Les Chemins du savoir repurposed using Dynamic Style Property Changer by Charlie Mansfield May 2007

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1848: Year of Revolution

I. The Situation prior to 1848:

The period between 1830 and 1848 saw a constitutional monarchy in France under the reign of Louis-Philippe I. As king, Louis-Philippe had restricted powers and most major decisions were taken by the strongly right-wing government. There was restricted suffrage (one had to pay 200 francs a year in tax - the cens - to be eligible to vote) and power was held by a narrow oligarchy of bankers and industrialists (the haute bourgeoisie) rather than the old nobility. The number of political parties was limited and there was much censorship. There was a period of rising tension during the 1840s. A number of scandals draw attention to the corruption of the r�gime. There was an economic crisis in 1846, a poor harvest in 1847 and a generally unpopular foreign policy.

II. The Events of 1848:

i) In February the government banned all public banquets and political meetings. Crowds took to the streets to demonstrate and were fired upon by the militia. Between the 22nd and the 24th February workers, students and the National Guard united against Louis-Philippe.

ii) On the 24th February, having failed to resolve the tensions, Louis-Philippe fled to England.

iii) The Second Republic was proclaimed and a provisional government set up ushering in a more progressive era: universal male suffrage, the establishment of national workshops, the abolition of slavery, the working-day reduced to ten hours etc.

iv) Elections were postponed out of fear but when they did take place in April a right-wing assembly was elected which began to back-track and repeal many of its original reforms.

v) In May there were demonstrations by the left against the actions of the newly- elected government.

vi) In June the national workshops were closed due to their high cost and there was an uprising of the Paris workers. The minister of war, Eug�ne Cavaignac received dictatorial powers and ordered the suppression of the uprising. Some 100,000 insurrectionists fought during the `June days' and were either killed, arrested or deported. Dreams of a Utopian social order had failed and the forces of order had triumphed.

vii) Power was now invested in a president - Louis-Napol�on - who began to reverse the progressive legislation introduced by the short-lived Second Republic.

III. The Events after 1848:

On the 2nd December 1851 Louis-Napol�on successfully carried out a coup d'�tat and the following year the Second Empire (1852-1870) was declared. The new dawn had failed and an era of reaction was reinstated.

Further Reading

� R. Price, The Revolutions of 1848 (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988)

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Love, Marriage and Adultery in Nineteenth-Century France

... although the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel may be said to move toward marriage and the securing of genealogical continuity, it often gains its particular narrative urgency from an energy that threatens to contravene that stability of the family on which society depends. It thus becomes a paradoxical object in society, by no means an inert adjunct to the family d�cor, but a text that may work to subvert what it seems to celebrate. (Tanner:1979 p.14)

A recurrent theme of the nineteenth-century novel was adultery. Novels like Honor� de Balzac's La Femme de trente ans, La Muse du d�partement and La Duchesse de Langeais, Jules Champfleury's Les Bourgeois de Molinchart, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Edmond Duranty's Le Malheur d'Henriette G�rard, to cite just a few French examples, all attest to writers persistant preoccupation with love, marriage and, above all, the `problem' of adultery. It can be argued that the popularity of adultery as a theme in nineteenth-century fiction may be explained by the way in which it allows a an exploration of the social order. Adultery calls into question dominant definitions of the nature and role of women, authority and hierarcy in society. The theme of adultery was used to explore the interlocking system of laws that governs women's lives under patriarchy. Writers focussed on the institution of marriage as the cornerstone in the systems of exchange of women between men that organizes patriarchal societies.

In nineteenth-century France, women could play no active role in public life and were excluded from adopting professional responsibilities which would give them economic independence. Woman's place was in the home as wife and mother. Women had no other positive role, only a passive one restricted to the confines of home and garden. Women were regarded as possessions, as decorations to men's social standing and success. This is how Emma is seen by Charles and the inhabitants of Yonville-l'Abbaye in Madame Bovary:

Charles finissait par s'estimer davantage de ce qu'il poss�dait une pareille femme. Il montrait avec orgeuil, dans la salle, deux petits croquis d'elle � la mine de plomb, qu'il avait fait encadrer dans des cadres tr�s larges et suspendus contre le papier de la muraille � de longs cordons verts. Au sortir de la messe, on le voyait sur sa porte avec de belles pantoufles en tapisserie. (Folio p.73)

Under the terms and conditions of the Napoleonic Code Civil women were regarded as perpetual minors. Fathers and husbands were the time-honoured guardians of women. The Code Civil had transformed marriage from an essentially religious sacrament to a legal contract in which authority was henceforth invested in the husband. The relatively progressive legislation put in place in the wake of the revolution of 1789, such as the introduction of divorce in 1792 was repealed by the Napoleonic Code Civil which denied women all rights. A law prohibiting divorce was passed in 1816 - which was to last until 1884 - making women the virtual prisoners of their husbands. Not substantially changed until 1938 the Code Civil stated that `... le mari doit protection � sa femme, la femme ob�issance � son mari'. The husband had the sole right to administer whatever wealth the family possessed, both property and dowry. Furthermore, in theory women risked imprisonment for committing adultery whereas a man risked only a fine, and only then if he had introduced his mistress into the family home. Due to the abolition of divorce which lasted between 1816 and 1884 women were the virtual prisoners of their husbands, trapped in marriage and unable to change their situation. Marriage incidentally, following the aristocratic and upper middle-class model, was about money rather than love with the respective parties seeking to consolidate their own interests through an advantageous match.

Until 1880 there was little provision for formal education at both primary and secondary level. The few who were fortunate enough to receive the little education available to them - mainly from convent schools - found the emphasis placed on religious instruction and indoctrination. An advisor to Napol�on III suggested that the goal of education for women was to `faire des m�res'. Such was the education that Emma received in Madame Bovary:

Mlle. Roualt, �lev�e au couvent chez les Ursulines avait re�u, comme on dit, une belle �ducation, qu'elle savait en cons�quence, la danse, la g�ographie, le dessin, faire de la tapisserie et toucher du piano. (Folio p.42)

In nineteenth-century France, and particularly during the Second Empire, the franchise was extended to only a few and it was not until the introduction of universal suffrage in 1944 that women could vote. Far more insidious than the legal oppression they faced was the ideological oppression of which they were the victims. The conventional view of women in the nineteenth century was unfavourable: they were the `weaker sex', constantly prone to illness and hysteria. The Grand Dictionnaire Universel of 1871 went so far as to assert: `La femme n'est point l'�gal de l'homme'. Women's domain was the home and any attempt to move outside this proper domain and to pursue a career of one's own was met with ridicule. Working women were disparagingly known, as they were in England, as `les bas bleus'. Early socialists such as Saint- Simon and Fourier had spoken of `l'esclavage de la femme' as early as 1829-30 yet theirs was a lonely voice in a society in which a crassly philistine utilitarianism was rapidly becoming the dominant ideology. Also, in 1848, after the revolution of February, there was a sporadic outburst of feminist activity, although it only consisted of a few maverick individuals like Flora Tristan and Ubertine Auclert.

One might argue then, that it was in the novel of adultery that the injustices faced by women in nineteeth-century France were best addressed. Balzac was perhaps the best-known writer to place the unhappily married women at the centre of a number of his novels but it was perhaps Flaubert who produced the most complex representation of la mal mari�e in Madame Bovary.

Further Reading

� J. Armstrong, The Novel of Adultery (London: Macmillan, 1976) 12-19

� L. Cyzba, Mythes et id�ologie de la femme dans les romans de Flaubert (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1983)

� T. Tanner, Adultery and the Novel: Contract and Transgression (Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1979)

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Art for Art's Sake

Greatly oversimplifying, one could describe the development of modern art in terms of a distinct movement towards a greater autonomy in the definition and practice of art. The category of `beauty' and the domain of beautiful objects was first constituted, first came into being in the period known as the Renaissance. These beautiful objects were an intrinsic part of both the life of the court and of the church. In the course of the eighteenth century, literature, the fine arts and music became institutionalized as activities independant of sacred and courtly life. Finally, around the middle of the nineteenth century there emerged the aestheticist conception of art which encouraged the artist to produce his/her work in accordance with the distinct consciousness of art for art's sake. This was a response to the commercialization of art and the book market which began to emerge at the end of the eighteenth century. When we reach Baudelaire, this retreat of art from everyday life became more pronounced. With Baudelaire poetry alienates itself from the public sphere and withdraws into the the untouchableness of complete autonomy. Baudelaire joins Flaubert in his belief that the work of art is beyond all social utility.

Further Reading

� M. Moriarty, `Structures of Cultural Production in Nineteenth-Century France' in P. Collier & R. Lethbridge (eds.), Artistic Relations: Literature and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1994) 15-29

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The Poet as Alchemist

To explain the analogy between the poet and the alchemist read the following passage from a planned preface to Les Fleurs du mal:

Des po�tes illustres s'�taient partag� depuis longtemps les provinces les plus fleuries du domaine po�tique. Il m'a paru plaisant, et d'autant plus agr�able que la t�che �tait plus difficile, d'extraire la beaut� du Mal. Ce livre, essentiellement inutile et absolumment innocent, n'a pas �t� fait dans un autre but que de me divertir et d'exercer mon go�t passionn� de l'obstacle.

Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard,1976) pp.181

Central to the mediaeval alchemist and to Baudelaire's conception of the poet is the idea of transformation or transubstantiation. Just as the mediaeval alchemist sought to turn base metal into gold, so the poet seeks to turn or transubstantiate the ugly, the everyday, the banal into the beautiful, the exquisite, the entoxicating. This process involves a fascination with evil, transgression, deviation, sin, otherness in all its forms. In a sketch for an epilogue to the 1861 edition of Les Fleurs du mal Baudelaire makes this analogy cristal clear:

Car j'ai de chaque chose extrait la quintessence;

Tu m'a donn� ta boue et j'en ai fait de l'or.

Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard,1976) p.192

The notion of the poet as alchemist is implicit in the ambiguity of the title, Les Fleurs du mal. On a simple level, this can be translated as - as it is commonly translated - The Flowers of Evil. However, one might equally translate the `du' as meaning `from' or `out of'. The translated title then becomes Flowers from Evil or Flowers out of Evil. The poet transforms evil, suffering, sickness - `mal' is a tricky word to translate too - into a thing of beauty. Baudelaire's `flowers' are created from evil. One of the things Les Fleurs du mal is all about is the extraction of powerful sensual impressions from unexpected sources. In `Le Soleil' Baudelaire compares the poet with the sun as both can ennoble the most banal:

Quand, ainsi qu'un po�te, il descend dans les villes,

Il ennoblit le sort des choses les plus viles

Turning defeat into something positive: the failure of the individual to escape spleen in turned into a volume of poetry, the everyday life of the metropolis is revealed to have its own poetry. Indeed, it is in the city poems that Baudelaire's transformation of `le laid' into `le beau' can be seen at its best. In `Les septs vieillards', `Les petites vieilles' and `Les Aveugles' Baudelaire finds spectacles of horror which both attract and repell him. The opening lines of `Les petites vieilles' is particularly interesting in this respect:

Dans le plis sinueux des vieilles capitales

O� tout, m�me l'horreur tournes aux enchantements

In the city poems Baudelaire finds beauty in ugliness, in strangeness, repulsion and fear. `Les petites vieilles' is a particularly sadistic poem in its de-feminized and de- humanized description of the old women the poet sees wandering the city streets. In `Les Aveugles', it is the blind beggars roaming the streets who provide Baudelaire with the pretext of the poem - an investigation of seeing and non-seeing, blindness and insight. These blind beggars are doubles of the poet, searching for answers and some peace amind the chaos of modern life. The most infamous example of Baudelaire's alchemical experiments is the so-called love poem called `Une Charogne'.

Further Reading

� A. Fairlie, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (London: Edward Arnold, 1960)

� F.W. Leakey, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

� P. Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)

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Art and Politics after 1848

1848 inaugurated a new era of disillusionment. There was a dissonance between the intense idealism that surfaced in the revolution's early stages and the extreme brutality to which it had descended by June. The writers and intellectuals of the generation of 1848 felt themselves to be profoundly out of synch with their time. For the working classes, the events of 1848 clarified their situation and the vested interests of the bourgeoisie that precluded any genuine partnership between them. But for the progressive-thinking and left-leaning intellectual bourgeoisie born and raised within the bourgeoisie and nurtured in its values yet also estranged from it, the events of June 1848 were a fiasco.

Disillusioned and discouraged by the failure of the 1848 revolution and now subject to greater levels of moral and political surveillance, many writers and artists retreated from all involvement ith the making of history. The responses of the generation of 1848 to both the June days, Louis-Napol�on's subsequent coup d'�tat and the Second Empire was a retreat from the making of history and a turning towards the making of art. Only Victor Hugo in exile in Jersey used his art as a form of intervention in political life; in particular Les Ch�timents (1856) but also Histoire d'un crime (1852) and Napol�on le petit (1852). One can see this tendency in the work of Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Flaubert. This tendency reaches its culminating point in the last quarter of the nineteenth century with the Symbolist movement and its belief that artistic signs could become the means of expressing the mysteries of an ideal, spiritual or higher reality and its stress on poetry as a self-sufficient, self-justifying gesture full of erudite and arcane references and a cultivation of rich semantic and phonetic patterns.

If one wanted a concise definition of the principal tendencies of the art produced in France in the second half of the nineteenth century one could describe it thus:

� the removal of art from the political sphere

� the aestheticization of the work of art.

How far does the work of Baudelaire fit into this neat characterisation of art and literature in the last half of the nineteenth century? Well, Baudelaire had fought alongside the insurgents in June 1848 against the brutality of the bourgeoisie and some fifteen years later wrote a prose poem, `Assommons les pauvres' about a young man who involves himself in France's class struggle. In `Assommons les pauvres' from Le Spleen de Paris (1869) Baudelaire stages a confrontation between the bourgeoisie and les couches d�favoris�es. A bourgeois intellectual develops the theory that it is only by mugging the poor in the street, rather than by giving them charity, that one might educate them and shock them out of their torpid acceptance of their lot. Only by receiving a beating would the poor realize the extent to which they are despised by the middle class and possibly retaliate. The bourgeois intellectual in the poem attacks a beggar in the street but his plan goes wrong and he receives a beating too. The poem ends with the two Frenchmen, intellectual and beggar, dazed, bruised and nursing their wounds but having learnt nothing.

