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.

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.