298
PAR TI SA N R'EV lEW
It is illuminating to note the contrast between such a view and
the grandiloquent and ostentatious parading of the writer's own feel–
ings and of the standards,derived therefrom such as had been begun
by Rousseau and was continued after him; a comparative interpreta–
tion of Flaubert's
aNotre coeur ne doit etre bon qu'a sentir celui des
autres,"
and Rousseau's statement at the beginning of the
Confes–
sions, aJe sens mon coeur, et je connais les hommes,"
could effectual–
ly represent the change in position which had taken place. But it
also becomes clear from Flaubert's letters how laboriously and with
what tensity of application he had attained to his convictions. Great
subjects, and the free, irresponsible rule of the creative imagination,
still have a great attraction for him; from this point of view he sees
Shakespeare, Cervantes, and even Hugo wholly through the eyes of a
Romanticist, and he sometimes curses his own narrow petty-bour–
geois subject which forces him to tiresome stylistic meticulousness
(adire ala fois simplement et proprement des choses vulgaires");
this
sometimes goes so far that he says things which contradict his basic
views :
« •. .
et ce qu'il y a de desolant, c'est de p'enser que, meme
reussi dans la perfection, cela [Madarne Bovary] ne pe'att etre 'que
passable et ne sera jamais beau, a cause du fond meme."
Withal, like
so many important nineteenth-century artists, he hates his period; he
sees its problems and the coming crises with great clarity; he sees the
inner anarchy, the
'(manque de base theologique,"
the beginning
menace of the herd, the lazy eclectic Historicism, the domination
of phrases; but he sees no solution and no issue; his fanatical mysticism
of art is almost like a substitute religion, to which he clings convulsive–
ly, and his candor very often becomes sullen, petty, choleric and
neurotic. But often this perturbs his impartiality and that love of
his subjects which is comparable to the Creator's love. The para–
graph which we have analyzed, however, is untouched by such
deficiencies and weaknesses in his nature; it permits us to observe the
working of his artistic purpose in its purity.
The scene shows man and wife at table, the most everyday situa–
tion imaginable. Before Flaubert, it would have been conceivable as
literature only as part of a comic tale, an idyl, or a satire. Here it
is a picture of discomfort, and not a momentary and passing one,
but a chronic discomfort, which completely rules an entire life, Emma
Bovary's. To be sure, various things come later, among them love
