I have never read a more sublime piece of literature than Madame Bovary. Unfortunately my French isn't good enough to have read this in its original language because that experience would have been so utterly transfixing. Flaubert did for the French language what Nabokov did for his native Russian: they elevated the language with such beautiful, insightful and compelling prose forever raising the bar for anyone who would follow.

What follows is a few of my favorite passages from MB. Hope you enjoy as much as I did.

"Down in her soul, the while, she was waiting for something to happen. LIke a shipwrecked sailor, she perused her solitary world with hopeless eyes, searching for some white sail far away where the horizon turns to mist. She didn't know what her luck might bring, what wind would blow it her way, what shore it would take her to, whether it was a sloop or a three-masted schooner, laden with anguish or crammed to the portholes with happiness. But, every morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would happen that day, and she listened to every sound, jumping to her feet, surprised when nothing came; then, as day to its end, with an greater sadness, she was longing for the morrow."
-We're always waiting for something: the bus, our lunch, our prince to come, Godot. We long for bigger, better, bolder with eternal hope and desire. The future is all we have so we invest our efforts in trying to imagine and configure our best possibilities as the present flees delicately from our grasp.

"From your chair you wander through the countries of your mind, and your thoughts, threading themselves into the fiction, play about with the details or rush along the track of the plot. You melt into the characters; it seems as if your own heart is beating under their skin."
-How many times have you imagined yourself as the character, knowing what they feel because at one time, that was you? Come on, who hasn't gone credit crazy like poor Emma and bought useless trifles like her blue vases or an extravagant cape for her loved?? This is why I read — it offers me free range to be who I want, be where I want to be and look inside worlds that I might never have or want access into. It is such a liberating and rewarding experience and Flaubert keenly understood this and thankfully gifted us this beautiful novel so that our hearts could indeed beat under Emma's skin.

"Love, she believed, had to come, suddenly, with a great clap of thunder and a lightning flash, a tempest from heaven that falls upon your life, live a devastation, scatters your ideals like leaves and hurls your very soul into the abyss. Little did she know that up on the roof of the house, the rain will form a pool if the gutters are blocked, and there she would have stayed feeling safe inside, until one day she suddenly discovered the crack right down the wall."
-Maybe I watch too many movies or read too many books or maybe deep down I'm just a hopeless romantic, but this is how I've always hoped that I would find love. But apparently, in reality it comes in short showers or light mists and this allows for the gutters to remain clear so that love can flow freely and safely (if that's the right choice of words). In other words, the grand gesture is all illusion as Emma finds out as her marriage fails, then her lover spurns her and finally runs into the wall as her affair fizzles. The torrents of rain pooled up for Emma and the pressure cracks her roof leaving her to drown in a pool of arsenic .

"One day you find it, repeated Rodolphe; one day, quite suddenly, just when hope seems lost. And the horizon opens up, it's like a voice crying: 'Behold!' You feel you must tell this person the secrets of your life, give them everything, sacrifice everything for them. Nothing is actually said, you just know. You have seen each other in your dreams. (And he was looking at her.) There it is at last, the treasure you have sought so long, there, right in front of you; shining, sparkling. Though you still have doubts, you dare not believe it; you stand there dazed, just as if you just stepped from shadow into sunglight."
-Perfection

"Her vanity, like a body unclenching in a steam-bath, melted open, softly and fully, at the warm touch of his words."
-So vain we are. How easily a compliment changes our affections and warms us up. I can imagine MB all proud and frigid melting as her young lover caresses her with his sensual words. Ahhhh to be young and beautiful and in love (or lust ...)

"Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as she was now; she had that indefinable beauty which comes from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, the beauty which is simply a harmony between temperament and circumstances. Her cravings, her sorrows, her experience of pleasure and her still-fresh illusions had brought her gradually to readiness, like flowers that have manure, rain, wind and sun, and she was blossoming at last in the splendor of her being. Her eyelids seemed perfectly fashioned for those long ardent looks that drown the eye; while deep breathing dilated her fine nostrils and lifted the plump corners of her mouth, shadowed in the light with a faint black down. You would have said some artist skilled in corruption had arrayed around her neck the dropping coils of her hair; they twined it in a great mass, neglectfully, betraying the accidents of adultery, that so dishevelled her every day. Her voice, these days, took on more mellow inflections, as did her figure; something subtle that ran straight through you breathed out even from the folds of her gown and from the curve of her foot, Charles, just as in the first days of his marriage, found her delicious and irresistible."
-An incredible passage. Flaubert's description is so precise and artistic, like a vibrant, nuanced canvas crafted by the skilled hand of Rembrandt. Each word is carefully selected and commas and semi-colons guide our reading scheduling each pause at the appropriate instant. Brilliant!

April 16, 2008