Could it have been from her girls' library?

In an earlier post I quoted Flaubert's sentence which provides the key to Emma Bovary's narrative - "Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres" - and mentioned how, like Dante before him with the "quando leggemmo" of Paolo and Francesca, the blame for all the trouble is attributed to books.

Dostoevsky plays the same theme. In Part I, Section IV of The Idiot, we learn of how Totsky set up Nastasya Filippovna, in the village of Отрадное ("pleasing" or "comforting", Pevear and Volokhonsky translate it as "Delight") ... В доме нашлись музыкальные инструменты, изящная девичья библиотека, картины, эстампы, карандаши, кисти, краски, удивительная левретка, ... "There were musical instruments in the house, an elegant library for girls, paintings, prints, pencils, brushes, paints, a wonderful greyhound ... " (Pevear and Volokhonsky use "astonishing greyhound" ... "amazing greyhound" would also be good).

And then when Nastasya Filippovna takes it upon herself to go to St Petersburg and cause trouble for Totsky we read:

Эта новая женщина, оказалось, во-первых, необыкновенно много знала и понимала, -- так много, что надо было глубоко удивляться, откуда могла она приобрести такие сведения, выработать в себе такие точные понятия. (Неужели из своей девичьей библиотеки?).

This new woman, it turned out, first of all knew and understood an extraordinary amount - so much that it was a cause of profound wonder where she could have acquired such information, could have developed such precise notions in herself. (Could it have been from her girls' library?)

But it is not only Nastasya Filippovna that has learned too much from books.

When the Epanchin girls are introduced, we read "С ужасом говорилось о том, сколько книг они прочитали" ... "with horror it was told how many books they had read".

A little later, in section VII, Mrs Epanchin, the "generalsha", lashes out at her "learned" (ученых) daughters: with their "умом и многословием" .. "brains and verbosity" ...

Во-первых, от ученых дочек -- отрезала генеральша -- а так как этого и одного довольно, то об остальном нечего и распространяться. Довольно многословия было. Посмотрим, как-то вы обе (я Аглаю не считаю) с вашим умом и многословием вывернетесь, и будете ли вы, многоуважаемая Александра Ивановна, счастливы с вашим почтенным господином?

"First of all, about my learned daughters," Mrs Epanchin snapped, "and since that is enough in itself, there's no point in expatiating on the rest. There's been enough verbosity. We'll see how the two of you (I don't count Aglaya) with your brains and verbosity are going to find your way, and whether you, my much esteemed Alexandra Ivanovna, will be happy with your honourable gentleman."

Envying all the world

Charles Bovary's father had no grasp of the financial realities that constrain success: "[il] buvait son cidre en bouteilles au lieu de le vendre en barriques" ... "he drunk his cider by the bottle instead of selling it by the barrel".

And then sequestered himself from the world ... "chagrin, rongé de regrets, accusant le ciel, jaloux contre tout le monde, il s’enferma dès l’âge de quarante-cinq ans, dégoûté des hommes, disait-il, et décidé à vivre en paix." (variously translated "morose, gnawed by regrets, railing at heaven, envying all the world, he shut himself away at the age of forty-five, disgusted with men, he said, and determined to live in peace." (Davis) & "chagrined, remorseful, cursing his fate, jealous of everybody, he shut himself away at the age of forty-five, disgusted with the world, he said, and determined to live in peace" (Wall)

Félicité, Passion, Ivresse

Returning to that final sentence of Chapter 5 of Part 1 of Madame Bovary

"Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres."

In Geoffrey Wall's translation for Penguin Classics it is: "And Emma sought to find out exactly what was meant in real life by the words fidelity, passion, and rapture, which had seemed so fine on the pages of books." "Fidelity" here seems like a mistake.

Lydia Davis' recent translation offers: "And Emma tried to find out just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "intoxication," which had seemed so beautiful to her in books."

Frank McConnell explains the range of meanings of these three words in his essay 'Félicité, Passion, Ivresse: The Lexicography of Madame Bovary': "To understand fully the range and importance of the verbal motto félicité, passion, ivresse, it is necessary to examine their potential grammar. All three may be understood as both intransitive and relational terms, depending upon the sense in which we decide to take them. Fklicitk-"bliss, "luck," "joy," or a kind of benign capacity for grace, is either a serenely full good humor or a dynamic equilibrium of circumstance and spirit. Passion is both le grand passion, the English "passion," and also a "passive" suffering, a state of being painfully objective to another person or to the world. And Ivresse is both "ecstasy" and, simply, "drunkenness" or "intoxication": taken most generally, the use of an object-or the objectification of a subject-for the artificial transcendence of one's subjective consciousness." (Novel, Winter 1970, p.158)

In a footnote he also quotes a remark by Wittgenstein: "That is to say, whether a word of the language of our tribe is rightly translated into a word of the English language depends upon the role this word plays in the whole life of the tribe; the occasions on which it is used, the expressions of emotion by which it is generally accompanied, the ideas which it generally awakens or which prompt its saying, etc., etc.," Wittgenstein, The Brown Book (New York, lssue), p. 103.

The calm of passions habitually appeased

"Dans leurs regards indifférents flottait la quiétude de passions journellement assouvies" - "In their coolly glancing eyes lingered the calm of passions habitually appeased." (p.48)

This is a succinct depiction of that possibly indefinable air of success - whether it be in terms of wealth or love or a happy lofe -that some people carry, as opposed to the pent-up frustrations and disappointments of so much of the population.

The cracking veneer of manners

Flaubert captures well the gap between feeling and politeness ... "et les mots de ma fille et de ma mère s’échangeaient tout le long du jour, accompagnés d’un petit frémissement des lèvres, chacune lançant des paroles douces d’une voix tremblante de colère."

