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Memoriile unui nebun. Noiembrie
Aceste texte de tinerete, pasionante, rascolitoare, strabatute de angoasa adolescentei si de fervoarea, dar si de spiritul autocritic ale celui care se stie predestinat literaturii, ne ofera o imagine captivanta, inedita, a scriiturii unuia dintre cei mai mari prozatori ai secolului al XIX-lea. Memoriile unui nebun, text aproape in intregime autobiografic, este jurnalul crizei sentimentale si existentiale prin care trece un adolescent exaltat, al primelor incercari si deceptii amoroase si al drumului lung si dificil spre maturizare. Temele si o parte din personajele de aici vor fi dezvoltate apoi in romanele de maturitate, cu precadere in Educatia sentimentala. Inspirat din betia iubirii pe care Flaubert a cunoscut-o in bratele frumoasei Eulalie Foucaud, Noiembrie exploreaza natura dorintei si a erotismului si conflictul dintre nevoia de insingurare si foamea de afectiune. Marie, personajul care aduna la un loc energiile textului, este o tinara prostituata, o fiinta de o senzualitate aparte, in care violenta se uneste neasteptat cu erotismul frust si care aminteste de chipul ascuns al Emmei Bovary.
„Un nebun! Asta e ceva ce stirneste oroare. Tu ce esti, cititorule? In ce categorie te incadrezi – a prostilor sau a nebunilor? Daca ti s-ar da sa alegi, vanitatea te-ar impinge sa o preferi pe ultima. Da, inca o data intreb, la ce foloseste o carte care nu este nici instructiva, nici amuzanta, nici stiintifica, nici filosofica, nici de agricultura, nici elegiaca, o carte care nu ofera nici o reteta contra cosurilor ori contra puricilor, in care nu scrie nimic nici despre caile ferate, nici despre bursa, nici despre strafundurile sufletului omenesc, nici despre vesmintele din Evul Mediu, nici despre Dumnezeu, nici despre diavol, ci in care este vorba despre un nebun, adica despre lume, aceasta mare neroada care se roteste de secole in spatiu fara sa faca un pas; si care urla, careia ii curg balele si apoi se sfisie singura.” (Gustave Flaubert)
„Un nebun! Asta e ceva ce stirneste oroare. Tu ce esti, cititorule? In ce categorie te incadrezi – a prostilor sau a nebunilor? Daca ti s-ar da sa alegi, vanitatea te-ar impinge sa o preferi pe ultima. Da, inca o data intreb, la ce foloseste o carte care nu este nici instructiva, nici amuzanta, nici stiintifica, nici filosofica, nici de agricultura, nici elegiaca, o carte care nu ofera nici o reteta contra cosurilor ori contra puricilor, in care nu scrie nimic nici despre caile ferate, nici despre bursa, nici despre strafundurile sufletului omenesc, nici despre vesmintele din Evul Mediu, nici despre Dumnezeu, nici despre diavol, ci in care este vorba despre un nebun, adica despre lume, aceasta mare neroada care se roteste de secole in spatiu fara sa faca un pas; si care urla, careia ii curg balele si apoi se sfisie singura.” (Gustave Flaubert)
- GenresFranceLiteratureFiction
208 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2015
About the author
Gustave Flaubert
2,376 books4,040 followersGustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 12, 2020
Wow, thanks to having this book on my shelf - my here at the house shelf - I got to read not just one Gustave Flaubert novella I think they're called, but two and not only that but also a short story. I could have gone through the whole rest of my life without any of them, but it's too late now. And since I read them in the order they came in the book I'll also review them that way, beginning with "Memoirs of a Madman" which is one of Flaubert's earliest writings, written in 1838 but not published until after his death. The first thing that interested me is that the book is dedicated to "Alfred" "To you my dear Alfred these pages are dedicated as a gift" but no clue who Alfred was, so I had to go searching and found that Alfred Le Poittevin was a a French poet and lawyer. He was five years older than Flaubert and one of his closest friends and confidants and Flaubert dedicated this story to him. I found very little about him other than that and what I did find was in French which when translated into English seems backwards to me and therefore confusing, so if you are at all curious about Le Poittevin I suggest you goggle him and don't ask me.
