bouvard and Pécuchet record in their ‘ Copie ’ a piece of advice on How to Forget Friends Who Have Died: Trotulas (of the Salerno school) says that you should eat stuffed sow’s heart. I might yet have to fall back on this remedy. I’ve tried drink, but what does that do? Drink makes you drunk, that’s all it’s ever been able to do. Work, they say, cures everything. It doesn’t; often, it doesn’t even induce tiredness: the nearest you get to it is a neurotic lethargy. And there is always time. Have some more time. Take your time. Extra time. Time on your hands.

Other people think you want to talk. ‘Do you want to talk about Ellen?’ they ask, hinting that they won’t be embarrassed if you break down. Sometimes you talk, sometimes you don’t; it makes little difference. The words aren’t the right ones; or rather, the right words don’t exist. ‘Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.’ You talk, and you find the language of bereavement foolishly inadequate. You seem to be talking about other people’s griefs. I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn’t love me; we were unhappy; I miss her. There is a limited choice of prayers on offer: gabble the syllables.

‘It may seem bad, Geoffrey, but you’ll come out of it. I’m not taking your grief lightly; it’s just that I’ve seen enough of life to know that you’ll come out of it.’ The words you’ve said yourself while scribbling a prescription (No, Mrs Blank, you could take them all and they wouldn’t kill you). And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.