What is the meaning of this puzzling allegory? It is possible to argue that the poem turns social antagonism into art, into poetry, and that perhaps the only suitable response to social conflict is to aestheticize it. In this reading then, the poem might be seen as an allegory of the bourgeois intellectual's powerlessness, his inability to alter the course of history. It expresses a deep-seated pessimism about the potential of art to effect radical change. Some critics however, have interpreted the poem as an incitement to class struggle and revolutionary violence. In this reading - which is not necessarily incompatible with the first reading - Baudelaire emerges as a sort of Marxist revolutionary acutely conscious of the real economic divisions that beset France. The answer to this social injustice lies in revolutionary violence. This is certainly the line taken by T.J. Clark:

`Assommons les pauvres', like the notes from Pauvre Belgique, is a statement of commitment. A commitment, self-destructive and despairing, to a revolution of and by the people, with the bourgeoisie as its enemy - the bourgeois `revolutionary' as much as the middle-class supporter of order. A hymn to conflict, in which hatred is the best augur of equality, and branch and fist are the means to `pride and life'. It is not a wisdom that the Revue nationale, or many others of Baudelaire's contemporaries, were likely to understand. But it measures up, in its sour and private fashion, to the realities of 1848; and if we look for a parallel, we must turn to the statements of Louis-Auguste Blanqui or the pages of Marx's commentary on the times, `The Class Struggles in France'. Inappropriate bedfellows, you might think, for the poet and the dandy; but that is the way with revolutions.

T.J. Clark, The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France 1848-1857 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982) p.177

Further Reading

� E.J. Ahearn, `Marx's Relevance for Second Empire Literature: Baudelaire's "Le Cygne"' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1986) 269-277

� R.D.E. Burton, Baudelaire and the Second Republic: Writing and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)

� W. Drost, `Baudelaire between Marx, Sade and Satan' in M. Bowie, A. Fairlie & A. Finch (eds.), Baudelaire, Mallarm�, Val�ry: New Essays in Honour of Lloyd Austin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 38-57

� H. Stenzel, `Les �crivains et l'�volution id�ologique de la petite bourgeoisie dans les ann�es 1840: le cas de Baudelaire' in Romantisme, 17-18 (1977) 79-91

� G. Van Slyke, `Dans l'intertexte de Baudelaire et de Proudhon: Pourquoi faut-il assommer les pauvres?' in Romantisme, 45 (1984) 57-77

� R. Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1985

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Balzacian Realism: Language and Social Type

Balzac's concern was to endow his characters with a realistic idiom, and each character has his own idiom, typical of whichever end of the social spectrum s/he moves in as well as typical of his/her own personality (although, of course, individual personality is less important than social type in Balzac). Sociolect and, to a lesser extent, idiolect are of great importance to Balzac. For example, the elegant prose of Clara de Beaus�ant contrastes with the coarseness of la grosse Sylvie in her exchanges with Christophe at the other end of the social scale. Madame Vauquer's idiom is typified by dialect and mispronunciation of standard French providing the novel with one of its sources of humour. Baron de Nucingen, the merchant banker husband of Delphine speaks with a thick Alsatian accent which us also used for comic purposes.

Although Balzac is sensitive to the ways in which language is used to assert social distinction, there is one important inconsistency: both Vautrin and Madame de Beaus�ant use the same language. They both deploy a sophisticated discourse full of extended metaphors and intricate argumentation. They share a common vision of the world articulated in the same language. This unsettling similarity of speech and of vision is central to the thematic heart of the novel: that corruption is omnipresent infecting both high (the elegant salons of the old aristocracy) and low (the bas-fonds of the criminal underclass).

Further Reading

� M. Kanes, Balzac's Comedy of Words (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)

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Balzac: Selected Further Reading

[Books on Balzac] [Studies of Le P�re Goriot] [Articles and Chapters on Balzac]

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Books on Balzac

� P. Barb�ris, Balzac et le mal du si�cle (Paris: Gallimard, 1970)

� P. Barb�ris, Balzac, une mythologie r�aliste (Paris: Larousse, 1971)

� P. Barb�ris, Le Monde de Balzac (Paris: Arthaud, 1973)

� M. Bard�che, Une lecture de Balzac (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1964)

� M. Bard�che, Balzac, romancier (Geneva: Slaktine, 1967)

� D. Festa-McCormick, Honor� de Balzac (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979)

� B. Guyon, Le Pens�e politique et sociale de Balzac (Paris: Armand Colin,1967)

� H.J. Hunt, Balzac's Com�die humaine (London: The Athlone Press, 1959)

� F. Marceau, Balzac et son monde (Paris: Gallimard,1955)

� A.R. Pugh, Balzac's Recurring Characters (London: Duckworth, 1974)

� C. Prendergast, Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)

� P.-L. Rey, Balzac: La Com�die humaine (Paris: Hatier, 1979)

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Studies of Le P�re Goriot

� P. Barberis, Le P�re Goriot de Balzac. �criture, structures, signification (Paris: Larousse, 1972)

� D. Bellos, Balzac: Old Goriot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)

� G. Gengembre, Balzac: Le P�re Goriot (Paris: Larousse, 1993)

� J. Guichardet, Le P�re Goriot d'Honor� de Balzac (Paris: Larousse,1993)

� M. Kanes, P�re Goriot: Anatomy of a Troubled World (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993)

� P.W. Lock, Balzac: Le P�re Goriot (London: Edward Arnold, 1967)

� E. Querouil, Le P�re Goriot de Balzac et le roman d'�ducation (Paris: Bordas, 1990)

� G. Riegert, Balzac: Le P�re Goriot (Paris: Hatier,1992)

� D. Rinc�, Honor� de Balzac: Le P�re Goriot (Paris: Nathan, 1989)

� J. Rougeon, Balzac: Le P�re Goriot (Paris: Bordas, 1990)

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Articles and Chapters on Balzac

� G. Besser, `Lear and Goriot: A Re-evaluation' in Orbis litterarum (1972) 28- 36

� N. Billot, `Le P�re Goriot devant la critique' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1987) 101-129

� L. A. Boldt, `The Framed Image: The Chain of Metaphors in Balzac's Le P�re Goriot' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 19 (1991) 517-535

� P. Brooks, `Balzac: Representation and Signification' in P. Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James and the Mode of Excess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) 110-224

� J. Gaudron, `Sur la chronologie du P�re Goriot' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1967) 147-156

� M. Ginriceo, `The Virgil-Dante Relationship' in Studies in Medievalism (1983) 67-79

� J. Guichardet, `Un jeu de l'Oie Mal�fique: l'espace parisien du P�re Goriot' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1986) 169-189

� L-F. Hoffmann, `Les M�taphores animales dans Le P�re Goriot' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1963) 91-106

� H. Levin, `Balzac' in H. Levin, The Gates of Horn (New York: Oxford Universitu Press, 1963) 150-213

� M. Milner, `La Po�sie du mal chez Balzac' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1963) 321-335

� S. Petrey, `The Father Loses a Name: Constative Identity in Le P�re Goriot' in S. Petrey, Realism and Revolution: Balzac, Stendhal, Zola and the Performances of History (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1988) 83-122

� B. Rigby, `Things, Distinction and Decay in Nineteenth-Century French Literature' in B. Rigby (ed.) French Literature, thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1993) 86-104

� C. Vercollier, `Fonction du temps dans Le P�re Goriot' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1978) 137-147

Concept: Charlie Mansfield, Text: Tony McNeill

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Character in Balzac

Balzac's conception of character is one that does not interest itself in exploring unique psychology. Rather, he sees character as a means of exploring social types. In short and at the risk of oversimplification, Balzac's characters tend to be more two-dimensional than say those in Stendhal or in Flaubert. Julien Sorel is, to paraphrase Christopher Prendergast, infinitely more complex and mysterious than the simple stereotype of the ambitious young parvenu. For example, Goriot is less an individual in the grip of an obsession than the very incarnation or embodiment of doting, indulgent fatherhood. Indeed, towards the end of the novel he is described as `Ce Christ de la Paternit�' (Folio p.282). Similarly, Rastignac is less interesting as an actual individual - he is certainly less interesting than his distant literary cousin Julien Sorel - than as an example or type of young post-Revolutionary aristocrat whose aspirations and moral standards are less than heroic and which reflect the moral squalor of the age. Balzac is interested in social types and the influence of surroundings or cadre on personality and behaviour. Balzac sees character as formed by the social, the historical and the environmental. The critic Georg Luk�cs claimed that Balzac's characters were superior to Stendhal's because he suceeded in creating both individuals as well as types. He discussed in a number of works Balzac's use of types which embody what he called `the totality of socially decisive forces'. What he meant by this was that Balzac's characters are all individuals struggling to make sense of the bewildering reality that faces particular classes and generations at particular moments in history. The cast of La Com�die humaine are all embodiments of the ideological conflicts generated by a society in the process of rapid change.

Further Reading

� A.R. Pugh, Balzac's Recurring Characters (London: Duckworth, 1974)

� C. Prendergast, Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)

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Balzac and the Literature of the City

Il est dans Paris certaines rues d�shonor�es autant que peut l'�tre un homme coupable d'infamie; puis il existe des rues nobles, puis des rues simplement honn�tes, puis des jeunes rues sur la moralit� desquelles le public ne s'est pas encore form� d'opinion; puis des rues assassines, des rues plus vieilles que de vieilles douairi�res ne sont vieilles, des rues estimables, des rues toujours propres, des rues toujours sales, des rues ouvri�res, travailleuses, mercantiles. Enfin les rues de Paris ont des qualit�s humaines, et nous impriment par leur physionomie certaines id�es contre lesquelles nous sommes sans d�fense. Il y a des rues de mauvaise compagnie o� vous ne voudriez pas demeurer, et des rues o� vous placeriez volontiers votre s�jour ... Ces observations, incompr�hensibles au-del� de Paris seront sans doute saisies par ces hommes d'�tude et de pens�e, de po�sie et de plaisir qui savent r�colter, en fl�nant dans Paris, la masse de jouissances flottantes, � toute heure, entre ses murailles; par ceux pour lesquels Paris est le plus d�licieux des monstres ... � Paris! qui n'a pas admir� tes sombres paysages, tes �chapp�es de lumi�re, tes culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a pas entendu tes murmures, entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne conna�t encore rien de ta vraie po�sie, ni de tes bizarres et larges contrastes. Honor� de Balzac: Ferragus (1833)

The literature of the nineteenth century is a literature of things, of objects. The literature of the nineteenth century is also however, a literature of place, of social space, a literature of precise geographical specificity. Since the nineteenth century was very much the century of the city and the rapid growth of the city - the population of Paris increased threefold during Balzac's lifetime from 650,000 to 1,800,000 inhabitants - the literature and the art of the nineteenth century was thus also a literature and an art of the urban, the metropolitan. This is certainly true of Le P�re Goriot. Indeed, almost on the very first page of the novel, in a kind of narratorial digression, we find the narrator wondering aloud if the story he is about to tell would be understood outside of Paris:

Serait-elle [l'histoire] comprise au-del� de Paris? le doute est permis. (Folio pp.21-2)

What the narrator is saying here is this: look, my story is so rooted in Paris, so much about the people and atmosphere of the place, that it may not be fully comprehensible to anyone living outside of Paris. Balzac's Paris, the Paris described in Le P�re Goriot is, I would argue, a fascinating mix of the historically verifiable and the poetic. At the same time as remaining superficially faithful to the real contours, detours, sights and smells of the city he projects onto the city his own mythologized vision. The extract from Ferragus at the beginning of this section expresses Balzac's desire to document the different quartiers of Paris and their respective characters, as well as a sensitivity to the city's strange poetry.

The Paris of Balzac's lifetime was largely mediaeval, based as it was on a mediaeval street pattern and largely unchanged. It was not until the 1850s with the modernization programme commissioned by Napol�on III and carried out by Baron Haussmann that the modern Paris we know today took shape. Balzac's Paris was one of glitter, ferment and temptation since the capital became a magnet for the concentration of wealth and power. Yet it was also one of squalid streets, dark alleys and poor hygiene. Balzac is alive to the economic developments and opportunities taking place in Restoration Paris. Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo a mere four years prior to the action of the novel and Paris had only just be free of the occupation of allied troops. Although between 1815 and 1818 things were rather uncertain economically, by 1819 the economy was beginning to pick up. Paris, in particular, was the beneficiary of a number of significant building projects: new markets and slaughterhouses, The Saint-Denis and Ourcq canals and the S�vres bridge were also completed during this period.

In keeping with Balzac's Realist aesthetic, his representation of life in Paris is broadly similar to documentary accounts produced at the time. Housing and police documents of the time for example, paint a dismal picture of the low standard of living and insanitary conditions of the poorer areas of Paris. The population of Paris grew rapidly in the period after 1815 but with no real increase in the number of available properties. Overcrowding, and the social and medical problems it causes was endemic. This explains the large number of boarding houses in poorer areas and, indeed, the often varied social mix who dwelt in those boading houses. As for the streets, well they were almost uniformly poorly lit, awash with mud and filth and were a constant place of crime. Little wonder then, that Rastignac makes so much fuss at having to brave the streets instead of taking a cab.

Further Reading

� R.D.E. Burton, `The Unseen Seer, or Proteus in the City: Aspects of a Nineteenth- Century Parisian Myth' in French Studies, 42 (1988) 50-68

� J. Guichardet, `Un jeu de l'Oie Mal�fique: l'espace parisien du P�re Goriot' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1986) 169-189

� C. Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

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Balzac and French History

Vous ne me paraissez pas fort en Histoire: Il y a deux Histoires: L'Histoire officielle, menteuse qu'on enseigne, l'Histoire ad usum delphini; puis l'Histoire secr�te, o� sont les v�ritables causes des �v�nements, une histoire honteuse. Honor� de Balzac: Illusions perdues (1843)

Any reading of Balzac must take into account the impact of the French Revolution and its effect on French society because the social, economic and political repercussions of 1789 inform the whole of La Com�die Humaine. It is the France of the aftermath of the Revolution of 1789 that fascinates Balzac. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to claim that the fall-out of that Revolution permeates La Com�die humaine as a whole in every text and on every page. On an explicit and an implicit level the Revolution and its retomb�es are omnipresent.

Following the events of 1789 and especially those of 1792 (1792 being the date when the National Assembly voted the abolition of the monarchy and declared France a republic), France saw around seventy years of political instability. Within these seventy or so years France witnessed three Revolutions: the first in 1830, the second in 1848 and the third in 1870 each involving a radical change in political r�gimes. Nothing in France after the events of 1789 could return to the way it was. The aristocracy and church might still be powerful but they were now facing consistent challenges to their authority and influence and the feudal order of the ancien r�gime could never return. The French Revolution had released social forces and ideas which could not be entirely suppressed. The genie was out of its bottle for good.