Moving on, I had to keep reminding myself while reading this that after all he was only fifteen and fifteen year olds can be rather dramatic and over emotional, at least the ones in my family can. If our first-person narrator isn't whining about almost everything, childhood, school, traveling and unattainable idealized females, he is in rhapsodies about childhood, school, travel, and unattainable idealized females. The book alternates between his musings on the present and his memories of the past. The narrator usually takes a bleak outlook on life, discussing writing, sanity, and death, but sometimes all is wonderful. Many times in the story our narrator just loves to ask those questions that I just hate, the ones that either have no answer or I really don't care what the answer is in the first place, here are some:
"And what are you reader? in which category do you place yourself, in that of fools or that of the mad?" Both
"But have I lived? I am young, my face is without a wrinkle and my heart without passion."
"And why so young, why so bitter?" Beats me.
"What do I know?" Next to nothing apparently.
"Can the broken branch bear fruit, the leaf torn away by winds and dragged through the dust grow green again?" At least I could tell him no to that.
"What a sad and strange period is ours, towards what ocean is this torrent of iniquities flowing?"
"What will we be? Nothing - not even a breath of air." If you knew the answer why did you ask?
Anyway, you get the idea and now I'll move on to the whining, it's more annoying then the questions:
"I can't finish, my bitterness is too great to express it - oh, if only all this were not in the end to be mere pity, smoke, nothingness!
"Man is arrested by a blade of grass and cannot overcome the problem of a speck of dust."
"Weariness overcame me, I began to doubt everything. Though young I was old, my heart was wrinkled...."
"Man then is like that traveller lost amid the sands searching everywhere for a route to lead him to the oasis but seeing only the desert."
One of the first paragraphs of the story says this:
"But I am going to put down on paper everything that springs to mind, my ideas with my memories, my impressions my dreams my whims, everything which passes through my thoughts and my soul -"
And that's what he does, he writes down everything his fifteen year old mind thinks of, I'm just not sure why.
I enjoyed the short story "Bibliomania" much more, but that wouldn't have taken much. The story is based on a real story about Don Vincente, once guardian of his Spanish monastery’s library, who left his Cistercian order and became a Barcelona rare-book dealer. I can't tell you more about Don Vincente because then I would be giving away the plot of "Bibliomania" it is almost exactly the same story that was in the newspaper at the time about Don Vincente. I suppose I should just say that "Bibliomania" is based on a true event and leave it at that, I still liked the story.
And that takes me to "November"which was Gustave Flaubert's first completed work, a novella first completed in 1842. That is what it says on the back of my copy and it has thrown me into confusion from the moment I read it. The first line on the cover says "One of Flaubert's earliest writings, written in 1838, but published only after his death, "Memoirs of a Madman".........then farther down it says "November" was his first completed work in 1842. How could November be first in 1842 if Memoirs was written in 1838? I don't know and I'm tired of thinking of it. Poor Bibliomania isn't mentioned at all.
The beginning paragraph of the story was nice enough:
"I love the autumn - that melancholy season that suits memories so well. When the trees have lost their leaves, when the sky at sunset still preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered grass, it is sweet to watch the final fading of the fires that until recently burnt within you."
Unfortunately if seems as if my first-person narrator from "Memoirs" is back, or at least a relative of his. In a very short period of time I am reading statements like this:
"It's a gloomy season, this one - it is just as if life were about to depart with the sun."
"the years of my paltry life passed before me, as if swept along by winter's pitiful blast"
"I savoured at length my wasted life; I told myself joyfully that my youth was over and done with"
And of course more pointless questions:
"Are you not tired as I am of waking up every morning and seeing the sun all over again?"
"Tired of living the same life, suffering the same sorrow?"
"Tired of desiring and tired of being sated?"
"Tired of waiting, and tired of possessing?"
Tired of these questions? Oh, that was me not our narrator. Then there is this rather bizarre quote:
"Then death appeared to me in all its allure. I have always loved death; as a child, I longed for it simply so as to know it, to find out what lies within the grave, and in that sleep what dreams may come; I remember how I would often scrape the verdigris off old coins to poison myself, or try to swallow pins, or go to an attic window to hurl myself down into the street....When I reflect that almost all children do likewise and play at suicide, I can't help but think that man, whatever he may say, has a raging love for death."
All children play at suicide? Really? I never even thought of it when I was a child and if I would have swallowing pins or scraping verdigris - whatever that is - off coins wouldn't have come to mind.
