Eric Le Calvez departed more Flaubert since

January 7, 2012 12:00 AM

Just one hundred and fifty years ago, on October 1, exactly, it was on the tip of the foot in the literary world serialized "Magazine of the Paris" Maxime Ducamp and Théophile Gautier. In six episodes, amputees of certain passages of his tragic life, considered too daring, "Madame bovary" would cover the Chronicle, put on trial its designer Gustave Flaubert and irony of history for the writer who hated the (bad) advertising launched his career on the eve of his thirty-five years. In February 1857, Flaubert triumphs over the lawsuit filed by the Crown. Book by Editor Maxime Lévy was released April 15. He scrambles as rolls two other prints will be needed then to reprints in 1858 and 1862.

Happy birthday, Emma Bovary! You do not your hundred and fifty years. If college students fear to start the long story of your dreams broken probably too young to understand , you remain today one of the most known (and "sold") women in the world; probably the best dissected by academics around the world. Eric Le Calvez, Professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta (), just sign in text a book illustrated on the writer, evokes the passion of the Americans for the novel: "I was even asked to write a book devoted entirely to"Madame bovary", eventually he focused on the whole of the work of Flaubert.

Haro on marriage

Its publication, it is the scent of scandal that made the success of the book, to the great despair of Flaubert, furious of the bourgeois buy the obscene supposed passages that do not exist. Inspired of a fact, the history of this fictional woman tired of her husband's doctor of campaign, seeking love, without success, in the arms of wealth lovers, and eventually poison to escape the shame and ruin what, it is true, shock the bourgeois of the time. But, above all, the power of evocation of the writer is such that player fantasy on the content of innocuous scenes. Thus the famous of the fiacre, censored in the publication in paper. An almost comical scene where Emma and her lover Leon roam streets of Rouen to a train to hell in a car at the lowered blinds aback look good people. The only piece of flesh that exceeds, it is a "bare hand" throwing out the window "of paper tears" (the letter of farewell to Emma to Léon into a thousand pieces).

The true scandal lies elsewhere: by two times, with his lovers, the provincial dandy Rodolphe and the young clerk Leon, Emma sees extinguished the flame of his love, its binding recreate the sad marriage routine. Flaubert attack front institution and an idyllic image of a couple... From this point of view, the text has not lost its bite a century and a half later. With this first novel published, Flaubert marks of at the outset its singularity showing a fundamental pessimism, a contempt for humanity, tempered by a form of desperate tenderness and a subtle dose of humour. "Madame bovary" is a biting against the bourgeoisie of province, areas that he knows well, since he himself is the son of a physician, surgeon of the Hospital of Rouen. Like Flaubert, Emma has evil to live; like him, she is bored. "Madame bovary" is the novel exciting of boredom. What prevents the reader bored in return, "it is the strength of the style of the writer", explains Eric Le Calvez. A specific and highly visual style. Flaubert, who worked the prose in poet, excels in the art of description and, through its psychological acuity, makes his characters live and extremely rich. Behind the narrow world of the Bovary, there is in fact a world real and imaginary that would cease to explore his life Flaubert, with an appetite of ogre, in true monster of the literature.

Five years for a novel

The great interest of the book by Eric Le Calvez is to show us in words and images the impressive behind-the-scenes work of the great writer, the colossal work there is behind each of his novels. And pointing a fundamental aspect neglected so far: if he has dedicated his life to literature his first nervous crisis in twenty-three years giving pretext to abandon his studies of law, it is total, almost organic, so devoting so much time, if not more, from reading to writing. The Flaubert of Eric Le Calvez is also subtitled "A world of books." Books, classical, romantic, historical, philosophical, have fed the hearts and minds of the young Gustave. They have helped forge his pen. Then, very quickly, they have become part of his writing work.

As for "Madame Bovary", Flaubert reads books about the Club feet or on poisons. For "The sentimental Education", it devours everything that it finds on the revolution of 1848 (against the background of the novel) so that he has but himself lived events. The writer is bulimic. For his novel unfinished "Bouvard and Pécuchet", which must address all the issues of the science, it swallows 1,500 volumes! Eric Le Calvez believes that these readings are not only sources of documentation, but inspiration also: they are "the trigger of his imagination", they excite his pen. And then "books are fiction, since they are then read by the characters themselves. Emma girl shares some romantic readings of Flaubert. Charles Bovary read the Treaty of Dr. Duval on the bots feet...

Imagine the writer in his Lair of Croisset, Normandy, his books and his scattered papers. Once chosen the argument of his novel, he wrote scenarios in telegraphic style in which he records all his notes. He began to write a chapter, while working on the following scenario, which can give him a new idea of reading... The actual writing is suffering. Flaubert always find the right word, the correct sentence. Must be that it just sounds: hence the exercise of the "gueuloir", where he said Cree his text as in the theatre, to flush out the repetitions, the dissonance and the flat words. The facsimiles of manuscripts reproduced in the book of text are edifying: a kind of minstrel conceptual art where the deleted words, mi-gribouillis, mi-hiéroglyphes, overlap, eat the paper. Yet these unreadable pages are a snapshot of its creation, the evidence of his genius: until then, ideas.

stories, reading notes were inert. Carved by Flaubert, the latter takes body and life, becomes art, with its stroked drafts. It takes the time it takes... the writer puts two months to describe the arrival of the Bovary spouses at auberge du Lion d'Or in their new village, almost six months to write the 25 bright pages of agricultural comice! The pace is taken: it takes on average five years to make a novel.