The central development of Balzac's lifetime was the growing power of the bourgeoisie - a newly empowered commercial and industrial middle-class who were beginning to make their prescence felt in French economic and political life. Indeed, the transfer of money and power from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie is absolutely central to Balzac's fiction. We see this in Le P�re Goriot. One of the principal characters - if not the principal character - is an impoverished young aristocrat whose family had lost all its land and its investments during the Revolution when all land and property - the biens nationaux - were seized by the state and sold off. New fortunes were made and the character of old Goriot himself is a good example of this. Goriot's life story is a product of history. He makes his money trading pasta and flour in the wake of the Revolution and the collapse of other peoples' fortunes. Because of the wealth he amassed he was able to secure for his two daughters an advantageous marriage: Anastasie to a member of the old aristocracy, Monsieur de Restaud and Delphine to a newly enobled banker, Baron de Nucingen. When Napol�on came to power he created a pseudo-aristocracy from the upper middle-class, the haute bourgeoisie, often to reward financial services. To put it more crudely, it was possible to buy a title. Again we can see examples of this newly created nobility in Le P�re Goriot in the character of Baron de Nucingen. Unlike other nobles in the novel however like Madame de Beaus�ant, he has bought himself a place in the aristocracy. Hence, in Le P�re Goriot we see a rivalry between old Goriot's two daughters: Delphine who is married to Baron de Nucingen and thus can never attain real class or social status and Anastasie who is married to a real old aristocrat, Monsieur de Restaud and who has real social credibilty and access to the glittering salons of the old nobility. Delphine ultimately becomes poisoned by the knowledge that she will never, ever have access to the higher echelons of social prestige.

Although Le P�re Goriot does not contained many of the detailed historical references that other novels of La Com�die humaine are full of, it nonetheless attempts to represent the social conflcts and ideological battles of the Restoration. There is in Le P�re Goriot an obsession with money, frenetic financial wheeler- dealings, a struggle for social distinction, inequalities in wealth and a rivalry between the returning emigr� aristocracy and the commercial and industrial middle class that were very much characteristic of the period. The main social phenomenon that interests Balzac is the large-scale capitalist development taking place in post-Revolutionary France. This new capitalist development both replaces the stable social order of the ancien r�gime of pre-Revolutionary France and it also replaces the heroic ideals and aspirations of the Napoleonic era. Because political power lay in the hands of a tiny minority of extremely affluent electors - only 90,000 men were qualified by wealth to vote and of these only a super-rich minority of 10,000 could serve as deputies - power and money went hand in hand and were, in fact, constitutionally linked in Restoration France. This goes a long way in explaining Rastignac's frenetic desire for wealth as a means of securing a profitable career. The era was decidedly one of vulgar money-grabbing with little room for idealism. One of the issues Balzac is also concerned with, and here there is a very useful comparison to be made with Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir, is the impossibility of heroic action. What we find in much post-Revolutionary and specifically post-Napoleonic fiction is the degradation of the hero. This reaches its culmination in Gustave Flaubert's L'�ducation sentimentale (1869) but is evident in both Stendhal's Julien and Balzac's Eug�ne de Rastignac.

Further Reading

� R. Butler, Balzac and the French Revolution (London: Croom Helm,1983)

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Prendergast on Balzac and Money

In Le P�re Goriot money is not only an atomistic agent (source of division and conflict in an individualistic society), but also ... a force which circulates throughout the social organism, providing points of contact between its otherwise divided parts, a kind of `bond' but one which paradoxically represents a travesty and a negation of primary human bonds. (Prendergast: 1978 pp.75-6)

Further Reading

Christopher Prendergast: Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)

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Balzacian Realism: The Narrator

Balzac's writing is marked by a fantasy of control and of total mastery. The anonymous narrators of many of his novels occupy a position of omniscience: they are all-seeing, all-knowing and ever-present. In the Balzacian novel - of which Le P�re Goriot is no exception - the narrator has four main ways of relaying information to the the reader:

� Omniscient Narration

� Direct Speech

� Indirect Speech

� Free Indirect Speech

Omniscient narration is used primarily in in about Le P�re Goriot and makes up some 70% of the novel. The past historic is the tense of omnisicent narration - it anchors events described firmly in the past and serves to promote or reinforce an essentialist vision of human character, to express the inevitability of events depicted. One main aspect you may have noted is the frequency with which the narrator interrupts the story to pontificate or make generalizing statements about character and action. Imagine the production of a play in which the author of the play was present alongside the characters, supplying background information, analysing motives, philosophizing about heredity or drawing moral conclusions. This is broadly what Balzac's novels are like; a kind of illustrated argument rather than properly autonomous action. The narrator cannot help poking his nose in and guiding the reader with his/her inferences. These narratorial intrusions take three main forms:

� extended discourse on nineteenth-century Paris

� Maxim or aphorism

� Generalization

Further Reading

� G. Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuils, 1972)

� S. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983)

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Balzac and the Natural Sciences

Balzac grounds his claim to be a historian in what he considers to be scientific theory. Backed up by various biological and physical theories prevalent in the early nineteenth century - theories elaborated by scientists like Buffon, Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire - Balzac asserts the validity of the idea of unity of substance. All animal life shares a common essence which is modified by certain environmental conditions. Society too might be said to resemble nature in this respect insofar as human beings too are influenced by environmental conditions. Just as there are zoological species, so are there social species, though their operation is more complex. It is interesting to note here that Le P�re Goriot is dedicated to the zoologist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire who originally elaborated the notion of unity of substance. The novelist is concerned with men, women and things, bound together in society which plays an essential role in forming them and shaping their destinies. These two extracts from the Avant- propos to La Com�die humaine make clear Balzac's creative debt to the natural sciences:

Cette id�e vint d'une comparaison entre l'Humanit� et l'Animalit� ... La Soci�t� ne fait-elle pas de l'homme, suivant les milieux o� son action se deploie, autant d'hommes diff�rents qu'il y a de vari�t�s en zoologie? Les diff�rences entre un soldat, un ouvrier, un administrateur, un avocat, un oisif, un savant, un homme d'�tat, un commer�ant, un marin, un po�te, un pauvre, un pr�tre, sont, quoique plus difficile � saisir, aussi consid�rables que celles qui distinguent le loup, le lion, l'�ne, le corbeau, le requin, le veau marin, la brebis, etc. Il a donc exist�, il existera donc de tout temps des Esp�ces Sociales comme il y a des Esp�ces Zoolologiques. Si Buffon a fait un magnifique ouvrage en essayant de repr�senter dans un livre l'ensemble de la zoologie, n'y avait-il pas une oeuvre de ce genre � faire pour la Soci�t�?

Honor� de Balzac:Avant-propos to La Com�die humaine (1842)

Le cr�ateur ne s'est servi que d'un seul et m�me patron pour tous les �tres organis�s. L'animal est un principe qui prend sa forme ext�rieure, ou, pour parler plus exactement, les diff�rences de sa forme, dans les milieux o� il est appel� � se d�velopper.

Honor� de Balzac: Avant-propos to La Com�die humaine (1842)

Further Reading

� B. Guyon, Le Pens�e politique et sociale de Balzac (Paris: Armand Colin,1967)

� H.J. Hunt, Balzac's Com�die humaine (London: The Athlone Press, 1959)

� L-F. Hoffmann, `Les M�taphores animales dans Le P�re Goriot' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1963) 91-106

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Barb�ris on the Theme of Paternity in Balzac

On sait la place que tient dans l'univers balzacien le th�me du p�re. On pense � Goriot, � Goriot "Christ de la paternit�", � Goriot qui va se cacher derri�re les arbres des Champs-�lys�es pour voir passer les voitures des ses filles: "Ma vie, � moi, est dans mes deux filles [...] Enfin, je vis trois fois. Voulez- vous que je vous dise une dr�le de chose? Eh bien! quand j'ai �t� p�re, j'ai compris Dieu [...]". Oui Goriot. Mais aussi la grosse m�re Minoret qui ne vit, qui ne pense que pour son fils D�sir�. Mais aussi Philippe Bridau: "Mon fils, lui, sera plus heureux que moi, il sera grand seigneur. Le dr�le souhaitera ma mort, je m'y attends bien ou il ne sera pas mon fils". Mais aussi Crevel et sa joie � l'annonce de la grossesse de Mme Marneffe. Mais aussi, pourquoi pas, Maxime de Trailles soi-m�me, Maxime, le coupe-jarret, Maxime, le destructeur de m�nages, le spoliateur d'enfants. Vieilli, demi-rat�, il pense � se marier: "J'aurai peut-�tre un enfant, je serai s�v�re pour lui, sa m�re sera riche, j'en ferai un diplomate, il pourra �tre ambassadeur [...]". Le th�me est le m�me partout; il s'agit de vivre par personne interpos�e, de r�ussir dans un autre que soi ce qu'on n'a pu faire en une courte vie, de se prolonger, de s'achever. Il s'agit de triompher non surtout du temps, mais des obstacles sociaux, de tout ce qui brime l'�lan vital et le vouloir-vivre, de tout ce qui ne s'apprend que par l'exp�rience.

Maxime sera s�v�re pour son fils, qui sera ce que Maxime n'a pu �tre, lui qui vient maintenant mendier aupr�s de Rastignac. Ainsi Maxime aura laiss� quelque chose. Il aura le sentiment d'avoir employ� sa force � quelque chose. Il aura cr��.

Ce th�me obs�dant, c'est le th�me humaniste par excellence, le th�me de Prom�th�e, le th�me de la lettre de Gargantua � Pantagruel. Ses filles pour Goriot, le village pour Benassis, le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu pour Porbus, Lucien pour Vautrin, la Com�die humaine pour Balzac, c'est toujours la cr�ation magnifiant le cr�ateur, faisant preuve pour le cr�ateur, la cr�ation sup�rieure au cr�ateur, plus compl�te.

"Mes filles sont plus belles que moi", dit Goriot. Or, Vautrin parle comme Goriot: "Je suis un bon homme qui veut se crotter pour que vous soyez � l'abri de la boue pour le reste de vos jours", dit-il � Rastignac. A Lucien, plus tard, il dira la m�me chose, de mani�re encore plus explicite: "Je me ferai vous [...] Je veux aimer ma cr�ature, la fa�onner, la p�trir � mon usage, afin de l'aimer comme un p�re aine son enfant. Je roulerai dans ton tilbury mon gar�on [...] ".

P. Barb�ris: Le Monde de Balzac (Paris: Arthaud, 1973) pp.434-435

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Balzac: Novelist or Poet

Despite Balzac's avowed intention to be the objective secretary of French society, his texts are in fact shot through with complex metaphors. Woven into the fabric of his narratives is an intricate pattern of imagery that make them more like extended prose poems than novels. Let's pick out or unweave and unravel just a few of these threads:

i) Animal

Although there are, as far as I know at least, not that many actual animals in Le P�re Goriot (I'm prepared to be proved wrong), the text abounds in animal imagery. For those who like their statistics neat, there are 67 different animals referred to in the novel and there are 92 animal comparisons applied to 19 of the characters.

The animal imagery applied to the various human characters is of both a conventional or public nature. For example, Goriot is often described as being like or wanting to be like a faithful dog to his daughters but when he eventually dies a pauper he is described as dying `comme un chien'. In both cases, although the connotations of chien are both negative and positive, they nonetheless correspond to conventional imagery. More importantly though, the animal imagery also correspond to a personal, private and idiosyncratic world view. The abundance of animal imagery, most of the negative or pejorative, express a profoundly pessimistic vision. Human society is bestial. It's a dog eat dog world out there, the law of the jungle is in force, its all about the survival of the fittest.

The dedication of Le P�re Goriot to the `grand et illustre Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire' is important since he was one of the innovators in the natural sciences who posited the notion of `unity of being', the belief that animal life adapted itself into different species according to habitat. Saint-Hilaire termed this theory transformism (le transformisme) and it could be argued that it was an early form of Darwinism. Balzac was a keen exponent of scientific theories and what we would now call pseudo- science and in his work one finds many references to phrenology (reading a person's character from bumps on their head) and mesmerism (belief in an invisible fluid which passed from one person's eyes to another's). Remember that Balzac wanted to catalogue the different human types or species and modelled his fictional practice on the classificatory schemas of natural scientists like Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier and Buffon.

Many of the characters' names in the text invoke the names of animals or qualities associated with animals: Goriot = goret (piglet), Vautrin = veau (calf) or the verb se vautrer (to slouch, to wallow in the mire as in se vautrer dans la boue/la fange). What is interesting is that each `species' of human has its own distinct behavioural patterns and territory. Each is fiercely territorial and is anxious not to become part of the food chain to be devoured by another more powerful creature.

ii) New World Forest, Ocean, Slough etc.

Closely related to the complex network of animal imagery are references to the world, and more specifically to Paris as, variously, a new world forest (Folio p.156), an ocean (Folio p.34/p.124) and a slough (Folio p.77). Here again, animal associations are prominent. The Pension Vauquer is variously described in the text as a `bocage' (grove, copse), a `terrier' (burrow, hole), a `caverne' (cave), a `steppe' (steppe) and a `mar�cage' (marsh, swamp, bog). What is significant about the animal world - symbolized by the jungle - is its immorality, or to be more precise its amorality. There is no concern with moral values; the main concern is to survive, is the struggle for survival and superiority. To take but one example, on pages 88 to 90 (Folio) Rastignac meets the arch-dandy and philanderer Maximes de Trailles and there is an immediate and reciprochal hostility between the two young men:

Rastignac se sentit une haine violente pour ce jeune homme (Folio p.89)

They are both predatory males in the jungle of Parisian society and both seek to mark out their territory. This comparison is not lacking justification since Maxime de Trailles is well known in aristocrat circles for provoking insults and then killing his rival in duels.

iii) The Prostitute

The literature, and indeed the art of nineteenth-century France is fascinated by the figure of the prostitute. The prostitute is a powerful image because as both seller, commodity and (occasionally) entrepreneur in one, s/he represents, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin, the commodification of social relations characteristic of capitalist society. Balzac is no exception. In an early novel entitled Ferragus, Balzac describes Paris as `cette grande courtisane' and what may be referred to as the prostitutional motif is also a central thread in Le P�re Goriot too. We are all prostitutes, we all have a price and would be ready to sell out to the highest bidder. The prostitutional motif is closely relation to the concepts of exploitation and exchange that are everywhere in the novel. And of course, exploitation and exchange are travesties of real human relationships. To read Le P�re Goriot is to witness the spectacle of individuals selling out, bartering themselves, exchanging an aristocratic name for wealth or conversely wealth for an aristocratic name. The notion of exchange is central to the novel. We see characters exchanging or bartering all the time. Typically, it is Vautrin who introduces the theme of prostition, he is the one character who sees with the most lucidity the ways of the world. Take, for example the following statement:

... voil� les Parisiennes. Si leurs maris ne peuvent entretenir leur luxe effren�, elles se vendent. (Folio p.74)

He makes the same point later on:

Vous verrez les femmes se prostituer pour aller dans la voiture du fils d'un pair de France (Folio p.152)

Finally, there is the most important reference to a Paris personified by Vautrin as a high-class prostitute:

Si les fi�res aristocrates de toutes les capitales de l'Europe refusent d'admettre dans leurs rangs un millionaire inf�me, Paris lui tend les bras, court � ses f�tes, mange ses d�ners et trinque avec son infamie. (Folio pp.158-9)

Vautrin realizes then, that Parisian life is based on prostitution - `Sur soixantes beaux marriages qui ont lieu dans Paris, il y en a quarante-sept qui donnent lieu � des march�s semblables' (Folio p.155) - and attempts to become a sort of pimp. For example, Vautrin tries to exploit Rastignac's physical beauty in a deal that would make Victorine Taillefer the sole inheritor of her father's fortune and thus a highly attractive wife for the right man. What he seems to be saying is, look kid, with your looks and my brains we could make a killing (quite literally!). Rastignac himself however, is more than capable of being both prostitute and pimp in one - seller and commodity. From early on in the novel he realizes the strategic value of pleasing powerful women. His relationship with Delphine is one based on his exploiting his aristocratic name in return for access to Delphine's wealth. But Delphine too prostitutes herself. She was the willing accomplice in a bought marriage as well as exchanging her body in return for Rastignac's social ticket.

iv) Mud

Mud, both of the literal and the metaphorical variety, is everywhere in the novel. Mud sticks. On both the literal and the metaphorical level mud is associated with poverty. Most of the inhabitants of the Pension Vauquer are trying to escape the mud and the dirt of the streets to the higher level of comfortable society. Rastignac is the most important character who seeks to escape the mud and dirt of the streets. On pages 85 to 86 Rastignac resents getting his boots dirty and is jealous (Folio p.89) of Maxime de Trailles spotless fine leather boots. For him, mud and dirt is concretely linked with poverty and cleanliness with money. However, the second metaphorical meaning of mud/dirt is corruption. It is Rastignac who first describes Paris as `un bourbier' (Folio p.77) - a slough or mud-pit - after listening to one of Vautrin's long diatribes. At the end of the novel this impression has deepened:

Il voyait le monde comme un oc�an de boue dans lequel un homme se plongeait jusqu'au cou, s'il y trempait le pied (Folio p.326)

Even, the elegant and aristocratic Madame de Beaus�ant is of this opinion:

... le monde est un bourbier, t�chons de rester sur les hauteurs (Folio p.114)

This kind of mud (mud as representing corruption) sticks and is eveywhere. No matter how hard Rastignac may try to escape the moral turpitude of Paris, he will always be dragged back in and back down. The mud metaphor is another way in which the dictinction between the high and low realms are collapsed and conflated: mud/corruption is everywhere.

