MODER N EVI DENCE
Madame Bovary*
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
F ROM
THE
viewpoint of criticism, the situation of the writer who
comes after everybody else, who draws up in the rear, brings with it
advantages not belonging to the writer of the prophetic type-the
writer who proclaims his success, who commands it, so to speak, with
the authority of self-assurance and recognition.
M. Gustave Flaubert no longer has any need of recognition, if
indeed he ever had such a need. Numerous artists, and some of the
finest and most established, have celebrated and engarlanded his
excellent book. There remains for criticism only to point out certain
neglected points of view about it and to emphasize some features and
aspects which have not been, at least to my mind, sufficiently ap–
preciated and discussed. Moreover, this position of the late-arriving
writer, outdistanced by current opinion, has as I have hinted a cer–
tain paradoxical charm. Because he is on his own, like a straggling
soldier, he has more freedom. He would seem to recapitulate in him–
self all the issues at stake, and, compelled to avoid the haranguings
of both prosecution and defense, his orders are to beat out a new
path for himself, without any other stimulus than love of the Beauti–
ful and the Just.
II
Since I have uttered that splendid and terrible word Justice, may
I be permitted-so gratifying is it to me-to express my thanks to
*
This review by Baudelaire first appeared in a Paris magazine shortly after
Madame Bovary
was cleared of charges of immorality by a French law-court. It
had, therefore, considerable topical interest at the time. In the final paragraph
Baudelaire mistakenly assumes that the book antedates
La Tentation de Saint
Antoine,
the first version of which was of course of earlier composition. To the
best knowledge of the translator the present translation into English is the first
which has been
made.-Translator's Note.