Most of this first part is the narrator talking or whining, whichever you prefer, about the women he's loved, or wants to love, or wants them to love him, mentioning just about any woman he can think of, ballet dancers, actresses, women he saw at a dance, or at a theatre, or that brushed against in walking down the street, on and on. Finally, he just goes to a prostitute, skipping over the being in love part I guess, and her part of the story is interesting, weird but interesting. Although again we have this odd passage; the prostitute, Marie, wants to cut a lock of his hair to keep for whatever reason people do that and our narrator tells us:
"I love hair. How often, in the cemeteries where gravediggers were turning over the soil, or in old churches that were being demolished, have I gazed on hair that appeared in the broken earth, between the yellow bones and fragments of rotten wood! Often the sun would shed on it a wan ray, making it gleam like a seam of gold...."
I'm not even sure what I want to say about someone who loves to watch for hair between yellow bones and rotten wood. It's just so strange. Marie tells him her story of how she got where she is, I found her story interesting, totally beyond me how she got this way, but still interesting. If anyone decides to read this book please tell me why the Marie story ended as it did I don't get it at all. Now that Marie is gone we are back to our narrator talking about everything. He does say this which had me thinking for awhile:
"it is a source of shame among men; everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul's possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level."
And now our narrator decides he wants to fly away, far away, never to return and we have to hear of every single place he wants to land in or on or at. On a camel's back with an eagle flying overhead, galloping through a plain of palm trees, next to ruined temples that goats are climbing on, white mountains filled with idols, China where you can hold women's feet in your hands (hey, don't ask me), mountain torrents of Norway covered with their foam or maybe a mule driver in Andalusia. Now our first-person narrator just stops and the ending is told by a third person narrator. This narrator's first paragraph is:
"The manuscript stops here, but I knew its author, and if anyone has reached this page after making his way through all the metaphors, hyperboles and other figures that fill the previous pages, and now wish to know how it ended, let him continue reading; we are about to tell him."
Well of course I was going to continue reading but not because I wished to know how it ended but because I made it this far and there were only ten pages to go. At the end of the book there was a section titled "Extra Material on Gustave Flaubert's 'Memoirs of a Madman' and 'November'". The first section was "Gustave Flaubert's Life" which was just what it says, a short biography of him from birth to death, the next section was "Gustave Flaubert's Works". I find it extremely odd that there was no mention of "Memoirs of a Madman", "Bibliomania", or "November" in either section. Anyway, go ahead and read the book, I didn't like it but then again my least favorite novel ever is" Ulysses" and lots of people are in love with that one. I'm trying to decide whether to give this book one or two stars, I'm leaning toward one, but the writer was only a teenager so maybe I should give him a break. No, I will not re-read it. Or "Ulysses". Happy reading.
Moving on, I had to keep reminding myself while reading this that after all he was only fifteen and fifteen year olds can be rather dramatic and over emotional, at least the ones in my family can. If our first-person narrator isn't whining about almost everything, childhood, school, traveling and unattainable idealized females, he is in rhapsodies about childhood, school, travel, and unattainable idealized females. The book alternates between his musings on the present and his memories of the past. The narrator usually takes a bleak outlook on life, discussing writing, sanity, and death, but sometimes all is wonderful. Many times in the story our narrator just loves to ask those questions that I just hate, the ones that either have no answer or I really don't care what the answer is in the first place, here are some:
"And what are you reader? in which category do you place yourself, in that of fools or that of the mad?" Both
"But have I lived? I am young, my face is without a wrinkle and my heart without passion."
"And why so young, why so bitter?" Beats me.
"What do I know?" Next to nothing apparently.
"Can the broken branch bear fruit, the leaf torn away by winds and dragged through the dust grow green again?" At least I could tell him no to that.
"What a sad and strange period is ours, towards what ocean is this torrent of iniquities flowing?"
"What will we be? Nothing - not even a breath of air." If you knew the answer why did you ask?
Anyway, you get the idea and now I'll move on to the whining, it's more annoying then the questions:
"I can't finish, my bitterness is too great to express it - oh, if only all this were not in the end to be mere pity, smoke, nothingness!
"Man is arrested by a blade of grass and cannot overcome the problem of a speck of dust."
"Weariness overcame me, I began to doubt everything. Though young I was old, my heart was wrinkled...."