The very last pages of the novel are interesting to read in the light of the mud metaphor. You may recall that Rastignac has just attended Goriot's lonely funeral at P�re Lachaise cemetary in the north-east of Paris. Rastignac looks down at the Paris skyline from the commanding vantage-point of the cemetary which is situated on a hill and delivers his challenge to the city: `A nous deux maintenant' (Folio p.367). Whereas in Stendhal, height or altitude tends to represent some form of superiority, distance or transcendance, the scene here is in no way symbolic of Rastignac's moral superiority. Far from being a moment of redemption and rejection, it signals descent and acceptance. It is a prelude to a descent into the mire of Parisian social life. The last words of the novel are, after all, not `A nous deux maintenant' but `Et pour premier acte de d�fi qu'il portait � la soci�t�, il alla d�ner chez Madame de Nucingen' (Folio p.367). From the vantage-point of the cemetary, Rastignac sees the totality of Paris, with all its sordid and hitherto secret interconnections and accepts it. He chooses not `r�volte' or `ob�issance' but `lutte', an ambiguous term which in Balzac's lexicon might best be understood as designating the social game of Parisian life.

Further Reading

� P. Barberis, Le P�re Goriot de Balzac. �criture, structures, signification (Paris: Larousse, 1972)

� D. Bellos, Balzac: Old Goriot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)

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Population and Society in Restoration Paris

N'allons pas croire pourtant que la s�gr�gation g�ographique, telle que la conna�tront les villes du XXe si�cle, est inexistante au temps de Louis XV. En fait, elle se d�veloppe m�me pendant cette �poque, en liaison avec la construction de quartiers neufs et r�sidentiels (...). Sous la Restauration dans la vieille ville ... les classes bourgeoises �migrent vers les quartiers neufs (...). Cette s�gr�gation ne se dessine pourtant que lentement, et pendant la plus grande partie de la p�riode le mixage social fait cohabiter, dans les m�mes quartiers, dans les m�mes maisons, du premier �tage bourgeois aux mis�rables soupentes, riches et ouvriers, population ais�e et marginaux mis�rables. (Chaussinand-Nogaret: 1981 p.587)

Further Reading

Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, Histoire de la France urbaine (Paris: Seuil, 1981)

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Recurring Characters in Balzac

By 1834, with the publication of the first installments of Le P�re Goriot Balzac had discovered one of the devices which was to play an important role of the construction of La Com�die humaine, the introduction of characters who recur in a number of novels - in French this is generally referred to as le retour des personnages. This is a very important device for Balzac. It allows him to spin a web of relationships - familial, financial etc. - which helps hold together the whole conception of La Com�die humaine and give to the imaginary world of his novels something of the complexity of the real world. Recurring characters are one of the ways in which Balzac sought to grasp French society in its totality, a society formed of individuals embedded in an elaborate skein of connections.

Further Reading

� H.J. Hunt, Balzac's Com�die humaine (London: The Athlone Press, 1959)

� A.R. Pugh, Balzac's Recurring Characters (London: Duckworth, 1974)

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Le P�re Goriot and the French Revolution

Le P�re Goriot est, sociologiquement parlant, un roman de la R�volution qui a eu lieu: noblesse de province d�class�e, noblesse parisienne artificiellement revenue aux splendeurs, pouss�e d�mographique et culturelle, fortunes nouvelles, p�riodes pendant lesquelles il a bien fallu vivre, couches populaires qui ont pass� Dieu sait par quoi pour finir Dieu sait o�, puissance de l'administration et des bureaux, sens plus ou moins partag� par beaucoup de monde que tout est instable et que tout droit est reconnu, vestiges culturels, esquisses ou parodies de culture nouvelle. (Barb�ris: 1972 pp.195-6)

Further Reading

� Pierre Barb�ris, Le P�re Goriot de Balzac: �criture, structures, signification (Paris: Larousse, 1972)

� R. Butler, Balzac and the French Revolution (London: Croom Helm,1983)

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Luk�cs on the Balzacian Novel of Disillusionment

In Balzac we see the tumultuous tragedy of birth; his sucessors give us the lifeless fact of consummation and lyrically or ironically mourn the dead. Balzac depicts the last great struggle against the capitalist degradation of man, while his sucessors paint an already degraded capitalist world. Romanticism - which for Balzac was only one feature of his conception, a feature which he overcame and developed further - was not overcome by his sucessors, but lyrically and ironically transmuted into reality which it outgrew, blanketing the great motive forces of evolution and providing only elegiac or ironical moods and impressions instead of an active and objective presentation of the things in themselves. The militant participation in the great human struggle for liberation slackens into mourning over the slavery that capitalism has brought on mankind and the militant anger at this degradation dies down to an impotently arrogant passive irony. Thus Balzac not only created the novel of disillusionment but also exhausted the highest possibilities of this type of novel. (Luk�cs: 1950 pp.63-64)

Further Reading

G. Luk�cs, Studies in European Realism (London: Hillway, 1950)

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Balzac: The C19th Novelist

It is no overstatement to claim that Balzac is the nineteenth-century French novelist. To write in the last 50 or 60 so years of the nineteenth century (and arguably in the first 50 or 60 years of the twentieth century) was inevitably to write within the broad shadow cast by Balzac. Balzac was the literary colossus whose work all subsequent writers had to negotiate, the novelist against which all subsequent novelists in France had to measure their own fictional practice. As D.A. Williams has pointed out:

Balzac provided the world with the prototype of Realism; all Realists - in particular, Strindberg and Howells - are indebted to him and all Realists - in particular, Flaubert - felt the need to modify the prototype. (Williams: 1978 p.287

Balzac's formidable reputation, his pre-eminent status comes not from the publication of any single novel but from the publication of a vast network of interconnected and interrelated texts known collectively as La Com�die humaine. La Com�die humaine is a truly monumental work which contains some 91 novels and short stories (some 137 were originally planned) and a cast of over 2,500 characters of which 573 appear in more than one text.

Let me give you a couple of examples of Balzac's influence. When in 1857 Gustave Flaubert gave to his novel Madame Bovary the subtitle moeurs de province it was in the full knowledge that such a subtitle alluded directed to Balzac's �tudes de moeurs, one of the three categories Balzac grouped the texts of the La Com�die humaine under. Similarly, when Zola began work on his series of interconnected novels called Les Rougon-Macquart: histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire (1871-1892) he could not help but situate himself and compare his own fictional project with Balzac's La Com�die humaine. If you click on Balzac and Zola you will find �mile Zola's unfinished and unpublished study provisionally entitled `Diff�rences entre Balzac et moi' which reveals this `anxiety of influence'.

Further Reading

� D.A. Williams, `The Practice of Realism' in D.A. Williams (ed.), The Monster in the Mirror: Studies in Nineteenth-Century Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) 257-279

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Balzac and Zola

Balzac dit que l'id�e de sa Com�die lui est venue d'une comparaison entre l'humanit� et l'animalit�. (Un type unique transform� par les milieux (G. St Hilaire): comme il y a des lions, des chiens, des loups, il y a des artistes, des administrateurs, des avocats, etc.). Mais Balzac fait remarquer que sa zoologie humaine devait �tre plus compliqu�e, devait avoir une triple forme: les hommes, les femmes et les choses. L'id�e de r�unir tous ses romans par la r�apparition des personnages lui vint. Il veut r�aliser ce qui manque aux histoires des peuples anciens: l'histoire des moeurs, peintre des types, conteurs des drames, arch�ologue du mobilier, nomenclateur des professions, enregistreur du bien et du mal. Ainsi d�peinte, il voulait encore que la soci�t� port�t en elle la raison de son mouvement. Un �crivain doit avoir en morale et en religion et en politique une id�e arr�t�e, il doit avoir une d�cision sur les affaires des hommes. Les bases de la Com�die sont: le catholicisme, l'enseignement par des corps religieux, principe monarchique. - La Com�die devait contenir deux ou trois mille figures.

Mon oeuvre sera moins sociale que scientifique. Balzac � l'aide de 3.000 figures veut faire l'histoire des moeurs; il base cette histoire sur la religion et la royaut�. Toute sa science consiste � dire qu'il y a des avocats, des oisifs etc. comme il y a des chiens, des loups etc. En un mot, son oeuvre veut �tre le miroir de la soci�t� contemporaine.

Mon oeuvre, � moi, sera tout autre chose. Le cadre en sera plus restreint. Je ne veux pas peindre la soci�t� contemporaine, mais une seule famille, en montrant le jeu de la race modifi�e par les milieux. Si j'accepte un cadre historique, c'est uniquement pour avoir un milieu qui r�agisse; de m�me le m�tier, le lieu de r�sidence sont des milieux. Ma grande affaire est d'�tre purement naturaliste, purement physiologiste. Au lieu d'avoir des principes (la royaut�, le catholicisme) j'aurais des lois (I'h�r�dit�, I'�n�it�). Je ne veux pas comme Balzac avoir une d�cision sur les affaires des hommes, �tre politique, philosophe, moraliste. Je me contenterai d'�tre savant, de dire ce qui est en en cherchant les raisons intimes. Point de conclusion d'ailleurs. Un simple expos� des faits d'une famille, en montrant le m�canisme int�rieur qui la fait agir. J'accepte m�me l'exception.

Mes personnages n'ont pas besoin de revenir dans les romans particuliers.

Balzac dit qu'il veut peindre les hommes, les femmes et les choses. Moi, des hommes et des femmes, je ne fais qu'un, en admettant cependant les diff�rences de nature et je soumets les hommes et les femmes aux choses.

�mile Zola: Diff�rences entre Balzac et moi (1869)

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Baudelaire on the Nineteenth Century

La France traverse une phase de vulgarit�. Paris, centre et rayonnement de b�tise universelle. Malgr� Moli�re et B�ranger, on n'aurait jamais cru que la France irait si grand train dans la voie du Progr�s. Questions d'art, terrae incognitae. Le grand homme est b�te.

Charles Baudelaire, `Projet de pr�face' in Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) p.182

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Baudelaire on Beauty

Toutes les beaut�s contiennent, comme tous les ph�nom�nes possibles, quelque chose d'�ternel et quelque chose de transitoire, - d'absolu et de particulier.

`De l'h�ro�sme de la vie moderne' in Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) p.493

J'ai trouv� la d�finition du Beau, - de mon Beau. C'est quelque chose d'ardent de triste, quelque chose d'un peu vague, laissant carri�re � la conjecture.

`Fus�es' in Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) p.657

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Baudelaire's `Black Venus' Poems

Poems 22 to 39 are all about Jeanne Duval. The woman in the poems is dark-skinned and dark-haired and the images used to describe her are full of an exotic tropicality. The poems are marked by their sensuality and their stress on the physical aspects of love and of sexual intimacy. The Jeanne Duval or black Venus poems are linked formally through certain recurrent images pertaining to heat, scent and physical abundance. The poem `Parfum exotique' is a key text here with the physicality of woman, to be more explicit, the scent of her sultry breast (`l'odeur de ton sein chaleureux') provoking in the poet an imaginative reverie of exploration and escape.

In `La Chevelure', it is the scent of her hair that inspires another fantasy of escape to a tropical idyll. The common link between these two poems is of woman as muse inspiring the poet, provoking exotic and erotic daydreaming. Woman's physicality allows the poet escape through imagination and memory. The magical powers of the imagination which had hitherto laid dormant are reawakened through women's physicality.

On a more critical level, what we can see Baudelaire doing is to repeat and reinforce stereotypes about non-western women as sexually voracious and animal-like. Indeed, when Jeanne is described in the sonnets it is generally in terms of an animal, often a cat. In `La Chevelure', the vocabulary used has strong animal connotations: `toison' (fleece), `moutonner' (to billow) and `encolure' (neck-line). Baudelaire in these poems, reveals himself to be very much a man of his time, reworking colonial stereotypes of the non-western woman. It is interesting to compare Baudelaire's representations of Jeanne Duval with French painting of the nineteenth century which also made use of western stereotypes about the colonial Other. You may like to consider the relevance of the argument made by Griselda Pollock in her book on the painter Paul Gauguin to Baudelaire's poems to his `V�nus noire':

The culturally feminized and racially othered body also carries the projected burden of cultural lack - the ennui - experienced by some of the Western bourgeoisie in the face of capitalism's modernity. Gauguin talks so often of escaping the urban industrial West for renewal in the Tropics. (Pollock: 1992 p.47)

Further Reading

� E.J. Ahearn, `Black Venus, White Poet: Exile and Exploitation in Baudelaire's Jeanne Duval Poems' in The French Review, 51 (1977) 212-220

� A. Carter, `Black Venus' in Black Venus (London: Picador, 1986) 9-24

� G. Pollock, Avant-Garde Gambits 1888-1893: Gender and the Colour of Art History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992)

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Baudelaire: The Lyric Poet and The Modern World

Baudelaire was an enthusiastic supporter of those artists who attempted to become `painters of modern life'. In his verse and prose poems he preferred to explore the artistic potential of modern life- `la beaut� passag�re, fugace de la vie pr�sente' (Oeuvres compl�tes II p.724) rather than concentrate on an idealized classical past. The city with its bizarre contrasts is preferred to the calm of the pastoral; the crowd is preferred to the individual's communion with nature.