"and the words mother and daughter went back and forth all day long, accompanied by a little quiver of the lip, each woman uttering sweet words in a voice trembling with anger" (Penguin Classics, p.40)

Genius Loci - happiness, une plante particulière

"Il lui semblait que certains lieux sur la terre devaient produire du bonheur, comme une plante particulière au sol et qui pousse mal tout autre part." - Flaubert.

"to her [Emma] it seemed that certain places on earth must produce happiness, like the plants that thrive in a certain soil and are stunted everywhere else." (p.38, Penguin classic)

This idea, which Flaubert places in the mind of the foolish young Emma - only two pages he has mentioned her passion for Lamartine, a poet he did not respect - but perhaps it is not such a silly idea. Flaubert presents Emma's dissatisfaction with the calm and peace of her existence as a misunderstanding of happiness: "it seemed quite inconceivable [to her] that this calm life of hers could really be the happiness of which she used to dream". It is Emma's dangerous restlessness which propels her forward into trouble.

Lawrence Durrell championed the idea of spirit of place, and it is everywhere in his writing from Justine to Caesar's Vast Ghost.

Inclined towards the tumultuous??

The character sketch of the young Emma in Chapter 6 of Part 1 of Madame Bovary captures some key elements of the restlessness which leads her towards trouble.

"Habituée aux aspects calmes, elle se tournait, au contraire, vers les accidentés. Elle n’aimait la mer qu’à cause de ses tempêtes, et la verdure seulement lorsqu’elle était clairsemée parmi les ruines. Il fallait qu’elle pût retirer des choses une sorte de profit personnel; et elle rejetait comme inutile tout ce qui ne contribuait pas à la consommation immédiate de son coeur, -- étant de tempérament plus sentimentale qu’artiste, cherchant des émotions et non des paysages."

The Penguin Classics translation seems to strike a somewhat different tone ... the first sentence, for example, transposes Flaubert's fairly direct imagery into a different register, almost Miltonic in its abstract grandeur.

"Familiar with the tranquil, she inclined, instead, towards the tumultuous. She loved the sea only for the sake of tempests, the meadow only as a background to some ruined pile. From everything she had to extract some kind of personal profit, and she discarded as useless anything that did not lend itself to her heart's immediate satisfaction - endowed with a temperament more sentimental than artistic, preferring emotions rather than landscapes."

The phrase "ruined pile" hits a strange note - somehow too Gilbert & Sullivan for this context, and the last phrase "cherchant des émotions et non des paysages" loses some of its simplicity.

Lydia Davis' recent translation discards "inclined towards" in favour of the simpler "turned toward" but keeps "tumultuous", and it is good to see no mention of a "ruined pile". Davis sticks closer to the French with "greenery", and her concluding phrase better mirrors the rhetorical balance of the original.

Here is Davis' translation: "Accustomed to the calm aspects of things, she turned, instead, toward the more tumultuous. She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it grew up here and there among ruins. She needed to derive from things a sort of personal gain; and she rejected as useless everything that did not continue to the immediate gratification of her heart, - being by temperament more sentimental than artistic, in search of emotions and not landscapes."

Beware of books

The last sentence of chapter five of Madame Bovary is a succinct expression of the engine that propels the story. It deserves to be as famous as the first sentence of Anna Karenina - Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему - or Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ..." and so forth. Flaubert writes:

"Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres."

In Geoffrey Wall's translation for Penguin Classics it is: "And Emma sought to find out exactly what was meant in real life by the words fidelity, passion, and rapture, which had seemed so fine on the pages of books." "Fidelity" here seems like a mistake.

Lydia Davis' recent translation offers: "And Emma tried to find out just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "intoxication," which had seemed so beautiful to her in books."

Books can be perilous - we know this from Paolo and Francesco in Canto V of Dante's Inferno. It was their reading of the story of Lancelot which was their dangerous path, and when they reached the part where Lancelot kissed the smiling lips of the Queen, they kissed and their fate was sealed. At the end of the canto, Dante faints from pity at this story.

Quando leggemmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.

Everything is beautiful at the ballet, as Edward Kleban's lyrics in the A Chorus Line song go, and fidelity, passion and rapture are generally "si beaux dans les livers".

Emma and Francesca are each driven by the desire to know and to experience things of which they have read. There is almost something of wanting to apply the scientific method to the world of the emotions which leads us into the world of Freud.  But more simply there is simply the desire to fully live, to experience what there is to be experienced and not let life pass by shut off from the big experiences.

Flaubert's close ups

Flaubert writes cinematically. The following paragraph reminds me of scenes like the opening of Bergman's Cries and Whispers, and of that febrile distortion of focus I remember from lying in bed sick as a child, where the clock on the far wall with a dog's face seemed so close.

"Il arriva un jour vers trois heures; tout le monde était aux champs; il entra dans la cuisine, mais n’aperçut point d’abord Emma; les auvents étaient fermés. Par les fentes du bois, le soleil allongeait sur les pavés de grandes raies minces, qui se brisaient à l’angle des meubles et tremblaient au plafond. Des mouches, sur la table, montaient le long des verres qui avaient servi, et bourdonnaient en se noyant au fond, dans le cidre resté. Le jour qui descendait par la cheminée, veloutant la suie de la plaque, bleuissait un peu les cendres froides. Entre la fenêtre et le foyer, Emma cousait; elle n’avait point de fichu, on voyait sur ses épaules nues de petites gouttes de sueur."

Bovary's hightened sensitivity is clear ... the fine detail, the flies drowning in the cider in the bottom of the glasses, and all this culminating in noticing the small beads of sweat on Emma's shoulders.