"Man then is like that traveller lost amid the sands searching everywhere for a route to lead him to the oasis but seeing only the desert."
One of the first paragraphs of the story says this:
"But I am going to put down on paper everything that springs to mind, my ideas with my memories, my impressions my dreams my whims, everything which passes through my thoughts and my soul -"
And that's what he does, he writes down everything his fifteen year old mind thinks of, I'm just not sure why.
I enjoyed the short story "Bibliomania" much more, but that wouldn't have taken much. The story is based on a real story about Don Vincente, once guardian of his Spanish monastery’s library, who left his Cistercian order and became a Barcelona rare-book dealer. I can't tell you more about Don Vincente because then I would be giving away the plot of "Bibliomania" it is almost exactly the same story that was in the newspaper at the time about Don Vincente. I suppose I should just say that "Bibliomania" is based on a true event and leave it at that, I still liked the story.
And that takes me to "November"which was Gustave Flaubert's first completed work, a novella first completed in 1842. That is what it says on the back of my copy and it has thrown me into confusion from the moment I read it. The first line on the cover says "One of Flaubert's earliest writings, written in 1838, but published only after his death, "Memoirs of a Madman".........then farther down it says "November" was his first completed work in 1842. How could November be first in 1842 if Memoirs was written in 1838? I don't know and I'm tired of thinking of it. Poor Bibliomania isn't mentioned at all.
The beginning paragraph of the story was nice enough:
"I love the autumn - that melancholy season that suits memories so well. When the trees have lost their leaves, when the sky at sunset still preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered grass, it is sweet to watch the final fading of the fires that until recently burnt within you."
Unfortunately if seems as if my first-person narrator from "Memoirs" is back, or at least a relative of his. In a very short period of time I am reading statements like this:
"It's a gloomy season, this one - it is just as if life were about to depart with the sun."
"the years of my paltry life passed before me, as if swept along by winter's pitiful blast"
"I savoured at length my wasted life; I told myself joyfully that my youth was over and done with"
And of course more pointless questions:
"Are you not tired as I am of waking up every morning and seeing the sun all over again?"
"Tired of living the same life, suffering the same sorrow?"
"Tired of desiring and tired of being sated?"
"Tired of waiting, and tired of possessing?"
Tired of these questions? Oh, that was me not our narrator. Then there is this rather bizarre quote:
"Then death appeared to me in all its allure. I have always loved death; as a child, I longed for it simply so as to know it, to find out what lies within the grave, and in that sleep what dreams may come; I remember how I would often scrape the verdigris off old coins to poison myself, or try to swallow pins, or go to an attic window to hurl myself down into the street....When I reflect that almost all children do likewise and play at suicide, I can't help but think that man, whatever he may say, has a raging love for death."
All children play at suicide? Really? I never even thought of it when I was a child and if I would have swallowing pins or scraping verdigris - whatever that is - off coins wouldn't have come to mind.
Most of this first part is the narrator talking or whining, whichever you prefer, about the women he's loved, or wants to love, or wants them to love him, mentioning just about any woman he can think of, ballet dancers, actresses, women he saw at a dance, or at a theatre, or that brushed against in walking down the street, on and on. Finally, he just goes to a prostitute, skipping over the being in love part I guess, and her part of the story is interesting, weird but interesting. Although again we have this odd passage; the prostitute, Marie, wants to cut a lock of his hair to keep for whatever reason people do that and our narrator tells us:
"I love hair. How often, in the cemeteries where gravediggers were turning over the soil, or in old churches that were being demolished, have I gazed on hair that appeared in the broken earth, between the yellow bones and fragments of rotten wood! Often the sun would shed on it a wan ray, making it gleam like a seam of gold...."
I'm not even sure what I want to say about someone who loves to watch for hair between yellow bones and rotten wood. It's just so strange. Marie tells him her story of how she got where she is, I found her story interesting, totally beyond me how she got this way, but still interesting. If anyone decides to read this book please tell me why the Marie story ended as it did I don't get it at all. Now that Marie is gone we are back to our narrator talking about everything. He does say this which had me thinking for awhile:
"it is a source of shame among men; everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul's possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level."