The prose poem `Perte d'aur�ole' from Petits po�mes en prose (1869) is an interesting text to read in connection with this new poetic project. It is a satire of the notion of the poet as standing aloof from the contingencies of the modern world. Re-writing the Romantic myth of the poet as `songeur ail�' (Hugo) distant from the world of the ordinary and the everyday, the poem embraces the poet's new position as a city dweller obliged to find poetry's subject matter in the streets, brothels, commotion, risks and temptations of the modern world. Here is the text in full:

Perte d'aur�ole

�Eh! quoi! vous ici, mon cher? Vous, dans un mauvais lieu! vous, le buveur de quintessences! vous, le mangeur d'ambroisie! En v�rit�, il y a l� de quoi me surprendre.

- Mon cher, vous connaissez ma terreur des chevaux et des voitures. Tout � l'heure, comme je traversais le boulevard, en grande h�te, et que je sautillais dans la boue, � travers ce chaos mouvant o� la mort arrive au galop de tous les c�t�s � la fois, mon aur�ole, dans un mouvement brusque, a gliss� de ma t�te dans la fange du macadam. Je n'ai pas eu le courage de la ramasser. J'ai jug� moins d�sagr�able de perdre mes insignes que de me faire rompre les os. Et puis, me suis-je dit, � quelque chose malheur est bon. Je puis maintenant me promener incognito, faire des actions basses, et me livrer � la crapule, comme les simples mortels. Et me voici, tout semblable � vous, comme vous voyez!

- Vous devriez au moins faire afficher cette aur�ole, ou la faire r�clamer par le commissaire.

- Ma foi! non. Je me trouve bien ici. Vous seul, vous m'avez reconnu. D'ailleurs la dignit� m'ennuie. Ensuite je pense avec joie que quelque mauvais po�te la ramassera et s'en coiffera impudemment. Faire un heureux, quelle jouissance! et surtout un heureux qui me fera rire! Pensez � X, ou � Z! Hein! comme ce sera dr�le!�

Further Reading

� C. Baudelaire, `Le Peintre de la vie moderne' in Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) 683-724

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

� R. Klein, `"B�n�diction"/"Perte d'aur�ole": Parables of Interpretation' in Modern Language Notes, 85 (1970) 515-528

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Baudelaire and the Renewal of Poetic Language

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century French drama and poetry was subject to the legislative conventions of neo-classicism. The forms and language used by writers from the seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century was rigidly codified and conventionalized. A distinction was made between les mots bas which were considered vulgar and inappropriate and les mots nobles which were considered worthy of great literature. The vocabulary thought proper to literature was small and select with an emphasis on the general and the abstract rather than on the particular and the concrete. Technical terms, colloquialisms archaisms and neologisms were banished in favour of a rigorously stripped-down purity of diction.

Victor Hugo in the early nineteenth century was amongst the first to challenge neo- classicism and claimed that:

Je fis souffler un vent r�volutionnaire

Je mis un bonnet rouge au vieux dictionnaire

V. Hugo, `R�ponse � un acte d'accusation'

This poetic project was being continued and extended throughout the nineteenth century this by, amongst others, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. Rimbaud's poem `Les Assis' (1871), an angry attack on small-minded local librarians, is an interesting example of the ways in which poets began to use vocabulary drawn from many diverse fields. Here is the first stanza:

Noirs de loupes, gr�l�s, les yeux cercl�s de bagues

Vertes, leurs doigts boulus crisp�s � leurs f�murs

Le sinciput plaqu� de harnosit�s vagues

Comme les floraisons l�preuses des vieux murs;

A. Rimbaud, `Les Assis'

Here we find words taken from anatomy and botany like `loupes' (a defect or disfiguration on a person or a tree) and `sinciput' (the upper front part of the skull) as well as neologisms like `boulus' (formed from `boulures' meaning outgrowths found on the base of plants) and `harnosit�s' (formed from `harneux' meaning fierce or aggressive).

Although Rimbaud is a very clear example of this extension of poetic vocabulary, Baudelaire in the middle of the nineteenth century was also enlarging the range of subjects and, consequently, vocabulary available to the modern poet. Perhaps the best example is `Une Charogne':

Une Charogne

Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous v�mes, mon �me,

Ce beau matin d'�t� si doux:

Au d�tour d'un sentier une charogne infame

Sur un lit sem� de cailloux,

Les jambes en l'air, comme une femme lubrique,

Br�lante et suant les poisons,

Ouvrait d'une facon nonchalante et cynique

Son ventre plein d'exhalaisons.

Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,

Comme afin de la cuire � point,

Et de rendre au centuple � la grande nature

Tout ce qu'ensemble elle avait joint ;

Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe

Comme une fleur s'�panouir.

La puanteur etait si forte, que sur l'herbe

Vous cr�tes vous �vanouir.

Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride,

D'ou sortaient de noirs bataillons

De larves, qui coulaient comme un �pais liquide

Le long de ces vivants haillons.

Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague,

Ou s'�lancait en p�tillant ;

On e�t dit que le corps, enfl� d'un souffle vague,

Vivait en se multipliant.

Et ce monde rendait une �trange musique,

Comme l'eau courante et le vent,

Ou le grain qu'un vanneur d'un mouvement rythmique

Agite et tourne dans son van.

Les formes s'effa�aient et n'�taient plus qu'un r�ve,

Une �bauche lente � venir,

Sur la toile oubli�e, et que l'artiste ach�ve

Seulement par le souvenir.

Derri�re les rochers une chienne inquiete

Nous regardait d'un oeil f�ch�,

�piant le moment de reprendre au squelette

Le morceau qu'elle avait lach�.

Et pourtant vous serez semblable � cette ordure,

A cette horrible infection,

�toile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,

Vous, mon ange et ma passion !

Oui ! telle vous serez, � reine des gr�ces,

Apres les derniers sacrements,

Quand vous irez, sous l'herbe et les floraisons grasses.

Moisir parmi les ossements.

Alors, � ma beaut� ! dites � la vermine

Qui vous mangera de baisers,

Que j'ai gard� la forme et l'essence divine

De mes amours d�compos�es!

Further Reading

� A. Fairlie, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (London: Edward Arnold, 1960)

� F.W. Leakey, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

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Baudelaire and Love Poetry

Having written of beauty in abstract terms in a number of the so-called `cycle of art' poems in `Spleen et id�al', Baudelaire moves on to the idea of beauty embodied by women in his love poems. Baudelaire's love poems have often been sub-divided in four smaller units according to the women who alledgedly inspired them:

� Jeanne Duval/amour-passion: XXII-XXXIX

� Madame Sabatier/amour-spirituel: XL-XLVIII

� Marie Daubrun/amour-tendresse: XLIX-LVII

� Secondary Heroines: LVIII-LXIV

Although I have followed conventional critical practise in sub-dividing Baudelaire's love poems into smaller cycles, it should be noted that Baudelaire himself never actually used such a term or encouraged that his poems should be read as being `about' any single woman or group of women. The love poems are, in fact, remarkably heterogeneous in their tone: some are intimate and tender whereas others are sarcastic and sadistic. Ambivalence and contradictory emotions about the beloved are a common feature of all of the poems are express Baudelaire's preoccupation with the duality of human experience.

Baudelaire's love poems can be read in the light of the `plot' of Les Fleurs du mal as representing a search for l'id�al and thus an escape from spleen. What emerges from the love poems is the conception of l'id�al as based on a desire to return to some earlier state of intimacy, innocence and unself- conscious enjoyment of the world (cf. 1st stanza of `Le Voyage'). The poem `La Vie ant�rieure' is also an interesting poem to read with respect to Baudelaire's views on l'id�al. In `Le Balcon' - a poem which interestingly begins with the poet addressing the beloved as both mother and lover (`M�re des souvenirs, ma�tresse des ma�tresses') - Baudelaire again writes of the consolation of finding l'id�al through memory. It is also a very self-referential poem, a poem, that is, about poetry itself. Poetry is seen as the privileged medium for evoking the past:

Je sais l'art d'�voquer les minutes heureuses.

Baudelaire, in his love poems, frequently stresses the physicality of love. This is a poetry of the body, of the body as a generator of fantasy, imagination, memory. To quote Jonathan Culler:

The woman herself, we might say, is left aside as the gestures and textures of bodies, conceived as if in memory, produce dramas or exchanges, direct fantasies, prompt utterance and reflexion. (Culler: 1993 p.xxiv)

One should mention the maternal associations of the image of the `sein chaleureux'. Happiness is frequently regressive in Baudelaire, it is often based on a desire to return to some idyllic former state of being.

The cruelty, darkness, evil and pain of passionate, erotic love are also key themes in the first cycle. Again, this links up with the ambiguity of the title: even the beautiful can be a source of pain (`mal' means both `pain/suffering' as well as `evil'). I want to conclude my introduction to Baudelaire's love poetry with the point that Baudelaire is essentially pessimistic about the possibility of fulfilled, happy love. To quote Jonathan Culler:

What is missing from Baudelaire's love poetry is the note of satisfied mutuality. (Culler: 1993 p.xxiv).

Further Reading

� L. Bersani, Baudelaire and Freud (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977)

� J. Culler, `Introduction' in Charles Baudelaire: The Flowers of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) xiii-xlviii

� C.E.J. Dolamore, `Baudelaire's Hunger and Thirst: Oral Imagery in Les Fleurs du mal' in Romance Studies, 13 (1988) 23-34

� F.W. Leakey, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 16-22

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Baudelaire and Modernity

Here [French society after 1848] a cleavage begins to open between bourgeois modernity, on the one hand, and aesthetic modernity, on the other. The later claims of the various modernisms to create the authentically new can be traced back to this early sense of `false' modernity whose surface momentum conceals its inner sameness, its increasing reproduction of the safe limits of the bourgeois world. Here too the particular modernist preoccupation with time begins, ... the conjunction of greed and inertia implies that the market has somehow frozen the movement of history, installing in its place a procession of ever `new' commodities ... (P. Nicholls: 1995 p.7)

Baudelaire argued ... that painters should paint figures in contemporary dress, rather than in archaic costumes from the past, and that the contemporary, in all its diverse and fleeting guises, had a heroic or epic dimension. Baudelaire's idea of modernity was not merely a question of being up-to-date or subject to swiftly changing fashions, although these were symptomatic of a modern type of experience. It claimed that the modern in art related to the experience of modernity, that is, to an experience which is always changing, which does not remain static and which is most clearly felt in the metropolitan centre of the city. As soon as we try to pin modernity down or define it in a simple formulation, we risk losing this sense that it is, by definition, constantly subject to renewal, that it marks out shifting ground. For Baudelaire, new subjects required a new technique; just as there were appropriate forms that the modern in art could take, so too there were inappropriate forms. (B. Fer: 1993 pp.9-10)

Further Reading

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

� M. Berman, `Baudelaire: Modernism on the Streets' in M. Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Verso, 1993) 131- 171

� B. Fer, `Introduction' in F. Frascina et al., Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1993) 3-49

� P. Nicolls, Modernisms: A Literary Guide (London: Macmillan, 1995) 5-23

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Baudelaire, Poetry and Social Experience

The artist-as-dandy acknowledges his potentially compromised position in the intensity of his refusal of alliances with others, a gesture which we see duplicated at the technical level of Baudelaire's writing by his rejection of any political rhetoric of identification. Not that he is blind to class tensions in contemporary life; to the contrary, many of his most powerful works record the sufferings of a disenfranchised urban proletariat. (P. Nicholls: 1995 pp.14-15)

What emerges again and again from Baudelaire's writings on poetry is the belief that all art must rise above the demands of conventional morality, political pressure and religious edicts. Baudelaire, like Th�ophile Gautier (the dedicatee of Les Fleurs du mal) and Gustave Flaubert (whose Madame Bovary also landed its author in court), maintained that art must be d�sint�ress�, with no ambitions to instruct, moralize or advance dogma. Art must be individual and autonomous, a self-contained and self-expressive gesture. This idea is discussed and refined in such essays as `L'Art philosophique' and `Th�ophile Gautier':

Plus l'art voudra �tre philosophiquement clair, plus il se d�gradera et remontera vers l'hi�roglyphe enfantin; plus au contraire l'art se d�tachera de l'enseignement et plus il montera vers la beaut� pure et d�sint�ress�e.

C. Baudelaire, `L'Art philosophique' in Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard,1976) pp.1,100)

Une foule de gens se figurent que le but de la po�sie est un enseignement quelconque, qu'elle doit tant�t fortifier la conscience, tant�t perfectionner les moeurs, tant�t enfin d�montrer quoi que ce soit d'utile ... La Po�sie, pour peu qu'on veuille descendre en soi-m�me, int�rroger son �me, rappeler ses souvenirs d'enthousiasme, n'a pas d'autre but qu'Elle-m�me.

C. Baudelaire, `Th�ophile Gautier' in Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard,1976) pp.112-13

However, Baudelaire's ideas on poetry were subject to constant revision and in his essay on the worker-poet Pierre Dupont he claimed that:

La pu�rile utopie de l'�cole de l'art pour l'art, en excluant la morale, et souvent m�me la passion, �tait n�cessairement st�rile. Elle se mettait en flagrante contradiction avec le g�nie de l'humanit�.

C. Baudelaire, Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard,1976) p.26

Although Baudelaire, then, claimed at one point to dissociate poetry from morality is this to say that his writing is devoid of any social or political content? Certainly not according to above claim and to the critic Walter Benjamin who argues that Baudelaire's work is `not esoteric' and that social experiences are inscribed in all of Baudelaire's writings in `extensive round-about ways'. Baudelaire's is a poetry indissociably linked to social experience, most notably, the negative transformations brought about by France's modernization.

Further Reading

� E.J. Ahearn, `Marx's Relevance for Second Empire Literature: Baudelaire's "Le Cygne"' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1986) 269-277

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

� R.D.E. Burton, Baudelaire and the Second Republic: Writing and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)

� P. Nicolls, Modernisms: A Literary Guide (London: Macmillan, 1995) 5-23

� H. Stenzel, `Les �crivains et l'�volution id�ologique de la petite bourgeoisie dans les ann�es 1840: le cas de Baudelaire' in Romantisme, 17-18 (1977) 79-91

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Baudelaire's Paris

In his uncompleted work called Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century, Walter Benjamin saw Paris, and the developing forms of urban life there, as representing the characteristic features of modernity, of modern life in general and its disturbing effects on social relations and the individual psyche. Baudelaire as a writer was one of the first to interrogate this and his writing is very much about Paris and those forms of modern existence that were developing there in the mid-nineteenth century.