Several lives

Flaubert seems to have several lives. Playing the hermits, he says that it would hang on the wall painting of a bear as a self-portrait. But it is not pushing in his den. Both to be sure. That he dictated his books and his imagination, he wants to check it on the ground. Can the lead far: thus, after having "investigated" like a madman to recreate the ancient Carthage, his second novel "salammbô" décor, it breaks down as soon as the first chapter. He left in catastrophe in Tunis, to reach the ruins, soak in the atmosphere, admire the sky color changes. "Bouvard and Pécuchet", away to his native Normandy. even for this novel of ideas, dominated by abstraction, he has to find a "stupid plateau" where will be the dialogue between the two "scholars" that is made thing, between Caen and Falaise. The travelling writer certainly takes books with him. Not just for feeding his next novels. But also for the production of his friends; contribute to the education of his niece, Caroline; or even simply for its own building and his pleasure.

Flaubert is decidedly a paradox: the book man is anything but a rat of library and pure spirit. His rage of books goes hand in hand with his rage to live. The life that he hates with happiness or he loves desperately Flaubert loves women; It is a sensual, although unwise it keeps catching diseases in the brothels of Europe and the East. It is also a loving man, who, if he is not married, by conformism, has had several long bonds. We know all that passionate with the poet Louise collar. It was found more recently that he had no doubt a during twenty-five years with the teacher of his niece... The intellectual, the hermit, the bear, was also epicurean. And if it shunned the honours, fame, he still loved the shows spawned with the Napoleonic entourage he was contemptuous of politically, accepted the Legion of honour... Sickened by the negative criticism (that of Barbey d'Aurevilly example, castigating his "materialism" and his mania for detail), it enjoyed the praise of admirers, Sainte-Beuve, the Goncourt brothers and, of course, those of her friend of heart, his "troubadour" George Sand... The most incredible was that he was still in the vortex of time to get bored.

Over the masterpieces

Both work, reading and reflection with action, travel and passion explains the richness of the work of Flaubert, its sophistication and ambition. An extremely varied work which, on the form as on the merits, marks the beginning of the modern novel. Flaubert will be a constant back and forth between two types: the contemporary novel and the ancient novel: after "Madame Bovary", "salammbô" (1862); After "Sentimental Education" (1869), "The temptation of Saint - Antoine" (1874) whenever the writer is sickened by his fellow, he takes refuge in "the ancient". But, says Eric Calvez, for each novel, it adopts a very different style. For this young flaubertien of forty-four years, the most advanced masterpiece is "Sentimental Education". A true blow of lightning to read: "twenty years ago, I licensed." The novel was enrolled in the program. I had no desire to read this keypad. The prof had already begun its course without that I have read a page. A weekend, I am decided me. I opened it Saturday afternoon. And I've closed it once completed at 8 o'clock in the morning. 12 Hours of continuous playback! I was excited. "Eric Le Calvez departed more Flaubert since.

If "Madame bovary" is the novel of boredom, "Sentimental Education" is the "failed novel." Failed historical and political revolution of 1848 which leads to the Second Empire, sentimental failure of the characters. Merging public and private despair in a same narrative hurricane, referring back to back the left and right and its heroes to their procrastination, Flaubert takes the risk to confuse the reader. His "failed novel" is also a critical and commercial failure. Eric Le Calvez said yet its extraordinary density, its carefully developed construction "the story is so rich, is nested so that it is virtually impossible to find any passage which marked us". As his style, he already achieved a model of perfection. More fluid than in "Madame bovary", it retains its power of evocation, without the need to resort to romantic metaphors.

With his last unfinished modern novel, Flaubert takes a further step in the sheer scale and abstraction. "Bouvard and Pécuchet" looks like the novel of stupidity or revenge. Revenge against an absurd world. Throughout the book, the two protagonists play scientists, pass through a science or an art, and every time, their experience fails. To show that the sciences are all defective, it is a kind of contre-encyclopédie that designs the writer, mobilizing all its talent to not sink into the monotony of repetition, making a concise and scathing, as outside the time style is often compared the beginning of the book to those of Beckett all strong stripper humour.

Sold out, overwhelmed by money problems, he died suddenly in 1880 while it is still only a few pages to write to complete the first volume of "Bouvard and Pécuchet". As if he had taken too long on the rope and the hated world decided to eliminate this too bothersome witness, in the burying a coup under a mountain of words, millions of signs that he has read and written. But a writer does not die by its library only to be read. Prescribe his life of masterpieces, by creating immortal heroes such as Emma Bovary, Salammbô, Flaubert, absolute writer, are guaranteed against forgetting and afterlife continues to defy the stupidity in the world.