From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert,

Lydia Davis (Translator)

Start date: October 1, 2012

Finish date: October 28, 2012

Discussion: Preliminary Reading

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Preliminary Reading

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Sep 29, 2011 Riku Sayuj rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lit

Madame Bovary & The Science of Adultery

Some universal features stand out when we talk of the human mating system.

1. First, women most commonly seek monogamous marriage—even in societies that allow polygamy. Rare exceptions notwithstanding, they want to choose carefully and then, as long as he remains worthy, monopolize a man for life, gain his assistance in rearing the children, and perhaps even die with him.

2. Second, women do not seek sexual variety per se. There are exceptions, of course, b ...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Darwin8u rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-ante-mortem, 2013

So, lessons learned in 300 pages: Women are trouble. Men are NOT to be trusted. Doctors don't know jack. If you want your kids to have a good job, raise them to be pharmacists or pawn brokers. Don't buy crap you can't afford. Don't get into debt. If you are going to kill yourself, do it right. Hide your notes. Marry for love. ...more

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Jan 13, 2018 Karen· rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, in-french

À Louise Colet. 20 Mars 1852
Toute la valeur de mon livre s'il en a une sera d'avoir su marcher droit sur un cheveu, suspendu entre le double abîme du lyrisme & du vulgaire (que je veux fondre dans une analyse narrative)- Quand je pense à ce que ça peut être j'en ai des éblouissemens
Source:
http://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/jet/pub...

'The entire value of my book, if it has any, will consist of my having known how to walk straight ahead on a hair, balanced above the two abysses of lyricism and vulgari À Louise Colet. 20 Mars 1852
Toute la valeur de mon livre s'il en a une sera d'avoir su marcher droit sur un cheveu, suspendu entre le double abîme du lyrisme & du vulgaire (que je veux fondre dans une analyse narrative)- Quand je pense à ce que ça peut être j'en ai des éblouissemens
Source:
http://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/jet/pub...

'The entire value of my book, if it has any, will consist of my having known how to walk straight ahead on a hair, balanced above the two abysses of lyricism and vulgarity (which I want to fuse in a narrative analysis.) When I think of what it can be, I am dazzled."

This is all dazzling bright surface, a world of things, of caps and clothes, of boots and shoes, of food and platters, of medical instruments, pharmaceutical apparatus, agricultural machinery. Horses and carriages and harness and riding crops. Fields, pastures, hills, woods. Two villages and a town in Normandie.
Here the metaphors are real. They are not an extra layer, added on, they are part of the fabric of life. The blind man who attaches himself to the post coach from Rouen back to Yonville opens an abyss of grief and horror in Emma. Sings his ironic song. And again to accompany her death. But he is real. Hivert can feel the extra weight and beats him off with his whip. We hear the sound of leather on his sore skin, we hear him tumble into the mud.
All of these things, all this banal material, it is inescapable. Only words can create a daydream world, a world of romance and finer feelings and wider horizons. Words suggestive of hidden treasure, of stars directing you to the one being to whom you can open your heart - are they working yet? These words? Rodolphe steals a sideways glance at Emma to see and meanwhile the scene is cross-cut with the local agricultural fair, the bellowing of ox, the bleating of sheep, the prizes and a silver medal for Catherine-Nicaise-Elisabeth Leroux from Sassetot -la-Guerrière for fifty four years of service on the same farm. Where is she? Here? Well, send her up, come on.

It is enchanting and terrible.

I love how Flaubert juxtaposes the incongruous. Emma feels ennui - that kind of existential ennui that comes of alienation - she has bought herself writing material (but who to write?), her book will not hold her attention, she despairs: "Elle souhaitait à la fois mourir et habiter Paris." (She wants to both die and live in Paris) - or Léon admires both the exaltation of her soul and the lace on her petticoat. That ironic distance - some find it unsettling, what does he want us to think of Emma? Dazzled, I feel both sympathy and contempt. Both.

This reading brought out Homais. Homais, the apothecary. The book ends with Homais. He feels like a male equivalent of Emma, one whose daydreams and fantasies were not nourished by romantic literature, but by the mythology of prestige, success and honour. His self-image has little to do with reality, he lives in as much of a fantasy world as Emma, and yet he manages to fuse his dreams onto the (male) material world. Through the judicious use of words in his journalistic pieces he creates a world in which he is hero. In the end he manages to convince the rest of the world of his merit.
"Il vient de recevoir la croix d'honneur."

The ultimate irony. ...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Marieke rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2012, classics, europe, e-book, fiction, kindle, proustiana

I took too long reading this. And now I feel strange that I've finished. I really enjoyed Flaubert's atmosphere and since this is the only book of his that I've read, and read twice, I suppose I ought to read some others.

I read this book in college and basically forgot everything in the meantime. I especially forgot about the promissory notes and debt collection. Given the recent fiascos in the banking and financial sector, I found this aspect of the book particularly fascinating (yes, I like bo ...more

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Jul 03, 2017 Kristen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, france, french-lit, personal-library, 2017, realism

This edition of the masterwork, with translation, notes and introduction by Lydia Davis, produces a literary package with a valuation higher than the sum of its parts. By that I mean that once consuming the whole of this particular edition, I can’t in good faith assign a rating of less than five stars even if at various intervals my reactions were somewhat flat or even petulant.

I am left preoccupied by a fantasy of dining with Flaubert, Proust, and Nabokov to share in a little tête-à-tête about ...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Landon is currently reading it

Rereading "Madame Bovary," this time in Lydia Davis's translation. Rereading "Madame Bovary" before rereading "In Search of Lost Time" because Flaubert influenced Proust. ...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Chris Walker rated it liked it · review of another edition

Madame Bovary and most of the people around her are irritating from start to finish but since that presumably was the objective of the author, the book succeeds admirably.

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Feb 06, 2012 Michael Bennett Cohn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Good book. Some great stuff about the self-destructiveness of middle class aspirational anxiety, and so on. Wish I knew how to pronounce the characters' names. ...more

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