One of the most important development Baudelaire attempts to come to terms with in his work is Haussmanization. Georges Haussmann was appointed by Louis Napol�on as the prefect of the Seine between 1853 and the fall of the Emperor in 1870. Through direct grant, public loans and creative accounting, Haussmann set about on one of the most ambitious projects in urban planning in the history of Europe. In order to glorify the new Napoleonic empire he began to construct a city that would not only rival the major European capitals of London and Berlin but which would also echo the Rome of the great Emperor Augustus. Louis Napol�on, through Haussmann had in their sights then, the recreation of the glories of Augustian Rome. The Paris op�ra (the Op�ra Garnier not the Nouvel Op�ra at Bastille) would become the focal point of Paris and the focal point of Napoleonic cultural supremacy.

Via the process of Haussmanization which took place during Baudelaire's lifetime, Paris evolved into a city of carefully ordered social space, with wide boulevards and regularized vistas. Paris, like any other city, had never remained static. From as early as 1770 pressure was building up within the city for more space and it began the steady process of expansion. What this process of expansion did was to allow greater opportunities for property developers and speculators to buy land cheap and sell at a handsome profit. New sites periodically became available and new property developments were created. The new bourgeoisie made unheard of profits through property speculation. The arrival of the railway in the 1830s in its turn contributed to this process. The essential trick was to build expensive appartments and make them so desirable that the wealthy would move in and in their turn push property values even higher. Many of the appartments that you might see in Paris today were built with this in mind and were constructed according to rigidly codified stylistic constraints.

Haussmanization had a number of unsettling consequences. It enforced, for example, the movement of large sections of the working-class population from the centre to the periphery. It also led to the phenomena of the crowd. The city became populated by thousands of people who were unrelated to one another. They pass one another by everyday as if ghosts or apparitions in an `unreal city' to use T.S. Eliot's term. Old, stable communities broke down and people henceforth began to live their lives around strangers. As a result of all of the above developments, there was a growing sense of exile and estrangement on the part of the individual. The modern city with its new concentrations of commerce, transport and people, with its expropriations and uprootings all undermined traditional relationships. What Wordworth called `the ballast of familiar life' (The Prelude) was jettisoned.

The modern individual was an urban dweller susceptible to the jolts of modernity. The German critic Walter Benjamin writes of Baudelaire's own sensitivity to the traumatic shocks of the modern city. The decline in collective festivals and traditions left individuals vulnerable and lacking the necessary experience to comprehend and come to terms with the rapid pace of modern urban existence. It is the city that best illustrates the fragmentation of modern living. The consciousness of the individual in the modern world is constantly confronted with disparate, dissonant experiences, with objects and encounters that do not seem to go together: the fragrant and the foul, the luxury and the squalor of the city streets and so on.

Further Reading

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

� M. Berman, `Baudelaire: Modernism on the Streets' in M. Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Verso, 1993) 131- 171

� R.D.E. Burton, The Context of Baudelaire's `Le Cygne' (Durham: Durham Modern Language Series, 1980)

� R.D.E. Burton, `The Unseen Seer, or Proteus in the City: Aspects of a Nineteenth- Century Parisian Myth' in French Studies, 42 (1988) 50-68

� R. Chambers, `Baudelaire's Street Poetry' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 13 (1985) 244-259

� P. Collier, `Nineteenth-Century Paris: Vision and Nightmare' in E. Timms & D. Kelly (eds.), Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985) 25-44

� C. Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

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Baudelaire: The Poet as Prostitute

Qu'est-ce que l'art? Prostitution.

C. Baudelaire, Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) p.649

Je n'ai pas pour ma�tresse une lionne illustre

La Gueuse de mon �me emprunte tout son lustre,

Invisible aux regards de l'univers moqueur,

Sa beaut� ne fleurit que dans mon triste coeur -

Pour avoir des souliers elle a vendu son �me;

Mais le bon dieu riait si pr�s de cette inf�me

Je tranchais du Tartufe, et singeais la hauteur,

Moi qui vends ma pens�e, et qui veux �tre auteur.

C. Baudelaire, `Je n'ai pas pour ma�tresse une lionne illustre'

Baudelaire knew what the true situation of the man of letters was: he goes to the marketplace as a fl�neur, supposedly to take a look at it, but in reality to find a buyer. (Benjamin: 1983 p.34)

On a number of occasions Baudelaire compared the artist with the prostitute. The commercialization of art and the book market which began to emerge at the end of the eighteenth century - what one might call the commodification of culture - created new markets and new career opportuities for writers. The growth of feuilletons, in particular, in 1830s created a mass market and real opportuities for writers to make real money (see Benjamin: 1983 pp.27-34).

Art was a commodity in an increasingly commercial society dominated by commercialism and materialism. The artist was someone who sold personal intimacy and could therefore be likened to a prostitute. One might add here that, in Baudelaire's view, the poet was a particularly devalued commodity.

Further Reading

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

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Baudelaire and the Prose Poem

Baudelaire had only been attracted to the genre insofar as it enabled him to find an appropriate form (a `correspondence') for a thematics of duality, contrast and opposition." He also draws attention to the importance of `incongruity', `ambivalence' and `antithesis'.

Tzvetan Todorov, `Poetry without Verse' in Mary Ann Caws and Hermine Riffaterre (eds.), The Prose Poem in France: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press 1983) p.64

Further Reading

� S. Bernard, Le Po�me en prose de Baudelaire jusqu'� nos jours (Paris: Nizet, 1959

� M. A. Caws/H. Riffaterre (eds), The Prose Poem in France: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press 1983)

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Baudelaire on Love

Dans l'amour, comme dans presque toutes les affaires humaines, l'entente cordiale est le r�sultat d'un malentendu. Ce malentendu, c'est le plaisir. L'homme crie: �oh! mon ange!� La femme roucoule: �maman! maman!� Et ces deux imb�ciles sont persuad�s qu'ils pensent de concert. - Le gouffre infranchissable, qui fait l'incommunicabilit�, reste infranchi.

`Mon coeur mis � nu' in Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) pp.695-6

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The Baudelarian Sonnet

A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines which is divided into two distinct parts:

� The Octave (the first eight lines)

� The Sestet (the last six lines)

Between these two parts there is usually a break or shift in tone, register or perspective. In the Baudelairian sonnet the break normally takes the form a difference between:

� Description or observation (octave)

� Analysis, criticism or vision (sestet)

The octave tends to narrate an event or describe a situation. The sestet, on the other hand, tends to reassesse, clarify or draw out the hidden signicance of this event or situation. Images of perception - `oeil', `yeux', `prunelle' - and of mental or spiritual apprehension - `�me', `cerveau', `esprit', `coeur' - are frequently to be found in the sestet. Critics of the Baudelairian sonnet have often argue that the break represents a conflict between Romantic imagination and critical intellect.

Further Reading

� D.H.T. Scott, Sonnet Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century France: Sonnets on the Sonnet (Hull: University of Hull Publications, 1977)

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Bernheimer on Baudelaire and Prostitution

When Baudelaire asks `What is art?' and answers `Prostitution', it is to [the] kind of biologically sterile, but erotically stimulating, multiplication of the self that he is referring. The entry in Fus�es that immediately follows this rhetorical question suggests a direct correlation in Baudelaire's thinking between prostitution and the fl�neur-poet: "The pleasure of being in crowds,", he writes, "is a mysterious expression of the enjoyment of the multiplication of number" (OC, 1247). The fl�neur, who gets "an immense pleasure from choosing to be at home in number" (OC, 1160), has precisely the kind of unanchored empathetic capacity Baudelaire associates with prostitution. In the prose poem entitled `Crowds' in Le Spleen de Paris, he writes: "The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being himself or someone else as he chooses. Like those wandering souls in search of a body, he enters whenever he wants into anyone's character. For him alone everything is vacant; and if certain places seem closed to him, it is because in his eyes they are not worth visiting' (OC, 244). This wandering soul, gifted from birth with a "love of disguise and masks", is the prostituted soul, for whom any one particular body is no more than a provisional identification. "What people call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared to this ineffable orgy, this holy prostitution of the soul that gives itself entire, poetry and charity, to the unexpected that appears, to the unknown that passes" (OC, 244).

This fl�neur in the crowd is intoxicated by the multiple opportunities for prostitution that surround him. Baudelaire calls these opportunities "poetic", suggesting a literary dimension to the flaneur's activity. Each occasion for the soul's prostitution is an invitation to narrative invention: "espousing the crowd" (OC, 1160) the fl�neur espouses a multiplicity of imagined stories ...

C. Bernheimer :Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth- Century France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989) p.73

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Rastignac's Bildung

If one accepts that Rastignac is the principal character in Le P�re Goriot it is possible to describe the novel as a bildungsroman or roman d'�ducation. The archetypal bildungsroman is a story of an inexperienced protagonist who undergoes a series of adventures that form his or her character and afford them a more mature view of the world. Typically, such narratives involve an opposition between the young protagonist and society, and the plot which emerges is one of struggle and accomodation. The experience of conflict will teach the young hero a lesson and will replace former illusions - the title of Balzac's Illusions perdues (1843) provides the key theme of the bildungsroman - with a more mature understanding of the world.

Rastignac's adventure in Le P�re Goriot conforms to this pattern. He is an impoverished young man of aristocratic descent from the provinces come to Paris to make his fortune. Initially, this proves difficult as he is unable to make sense of the society around him and how it functions. He is confronted with mysteries and with individuals whose relationships with one another he cannot decipher. He is presented with conflicting advice from a number of quarters: from Goriot (ob�issance), from Vautrin (r�volte)and from his cousin Madame de Beaus�ant (lutte). He eventually heeds his cousin's advice, using his aristocratic name to make his way in Parisian high society. Through his relationship with Delphine de Nucingen - one of Goriot's daughters - he is networked into fashionable society and through her husband - the corrupt Baron de Nucingen - he starts to make his fortune.

Martin Kanes claims that Le P�re Goriot is `a mock education novel' and that `Eug�ne does not rise to some broader and more mature view of himself; he does not deepen his understanding of his own motives' (M. Kanes, 1993 p.31). However, such a reading holds `education' to be a synonym for `moral improvement', a bettering of the self. In the world of La Com�die humaine education may well entail an unlearning of morality, an acquisition of competances allowing survival in the Parisian jungle. Education has its price in Le P�re Goriot as in the whole of La Com�die humaine and that is a loss of innocence and of moral integrity.

Further Reading

� P. Barberis, Le P�re Goriot de Balzac. �criture, structures, signification (Paris: Larousse, 1972)

� D. Bellos, Balzac: Old Goriot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)

� M. Kanes, P�re Goriot: Anatomy of a Troubled World (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993)

� P.W. Lock, Balzac: Le P�re Goriot (London: Edward Arnold, 1967)

� E. Querouil, Le P�re Goriot de Balzac et le roman d'�ducation (Paris: Bordas, 1990)

#######

Emma Bovary: A Nineteenth-century Arachne

The act of sewing is a recurrent motif in Madame Bovary. Descriptions of Emma sewing are consistent with the activities carried out by many women in the nineteenth- century - Emma learnt sewing and tapestry skills at the convent school she attended and the embroidered slippers she makes Charles are a source of much pride - but they carry an additional payload of meaning beyond the purely referential. Descriptions of Emma sewing may be seen as part of what A.M. Lowe has called the `mythological substructure' of the novel who has argued that Emma is a `modern Arachne'. Arachne, a maid of humble origins, challenges the goddess Minerva (goddess of foresight and protectress of commerce, industry, medecine and of weavers and spinners) to a weaving competition. Minerva is so outraged by the presumption of this mortal that she strikes her causing Arachne to later hang herself. However, Minerva takes pity on her and brings her back to life as a spider and decrees that all her children should be spinners. The significance of the myth to Madame Bovary is that:

Emma, Arachne-like, is setting herself up in rivalry to the goddess, that is, presumptuously assuming her capacity to compose the pattern of her own life. (Lowe: 1984 p.70)

The Arachne myth is brought into play not explicitly but indirectly, through a number of discrete allusions to sewing, spinning and spiders. In Monsieur Roualt's farmhouse there is `[u]ne t�te de Minerve, au crayon noir' (Folio p.39) on the wall. When Emma dies we are told that the ugliness of death is displaced as pulchritude is restored to Emma's corpse and:

... une sorte de poussi�re blanche lui parsemait les cils, et ses yeux commencaient � dispara�tre dans une p�leur visqueuse qui ressemblait � une toile mince, comme si des araign�es avaient fil� dessus' (Folio pp.417-8)

At the end of the novel Berthe is sent to work in `une filature de coton' (Folio p.441) and, although dead, Emma continues to weave her romantic web from beyond the grave.

Further Reading

� A.M. Lowe, `Emma Bovary, a Modern Arachne' in French Studies, 26 (1972) 30-41

� A.M. Lowe, Towards the Real Flaubert (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)

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Flaubert, Language and B�tise

A central theme of Flaubert's fiction is that of stupidity - la b�tise. Here are some passages from Flaubert and his critics which elucidate Flaubert's conception of stupidity:

Je sens contre la b�tise de mon �poque des flots de haine qui m'�touffent. Il me monte de la merde � la bouche ... mais je veux la garder, la figer, la durcir; j'en veux faire une p�te dont je barbouillerai le XIXe si�cle, comme on dore de boug�e de vache les pagodes indiennes; et qui sait? cela durera peut-�tre?

Correspondance (30 September 1855)

The essence of b�tise is faith in the omnipotence of worldly language, which takes the form of `received ideas' or clich�s. (Gans: 1989 p.25)

The Dictionnaire des id�es re�ues implies, ... that stupidity is a mode of language, or rather that social language is itself stupid: it is not the instrument or vehicle of a spontaneous response to the world, it is not something lived but something given, a set of codified responses. We do not understand the world or even come to grips with it. We talk about it in phrases which interact with one another in a self-enclosed `system. (Culler: 1974 pp.164-65)

Further Reading

� J. Culler, Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty (London: Elek, 1974)

157- 185

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: The End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

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Bird Imagery in Madame Bovary

Bird imagery is one of the recurrent patterns of Madame Bovary: there are birds in the trees as Charles travels to see Emma for the first time; Emma's father brings Charles a turkey with the payment for his broken leg (Folio p.45) and, when Charles is married to Emma he sends the couple one every year (Folio p.102); and Emma is frequently associated and is described as having a `d�marche d'oiseau' (Folio p.152) as being as changeable as a bird's feather in the wind. (Folio p.157).

More importantly though, birds form part of Emma's world of fantasy (Folio p.64 and p.66) nutured by her reading of Romantic literature. Birds symbolize passion for Emma and, at one point, passion is explicitly likened to `un grand oiseau au plumage rose planant dans la splendeur des ciels po�tiques' (Folio p.70). Emma seeks to soar above the banalities of married life into the ideal realm of romantic bliss and erotic fulfillment. Related to this last point birds also symbolize freedom and escape for Emma: `Elle aurait voulu, s'�chappant comme un oiseau, aller se rajeunir quelque part, bien loin, dans les espaces immacul�s' (Folio p.372-3).