And now our narrator decides he wants to fly away, far away, never to return and we have to hear of every single place he wants to land in or on or at. On a camel's back with an eagle flying overhead, galloping through a plain of palm trees, next to ruined temples that goats are climbing on, white mountains filled with idols, China where you can hold women's feet in your hands (hey, don't ask me), mountain torrents of Norway covered with their foam or maybe a mule driver in Andalusia. Now our first-person narrator just stops and the ending is told by a third person narrator. This narrator's first paragraph is:
"The manuscript stops here, but I knew its author, and if anyone has reached this page after making his way through all the metaphors, hyperboles and other figures that fill the previous pages, and now wish to know how it ended, let him continue reading; we are about to tell him."
Well of course I was going to continue reading but not because I wished to know how it ended but because I made it this far and there were only ten pages to go. At the end of the book there was a section titled "Extra Material on Gustave Flaubert's 'Memoirs of a Madman' and 'November'". The first section was "Gustave Flaubert's Life" which was just what it says, a short biography of him from birth to death, the next section was "Gustave Flaubert's Works". I find it extremely odd that there was no mention of "Memoirs of a Madman", "Bibliomania", or "November" in either section. Anyway, go ahead and read the book, I didn't like it but then again my least favorite novel ever is" Ulysses" and lots of people are in love with that one. I'm trying to decide whether to give this book one or two stars, I'm leaning toward one, but the writer was only a teenager so maybe I should give him a break. No, I will not re-read it. Or "Ulysses". Happy reading.
May 15, 2018
Memories of a Madman is so much better than November...
Funnily enough, it was written before (I think Gustave was around 20 when he wrote November).
My 5 stars are for Mémoires d'un fou, madames et messieurs.
The heart is a soil which every passion moves, tosses and works on over the ruins of other passions. (Flaubert, being effing 17 years old...)
Funnily enough, it was written before (I think Gustave was around 20 when he wrote November).
My 5 stars are for Mémoires d'un fou, madames et messieurs.
The heart is a soil which every passion moves, tosses and works on over the ruins of other passions. (Flaubert, being effing 17 years old...)
December 31, 2024
2,50 spre 3 ⭐️ - doar pentru ca am mai citit și alte opere de-ale lui Flaubert, iar acestea par doar “niște ciorne” în comparație cu celelalte.
February 19, 2016
Memoriile unui nebun mi s-a parut un text mai reusit decat Noiembrie. Cred ca imi place Flaubert.
April 17, 2015
„Toate aceste texte de început ale lui Flaubert pot fi privite ca o mărturie a căutării unei voci și al unui stil singular. Flaubert nu se ferește să înceapă prin a scrie slab calitativ și să recunoască acest fapt în chiar procesul scrierii textelor, lăsând să se vadă intuitiv ceea ce se va desăvârși mai târziu într-un stil inovator și influent.”
de la sursă: Memoriile lui Flaubert primite de-a gata – SemneBune http://semnebune.ro/2015/memoriile-lu...
de la sursă: Memoriile lui Flaubert primite de-a gata – SemneBune http://semnebune.ro/2015/memoriile-lu...
July 1, 2026
Angoase, ultima parte a cărții, a salvat mare parte din restul textului, printr-o profunzime și o abordare tulburătoare..
May 31, 2024
nu vreau sa stiu cati ani avea flaubert cand a scris noiembrie... memoriile unui nebun one hundred times better
January 5, 2023
This is a very reflective work. I'm 61 and the young Flaubert's musing on his future life in Memoirs made me think about my own youth: what I did right and what I screwed up. Note: I am a recovering Alcoholic, sobriety date Apr 24 1984, so there are a lot of things I screwed up before I sobered up, but there are also things I did right even while I was still in my disease. SO the past couple of nights I've been looking back. Also an exercise that many, not just I, take part in. I also found that November also lends towards reflection on the part of the reader. And in this edition there is a brief bio of Flaubert that seems to indicate that what he discusses in both works are memoirs of his own life or at least vignettes from his circle. if you are male and want a think piece that is short, this is it. If you are over 60 or at a time in your life that reminiscing is appropriate, GREAT read. If you are female, all you will find is that men both young and old are yucky. Yes we are. As we age we need to look back on both the good and bad and these works will both help with that exercise.
October 29, 2025
Mémoires : un Flaubert fâché qui se plaint
Novembre : poétique mais lassant
Novembre : poétique mais lassant
December 8, 2016
"[...] viața mea nu este compusă din fapte; viața mea este numai gânduri."
July 13, 2022
He is so dramatic lol
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews