HAUBERT
61
world of undifferentiated liquid matter, this phenomenological obses–
sion is largely irrelevant to his art. For the "solution" of writing
(which, by giving the world sharply defined forms, also keeps it at a
distance) immediately creates a problem of being which can be ac–
counted for
only
by the inventions of art. True, Emma occasionally
experiences a sense of oneness with the world: in the form of an
ecstatic synchronization with the rhythms of nature when Rodolphe
makes love to her for the first time in the forest, and, just before she
takes the poison, in the form of a terrifying, vertiginous confusion
between her frantic mind and a suddenly spinning countryside. But in
a sense these "natural" illusions, even the terrifying ones, are pri–
vileged moments of exception. The deeper horror in
Madame Bovary
is Flaubert's stunning achievement of describing a world which rep–
resents nothing; for in the anxiety Emma feels in front of the most
banal aspects of an astonishingly banal environment, Flaubert indi–
cates the more profound mystery of a totally abstract sickness, that
is, of an agony and a death whose insignificant cause is merely the
exercise of imagination.
The profundity of Emma Bovary as a figure in literature has
been obscured by her intellectual and psychological triviality as a
"character." I would associate that profundity first of all with what
may seem like a sign of her imaginative mediocrity: her indifference
to, and curious irritability over occasions which seem to realize her
dreams. For, even in this mortally boring province, occasions
do
pre–
sent themselves: there are, after all, the adventures with Leon and
Rodolphe. But, significantly, Emma is never more exasperated than
during her love affairs. The affair with Rodolphe could, one imagines,
have gone on indefinitely; it's
Emma
who ends it with her frantic
insistence on transporting it to other, more "suitable" climates. And
Leon doesn't really break with her; with docility and terror, he plays
the pathetic games of an extravagant, brutal sexuality meant to dead–
en Emma's constant sense of "the insufficiency of life," of that "instant
decay of the things she leaned on." And, even during their discreet,
unavowed love at Yonville earlier in the novel, Leon's presence de–
stroys the pleasure of thinking of him. "Emma trembled at the sound
of his footsteps: then, in his presence, her emotion fell, and after–
wards there remained only an immense astonishment which ended
in sadness."