This desire to `fly away', as it were, finds expression in the attraction she feels towards other men. During the early stage of Emma's relationship with L�on we are told that Emma's thoughts returned constantly to L�on like pigeons in search of water:

... ses [Emma's] pens�es continuellement s'abattaient sur cette maison [L�on's], comme les pigeons du Lion d'Or qui venaient tremper l�, dans les goutti�res, leurs pattes roses et leurs ailes blanches. (Folio p.153)

Later in the novel birds are associated with Emma's adulterous assignations. It is no coincidence that the name of the coach that takes her to her romantic meetings with L�on in Rouen is called the Hirondelle (swallow). L�on notices birds flying in a blue sky on the day of their first illicit assignation in Rouen (Folio p.310).

Birds symbolize freedom and escape but also, like much of the other imagery in Madame Bovary, they also anticipate Emma's ultimate undoing and death. When Emma's father receives a message from Homais he sees three black hens - `trois poules noires' (Folio p.424) - on his way which he reads as an omen of her death. Once again, Emma's fantasy life and death are related by means of the novel's recurrent imagery.

Further Reading

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

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Colour Imagery in Madame Bovary

Colour imagery is important in the novel. For reasons of space we can only look at one instance of colour symbolism in the novel involving the colour blue. The colour blue has a key thematic importance in Madame Bovary where it is used to symbolize Emma's idealized fanatsy realm of romance and passion. This is made explicit in the scene following her first sexual encounter with Rodolphe in the forest:

Elle se r�p�tait: `J'ai un amant! un amant!', se d�lectant � cette id�e comme � celle d'une autre pubert� qui lui serait survenue. Elle allait donc poss�der enfin ces joies de l'amour, cette fi�vre du bonheur dont elle avait d�sesper�. Elle entrait dans quelque chose de merveilleux o� tout serait passion, extase, d�lire; une immensit� bleu�tre l'entourait, les sommets du sentiment �tincelaient sous sa pens�e, et l'existence ordinaire n'apparaissait qu'au loin, tout en bas, dans l'ombre, entre les intervalles de ces hauteurs. (Folio p.219)

On another occasion in the novel, this time during her infatuation with L�on, we are told that:

Il [L�on] habitait la contr�e bleu�tre o� les �chelles de soie se balancent � des balcons, sous le souffle des fleurs, dans la clart� de la lune. (Folio p.371)

The association blue-idealized fantasy world has been implicit from earlier on in the novel however. When we first see Emma she is described as: `[u]ne jeune femme en robe de m�rinos bleu garnie de trois volants' (Folio p.37) and she is later described as wearing `une robe de soie bleu � quatre falbalas' (Folio p.287). During her convent school days she enjoys the romance and mystery of the rituals of the Catholic church and there is a reference made to the swirling blue mists of the incense: `elle apercevait le doux visage de la Vierge, parmi les tourbillons bleu�tres de l'encens qui montait' (Folio p.157). On a less spiritual level, blue features in her desire for material luxuries, in particular: `l'envie d'avoir, pour l'amener � Rouen, un tilbery bleu, attel� d'un cheval anglais, et conduit par un groom en bottes � revers.' (Folio p.347).

The colour blue is important in her adulterous liaisons with both Rodolphe and L�on. Emma fills Rodolphe's blue vases with roses - `Quand il [Rodolphe] vient, elle emplissit de roses ses deux grands vases de verre bleu, et disposait son appartement et sa personne comme une courtisane qui attend un prince' (Folio p.249) - and L�on notices birds flying in a blue sky on the day of their first illicit assignation in Rouen (Folio p.310) and there is `[un] ciel bleu' (Folio p.332). The colour blue is important in her relationship with Charles too. When she sends Charles a letter summoning him to Les Bertaux to mend her father's broken leg it is sealed with blue sealing wax. As Charles breaks `la cire bleue' (Folio p.35) of Emma's letter he is symbolically entering Emma's blue world of fantasy.

In common with the other symbols in Madame Bovary, colour imagery follows a similar pattern of aspiration followed by failure and despair. Emma's dreams lead to the nightmare of her death. Towards the end of the novel Emma catches her first glimpse of the arsenic in Homais' pharmacy in `une bouteille, en verre bleu, cachet�e avec de la cire jaune, qui contient une poudre blanche' (Folio p.321). The next time it occurs is when she uses it to kill herself:

... elle alla droit vers la troisi�me tablette, saisit le bocal bleu, en arracha le bouchon, y fourra la main, et la retirant pleine d'une poudre blanche, se mit � manger � m�me comme du sucre. (Folio p.400)

The colour blue occurs on Emma's deathbed when her physical condition is described: `[d]es gouttes suintaient sur sa figure bleu�tre' (Folio p.402) and again when Charles comes to see her dead body during the wake and sees a `vapeur bleu�tre' (Folio p.421) caused by the burning of the candles and the aromatic herbs.

As with the other imagery used in the novel, colour imagery is used to linked the illusory world of Emma's fantasies with the sordid reality of her death. To quote Stirling Haig: `[t]he sweetness of the contr�e bleu�tre has led Emma to a bitter end' (Haig: 1970, p.34).

Further Reading

� P.A. Duncan, `Symbolic Green and Satanic Presence in Madame Bovary' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 13 (1985) 99-104

� S. Haig, `The Madame Bovary Blues' in Romanic Review, 61 (1970) 27-34

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Emma Bovary: Victim of the `Bourgeois Century'

It is possible to consider Emma as a woman crushed by a materialist and complacent century. The society portrayed in Madame Bovary is shown to be one stratified in terms of class. We see different examples of the peasantry from Emma's father to Catherine Leroux; the old aristocracy at La Vaubyessard and in the character of Rodolphe, a gentleman farmer and rentier; and, of course, numerous examples of the bourgeoisie. Madame Bovary is very much a book about the bourgeoisie, very much a portrait of a class in the process of finding and defining itself and consolidating its position in society. Particularly in the characters of Homais and Lheureux we see bourgeois money on the move in search of new profits and power. The main action of Madame Bovary is much financial as it is erotic. Madame Bovary is full of scenes of buying and selling, borrowing and lending. Even personal relationships fall under the sway of financial considerations. For example, Charles's first wife is chosen for him by his mother on the grounds that she is a wealthy widow - she manages to outwit a grocer who has the support of the village priest in the competition for her - and Emma's father allows Charles to marry Emma because he is unlikely to try to haggle over the dowry.

Money is as important in Madame Bovary as it is in the fictional universe of Balzac's La Com�die humaine. Stephen Heath has written of Balzac's `epic fascination with money as demonic power' (Heath: 1992, p.58) but has claimed that Flaubert's treatment of money in Madame Bovary lacks the moral intensity of the financial dealings in La Com�die humaine. There are no handsome aristocrats in search of lost fortune playing the roulette wheels of Parisian casinos or the equally dubious operations of La Bourse in Madame Bovary, just the banal and petty financial calculations of self-seeking provincial businessmen like Lheureux and Homais. This is one of the (many) ways in which Flaubert re-wrote the Balzacian fictional model. The grand gestures and dramatic successes and failures of the characters in La Com�die humaine have been replaced by the piecemeal and meticulous manoeuverings of a new commercial bourgeoisie.

According to the rules of competition in capitalist society there has to be both winners and losers. An increasingly prosperous society generates its human `garbage' as much as its wealthy entrepreneurs. Just like the stories of La Com�die humaine, Madame Bovary contains its losers like Catherine Leroux, M�re Rollet, Hippolyte, the blind beggar and, at the end of the novel, Berthe; and its winners like Lheureux - a merchant-draper who profits from artificially created dreams and desires and who extends credit to local businesses only to buy them up when they cannot pay - and, of course, Homais, the chemist and key exponent of scientific progess, technical advance and modernity. There are even more losers in the novel: Charles, of course, who loses out to the implacable advances made by Homais's pharmacy, his father who is a failure in business, his first wife who cheats him on the dowry and Emma's father who loses his farm.

Emma's behaviour throughout the novel directly contravenes the money-making ethos of Lheureux and Homais. What is particularly notable about Emma is her prodigality. She spares no thought for expense and consumers beyond her means. She offers her lovers extravagant presents:

Outre la cravache � pommeau de vermeil, Rodolphe avait re�u un cachet avec cette devise: Amor nel cor; de plus, une �charpe pour se faire un cache-nez, et enfin un porte-cigares tout pareil � celui du vicomte, que Charles avait autrefois ramass� sur la route et qu'Emma conservait. Cependant ces cadeaux l'humiliaient. Il en refusa plusieurs; elle insista, et Rodolphe finit par ob�ir, la trouvant tyrannique et trop envahissante. (Folio p.252)

Emma rejects good economic management, thrift, hard work and parcimoniousness and dedicates herself to style. Towards the end of the novel Lheureux rebukes Emma with the words: `Tandis que je suis, moi, � b�cher comme un n�gre, vous vous repassez du bon temps' (Folio p.374). For Stephen Heath Emma represents: `a threatening disturbance to the good commerce of society' (Heath: 1992, p.56), a challenge to the very principles on which her century is based. Flaubert too was opposed to the active success of the practical world of the bourgeoisie with their `can-do' attitude and concern for commercial and industrial success and it is tempting to see in Emma a portrait of the artist. Emma's attitude, for all its triviality, may be viewed as constituting a serious critique of her society. Emma's dissatisfaction with the world, her rejection of it in favour of the superior world of imagination and passion may be interpreted, as Diana Knight has claimed, as having a `positive moral value' (Knight: 1985 p.67). Reality, as represented by self-seeking and materialist characters like Homais and Lheureux, is somehow inferior to the imaginative world created by Emma as a virtual and substitute reality. Here is Diana Knight on this point:

If Emma is unsatisfied with her life and with reality, it is reality which is blamed, not Emma, however unintelligent she may be. Written into her story is the suggestion that although her hopes and dreams almost inevitably wither into lies and disappointments, this is only marginally Emma's fault, for there is something fundamentally wrong with the reality which cannot meet her needs. In other words, despite her silliness, her metaphysical unease is taken seriously. (Knight: 1985 p.79)

Further Reading

� C. Baudelaire, `Madame Bovary' in Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) pp.76-86

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: the End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

� D. Knight, Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

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Champfleury on Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary roman par Gustave Flaubert repr�sente l'obstination de la description. Ce roman est un de ceux qui rappellent le dessin lin�aire, tant il est fait au compas, avec minutie, calcul�, travaill�, tout � angles droits, et en d�finitive sec et aride. On a mis plusieurs ann�es � le faire, Chaque rue, chaque maison, chaque chambre, chaque ruisseau, chaque brin d'herbe est d�crit en entier! Chaque personnage en arrivant en sc�ne parle pr�alablement sur une foule de sujets inutiles et peu int�ressants servant seulement � faire conna�tre son dear� d'intelligence. Par suite de ce syst�me de description obstin�e, le roman se passe presque toujours par gestes. Pas une main, pas un pied ne bouge, qu'il n'y air deux ou trois lignes pour le d�crire. Il n'y a ni �motion, ni sentiment ni vie dans ce roman, mais une grande force d'arithm�ticien qui supput� et rassembl� tout ce qu'il peut y avoir de gestes, des pas ou d'accidents de terrains dans des personnages, des �v�nements et des pays donn�s. Ce livre est une application litt�raire du calcul des probabilit�s. Je parle ici pour ceux qui ont pu le lire. Le style a des allures in�gales, comme chez tout homme qui �crit artistiquement sans sentir; tant�t des pastiches, tant�t du lyrisme, rien de personnel. Je le r�p�te, toujours description mat�rielle et jamais impression. Ils me parait inutile d'entrer dans le point de vue m�me de l'oeuvre, auquel les d�fauts pr�c�dents enl�vent tout int�ret. Avant que ce roman eut paru, on le croyait meilleur - Trop d'�tude ne remplace pas la spontan�it� qui vient du sentiment.

Champfleury: Extract from R�alisme, No.5 March 1857

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Emma's Clothes

Related to the theme of Emma as an intelligent and energetic woman restrained by the norms of society, there is in Madame Bovary an attention to the details of Emma's clothes. Clothes are important in signifying who we are and our status in the world. It is, after all, through clothes that we signify our gender in society. The first time we see Emma she is described as:

[u]ne jeune femme en robe de m�rinos bleu garnie de trois volants (Folio p.37)

The description of her dress with its three petticoats corresponds to the feminine ideal of the time but also suggests a certain restriction. There are a number of descriptions of Emma's dresses throughout the novel which stress this point. Emma wears `une robe de soie bleu � quatre falbalas' (Folio p.287) and on other occasion the comment is made that Emma's dress `aux plis droits cachait un coeur boulevers�' (Folio p.152). This sense of restriction is accentuated when she marries Charles and loses even more of her freedom. Her wedding dress is too long and heavy and trails along the ground picking up thistles (`La robe d'Emma, trop longue, tra�nait un peu par le bas' Folio p.54). The dress is burdensome like her new social status as a married woman. Interestingly, her marriage to Charles is likened to `l'ardillon [prong] pointu de cette courroie [belt] complexe qui la bouclait de tous les c�t�s' (Folio p.154). When she and Charles move to Yonville l'Abbaye there is an interesting scene (Folio p.119) in which she raises her dress slightly so as to warm herself by the fire of the Lion d'Or inn. This corresponds to the way in which she will attempt to free herself from the restraints of her position and open herself up to a new range of sensual experiences.

Despite the images of confinement and constriction that accompany description of Emma's clothes, there is also in some scenes the suggestion of rebellion. In one scene (Folio p.142) the expansion of Emma's dress in voluminous folds suggests a strong presence on Emma's part. Emma is expressing herself through a dress which cannot contain or restrict her exhuberance. In another scene Emma is wearing a yellow dress whose movement evokes a stirring of energy within her (Folio p.179). Moreover, there are a number of descriptions of Emma's clothes that suggest an assumption of male dress codes and a rejection of her socially circumscribed gender identity. We see Emma striving towards the mobility and strength of men: `[e]lle portait, comme un homme, pass� entre eux boutons de son corsage, un lorgnon d'�caille.' (Folio p.40). Another scene has Emma wearing `un gilet � la fa�on d'un homme' (Folio p.254). There are also Emma's riding trousers (Folio p.213) which are linked to mobility, movement and escape.

Further Reading

� L. Cyzba, Mythes et id�ologie de la femme dans les romans de Flaubert (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1983)

#######

The Symbolic Infrastructure of Madame Bovary

There is, underlying the narrative of Emma's downfall in Madame Bovary, what one might call a symbolic infrastructure, a complex network of suggestion woven into the text. This network of suggestion is an integral part within the triadic pattern that structures Madame Bovary.

