I'd had Madame Bovary on my bookshelf for a while, and after reading some Turgenev, and the letters between Turgenev and Flaubert, and all of the latter's hard work and 10 hour days of reading and researching, toiling in his writing, and constant financial struggles (even after the great success of Bovary) that got to the point of him trying to get a plum job at major Parisian library, well, then I was really interested to read Flaubert, and to read his best.
All I can say is that there is so much notable hard work and genius that went into that book that it is simply awe-inspiring. Page after page, all the way through, incredibly beautiful poetic yet lean sentences, musical words, nimble and nuanced descriptions of thoughts and things, and a complex, yet natural plot that spins through it -- which kept me interested. There were even a few laughs, and enjoyable ironies.
To be able to delve into the inner thoughts of Emma Bovary took some real artistic effort. It all comes off so naturally, and it is not overdone. Also, to be able to describe in detail all those ladylike, girly, frilly things that a proper woman of that era would know, that took some research and effort. I would surmise that Flaubert, who lived with his mother most of his life, was constantly asking her what you call this or that.
People don't realize when they read a book that anything in it that the author isn't intimately familiar with has to be researched -- like the types of leaves or trees or bushes in a setting, or the cloth and cut of a suit or dress -- all that has to be researched and verified and then presented in such a way in the book that it is natural, unassuming -- a given.
I noticed a lot of that type of detail in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, when he described all the cherished, worldly items that Mr. Gray surrounded himself with (I haven't written about that book, but I'll get to it in more detail in another post).
One thing I did notice was a particular detailed description of a character's fingernails, and of a woman becoming flushed red to the roots of her hair, which are similar to what I remember in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Flaubert and Turgenev were friends, so I looked up when they met and started exchanging letters, and when their respective books were published (although a book's publication date does not reflect its completion date -- it could be published years later), to see who had 'stolen' -- I mean borrowed -- from whom.
It looks like Flaubert's book was out five years before Turgenev's and several years before they met. But there is one other possible explanation -- which is that since Turgenev translated Flaubert's books into Russian, he may have at some point inserted those phrases, or rather, translated them as that, and they became a part of the text. This is plausible, since, I also read that apparently some critics objected to Turgenev's translations of Flaubert back then, saying he had added his own edits and touches and interpretations to make the book even better, but they were not true to the work. Which is all quite possible.
Nevertheless, the talent of Flaubert and the writing in that book kept me interested in a story that I would not have normally had an interest in, and the beauty of his writing had me smiling and underlining particular phrases or passages. And also, it was more than just a story, it's a detailed, tidy plot and ending that carry a moral theme, ultimately.
What is funny is that the book was almost stopped from being published by an obscenity trial, but ultimately allowed to "scandalize" the nation. There isn't the least bit of sex in it -- only implied. Like when she gets in the carriage taxi with Leon, and they both professed their unrealized lust, and the carriage curtains are drawn and Leon keeps telling the driver to just keep going as they drive on and on about the city and even the country for hours and hours. It's implied that they were getting it on, although not a speck of detail, or disrobing.
But the writing, the writing is exquisite. They call it realism but it is more than that, since it is so tight, terse, succinct and yet powerfully lyrical and poetic. The book is filled with great sentences that paint a scene, but here are some of the phrases and sentences that stand out:
Through the wooden slats, the sunlight fell upon the stone floor in long thin stripes which broke upon the corners of the furniture and went glancing up to the ceiling.
*******
As it was almost empty, she leaned back to drink, and, her head thrown back, her lips parted her throat elongated, she laughed at being unable to taste anything, while the tip of her tongue thrust out between her delicate teeth, licked tiny drops from the bottom of the glass.
*******
She bit her lips and a tide of blood flooded up under her skin which flushed deep pink from the roots of her hair to the edge of her collar.
*******
*******
*******
He no longer offered, as he had once done, those words so tender that they made her cry, nor those violent caresses that drove her to frenzy; with the result that their great love in which she lived submerged seemed to dwindle away about her, like the waters of a river being absorbed by its bed, until she saw the slimy bottom.
*******
Her eyes, full of tears, glimmered like flames under water;
*******
SEE WHAT I MEAN?
The man struggled his whole life, but what a writer!
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