Flaubert did not adopt a crude aproach to description. He doesn't go in for what Roland Barthes called `l'effet de r�el' common to realist fiction whereby objects are included in the narrative with no symbolic function other than signifying the real:

... le barom�tre de Flaubert, la petite porte de Michelet ne disent finalement rien d'autre que ceci: nous sommes le r�el. R. Barthes's `L'Effet de r�el' in G. Genette & T. Todorov (eds.) Litt�rature et r�alit� (Paris: Seuil, 1982) p.89

Objects in Madame Bovary like Emma's wedding bouquet or the cupid on her wedding cake create the illusion of le r�el yet they contain a supplementary payload of meaning, have a resonance being the purely referential. Referential and symbolic elements coexist without cancelling one another out. Every detail in Madame Bovary must earn its keep. There is no free passage and symbolic and realistic elements exist in a state of coexistence. The objects and gestures which form the novel's symbolic infrastructure have no intrinsic meaning in their own. It is only through repetition that objects and gestures accumulate meaning and this meaning is largely determined by their position within a network of interrelated imagery related to both aspiration, sensuality and eroticism and degradation, decay and death.

Further Reading

� R. Barthes, `L'Effet de r�el' in G. Genette & T. Todorov (eds.), Litt�rature et r�alit� (Paris: Seuil, 1982)

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

#######

Cupids in Madame Bovary

There are a number of Cupids, or, to be more precise, representations of Cupids in the novel. The first to appear is a small chocolate Cupid on a swing found on Emma and Charles's wedding cake (Folio p.55) in Part I of the novel. This particular Cupid is a sickly image of conjugal bliss whose saccharine constitution suggests the falsity of their marriage.

There is a second Cupid in Part II of the novel in Guillaumin's garden in Yonville- l'Abbaye with its finger pressed close to its lips in a gesture calling for silence and discretion. This prefigures Emma's later adulteries. Moreover, since Guillaumin is a notary and the wealthiest man of the community, the Cupid's has been read as suggesting Emma's future financial as well as sexual entanglements.

The third Cupid is found in Part III of the novel. In the `splendeur un peu fan�e' (Folio p.341) of Emma and L�on's Rouen hotel room there is `un petit Cupidon de bronze qui minaudait en arrondissant les bras sous une guirlande dor�e' (Folio p.343). This is a second-hand, kitsch and derivative cupid smirking at the adulterous lovers as they consummate their desire.

There is one more Cupid in the novel however, that has been haunting Emma in the last few months of her liaisons: the blind beggar. It is highly significant that the blind man makes his first appearance after Emma first commits adultery and his last when Emma is on her deathbed. On both occasions he is heard singing a sexist ditty about country girls working in the fields whose skirts are raised by the wind. Moreover, the key characteristic of his physical state is his blindness as in the French text he is referred to as `l'aveugle'. This is significant as the traditional symbol of passion is Cupid who, too, is blind. This is why it is possible to see the blind beggar as the novel's fourth and final Cupid figure albeit a deformed and grotesque one. This parody of passion anticipates the degradation towards which Emma's dreams will fatally lead her.

Further Reading

� M. Aprile, `L'Aveugle et sa signification dans Madame Bovary' in Revue d'histoire litt�raire de la France, 76 (1976) 385-392

� M. Sachs, `The Role of the Blind Beggar in Madame Bovary' in Neophilologus, 22 (1968) 72-80

� W.B. Stein, `Madame Bovary and Cupid Unmasked' in The Sewanee Review, 73 (1965) 197-209

� P.M. Wetherill, `Madame Bovary's Blind Man: Symbolism in Flaubert' in The Romanic Review, 61 (1970) 35-42

#######

Dust Imagery in Madame Bovary

Dust imagery abounds in Madame Bovary. There are 27 references to dust in the novel with the words poussi�re, poudre and their related adjectives recurring at regular intervals. On the one hand, references to dust have a clearly referential function: they signify the realities of nineteenth-century life in which roads and pavements were not coated in tarmac or concreted over. On the other hand however, references to dust have a clear thematic function as they serve to underline Emma's suffocation and oppression in the small provincial world she inhabits. One early important reference to dust occurs on page 60 (Folio) when Emma surveys her dusty new home in Tostes. Everything about this home seems to be covered in dust, the especially the bookshelves (Folio p.66) and the garden (Folio p.75).

On other occasions in the novel dust is associated with Emma's fantasies of a life of elegance and passion. When she buys things to decorate her home in Tostes (Folio pp.95-6) her attempts to beautify her world are likened to `une poussi�re d'or qui sablait tout du long le petit sentier de sa vie' (Folio p.96). Moreover, there is a reference to a `poussi�re jaune' on page 137 (Folio) caused by Emma brushing yellow wallflowers (`ravanelles') with her parasol as she walks with L�on and the talk about their dreams. Dust is connected with her adolescent reading of romantic literature: `Emma se graissa [...] les mains � cette poussi�re des vieux cabinets de lecture' (Folio p.66). This connection is repeated on page 289 (Folio) in the description of `l'odeur poussi�reuse des couloirs' of the theatre in Rouen, another site of romantic fantasy.

Dust imagery is related to Emma's fantasy life in a negative way to however. It is significant that in Part 1 of Madame Bovary when Emma bitterly regrets her marriage to Charles (Folio p.104) she burns her dusty wedding bouquet. Dust here is clearly related to the ultimate defeat of dreams. Images of dust underline the theme of organic degeneration, decay and deterioration: things fall apart, hope turns to disillusionment and dreams turn to dust. There are clear Biblical overtones here (`ashes to ashes, dust to dust', `man thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return' etc.). Death is associated with dust when Emma passes through the graveyard of the church which is continually covered in `une poudre fine' (Folio p.157). Another significant reference related to the dust imagery is the arsenic, `la poudre blanche' (Folio p.400) which Emma stuffs in her mouth causing her death. The final dust/powder reference is to the `sorte de poussi�re blanche' (Folio p.417) which covers Emma's eyelashes on her deathbed.

What Flaubert appears to be doing is setting up a network of suggestion involving dust imagery that connects Emma's dreams to her ultimate death. Obliquely, he seems to be making the point that Emma's fantasy life nourished by her adolescent reading and the reality of her death are in fact related. Her reading is partly responsible for her death. Although at no point does Flaubert make explicit the link between fantasy and destruction but he does suggest it on a textual level, on the level of symbolism. To quote D.T. Shukis:

The dust in these episodes [books and opera] ... creates a link between Emma's unrealizable desires and her eventual, inevitable death. (Shukis: 1978 p.215)

Further Reading

� D. T. Shukis, `The Dusty World of Madame Bovary' in Nineteenth Century French Studies, 7 (1979) 213 19

#######

Flaubert and Free Indirect Discourse

An important formal feature of Madame Bovary is its use of free indirect discourse (FID) or style indirect libre as it is called in French. Free indirect discourse is, as it name suggests, similar to direct discourse. Direct discourse is a direct quotation of a monologue or a dialogue as in the following examples from Madame Bovary:

- Cherchez-vous quelque chose? demanda-t-elle.

- Ma cravache, s'il vous pla�t, r�pondit-il. (Folio p.40)

- Il va pleuvoir, dit Emma.

- J'ai un manteau, r�pondit-il.

- Ah! (Folio p.167)

Free indirect discourse, on the other hand, is characterized by:

� the absence of quoting phrases or reporting verb (`he said', `she replied' etc.)

� the use of the third person

� the use of the imperfect, the conditional and the pluperfect

� expressions of doubt.

Here is an example of free indirect discourse taken from Madame Bovary:

Mais, en s'apercevant dans la glace, elle s'�tonna de son visage. Jamais elle n'avait eu les yeux si grands, si noirs, ni d'une telle profondeur. Quelque chose de subtil �pandu sur sa personne la transfigurait. Elle se r�p�tait: `J'ai un amant' un amant'. Se d�lectant � cette id�e comme celle d'une autre pubert� qui lui serait survenue. Elle allait donc poss�der enfin ces joies de l'amour, cette fi�vre du bonheur dont elle avait d�sesp�r�. Elle entrait dans quelque chose de merveilleux o� tout serait passion, extase, d�lire; une immensit� bleu�tre l'entourait, les sommets de l'existence ordinaire n'apparaissait qu'au loin, tout en bas, dans l'ombre, entre les intervalles de ces hauteurs.

Alors elle se rappela les h�roines des livres qu'elle avait lus, et la l�gion lyrique de ces femmes adult�res se mit � chanter dans sa m�moire avec des voix de soeurs qui la charmaient. Elle devenait elle-m�me comme une partie v�ritable de ces imaginations et r�alisait la longue r�verie de sa jeunesse, en se consid�rant dans ce type d'amoureuse qu'elle avait tant envi�. D'ailleurs, Emma �prouvait une satisfaction de vengeance. N'avait-elle pas assez souffert! Mais elle triomphait maintenant, et l'amour, si longtemps contenu, jaillissait tout entier avec des bouillonments joyeux. Elle le savourait sans remords, sans inqui�tude, sans trouble. (Folio pp.218-219)

As the above example illustrates free indirect discourse is a particularly suitable vehicle for interior monologues as it often verbalizes essentially pre-verbal sensations and states of mind. Despite the one instance of direct discourse - `Elle se r�p�tait: "J'ai un amant" un amant"' - this extract highlights the dual nature of free indirect discourse. The most important feature of free indirect discourse according to many critics is way it combines two voices: the voice of the narrator and that of a character. In the above extract, we, as readers, gain privileged access to Emma's subjective life - thoughts, dreams, memories, desires etc. - but we are also helped to interpret it by the voice of the narrator. At times there is a certain amount of ironic distancing as the narrator holds up the excessive and derivative nature of Emma's desires - `Elle entrait dans quelque chose de merveilleux o� tout serait passion, extase, d�lire; une immensit� bleu�tre l'entourait etc.' - yet at other times the language suggests an empathetic identification with Emma's dreams - `D'ailleurs, Emma �prouvait une satisfaction de vengeance. N'avait-elle pas assez souffert!'. Free indirect discourse then, facilitates a multifaceted presentation of character, allowing the possibility of both ironic and empathetic attitudes.

Further Reading

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: The End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

� G. Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuils, 1972)

� S. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983)

� R.J. Sherrington, Three Novels by Flaubert: A Study of Techniques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)

####### Concept: Charlie Mansfield, Text: Tony McNeill, Artwork: Carole Baker

#######

Focalisation in Madame Bovary

One important distinction commonly made when discussing novels is that made between what G�rard Genette has termed `narration' and `focalisation'. What Genette means by this is that there is a difference between voice and perspective - `qui parle' and `qui voit'. The events, characters, scenes and the like of any given novel are presented through someone's viewpoint. In much Realist fiction this viewpoint is that of the omniscient narrator - `qui parle' and `qui voit' are, in the case of Balzacian Realism, one and the same. However, this is not always the case and the narrator can verbalize or describe the impressions and viewpoint of one or more of the characters of the story he is narrating.

Narration and focalization are two separate activities then and just as one can speak of a novel having a narrator, one can also speak of it having a focaliser or focalisers. A focaliser is the character through whose subjectivity, viewpoint, conceptualization of world events in the novel are presented. The focaliser provides the key perspective or angle of vision of the narrative. Let's take a quick look at the opening passage of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo ... .

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

...

When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets cold.

Events in this scene are clearly presented via the subjectivity of a very small child. The sensory impressions and the simplicity of cognitive connections made all suggest this. However, a very small child does not have the linguistic sophistication to verbalise these impressions. The focaliser of the above passage then, is a young child but the narrator is someone else.

This is an important point to make when discussing Madame Bovary since around 70% of the novel is presented via the subjectivities of its characters. Since the novel is called Madame Bovary, it is no surprise that most of the characters and events are perceived through Emma's perspective, although Charles, L�on and Rodolphe also become focalisers at various points in the novel. What this allows Flaubert to do is to integrate description with characterization. We, as readers, see events and individuals as they are seen by the characters of the novel. We are only presented with circumstances as they are perceived by the characters, as they impinge upon their subjectivity and, as such, we enter their world more fully. R.J. Sherrington claims that:

The subjectivity of the witnessing character is of prime importance: the description constitutes a significant part of what Flaubert is telling us about his characters. We should be interested less in the thing described than in the way it is seen. Description is a means of conveying a state of mind or a trait of character. (R.J. Sherrington: 1970 p.85)

Let's take just one example of this. The following two extracts are descriptions of Emma's garden in Tostes at different points in the early days of her marriage:

Le jardin, plus long que large, allait, entre deux murs de bauge couverts d'abricots en espalier, jusqu'� une haie d'�pines qui le s�parait des champs. Il y avait au milieu un cadran solitaire en ardoise, sur un pi�destal de ma�onnerie; quatre plates-bandes garnies d'�glantiers maigres entourait sym�triquement le carr� plus utile des v�g�tations s�rieuses. Tout au fond, sous les sapinettes, un cur� de pl�tre lisait son br�viaire. (Folio p.60)

Les jours qu'il faisait beau, elle descendait dans le jardin. La ros�e avait laiss� sur les choux des guipures d'argent avec de longs fils clairs qui s'�tendaient de l'un � l'autre. On n'entendait pas d'oiseaux, tout semblait dormir, l'espalier couvert de paille et la vigne comme un grand serpent malade sous le chaperon du mur, o� l'on voyait, en s'approchant, se trainer dans les cloportes � pattes nombreuses. Dans les sapinettes, pr�s de la haie, le cur� en tricorne qui lisait son br�viaire avait perdu le pied droit et m�me le pl�tre, s'�caillant � la gel�e avait fait des gales blanches sur sa figure. (Folio p.99)

In the first extract, when Emma is indifferent to her new status as a married woman she has no particular opinion of her new surroundings - expressed by the relative neutrality of the description. However, in the second extract, when Emma is bitterly regretting her marriage to Charles, the garden becomes a place of decay, dereliction and disease. Because the two descriptions of the garden are focalized through Emma's perception they may be interpreted as indicative of her psychological development. The garden has not really changed but Emma has and so has her way of looking at the world.

People too, appear not as they really are but how other characters see them or want them to be. Take for example this description of Charles and L�on seen by Emma:

... elle tourna la t�te: Charles �tait l�. Il avait sa casquette enfonc�e sur les sourcils, et ses deux grosses l�vres tremblotaient, ce qui ajoutait � son visage quelque chose de stupide; son dos m�me, son dos tranquille �tait irritant � voir, et elle y trouvait �tal�e sur la redingote toute la platitude du personnage.

Pendant qu'elle le consid�rait, go�tant ainsi dans son irritation une sorte de volupt� d�prav�e, L�on s'avan�a d'un pas. Le froid qui le p�lissait semblait d�poser sur sa figure une langueur plus douce; entre sa cravate et son cou, le col de la chemise, un peu l�che, laissait voir la peau; un bout d'oreille d�passait sous une m�che de cheveux, et son grand oeil bleu, lev� vers les nuages, parut � Emma plus limpide et plus beau que ces lacs de montagne o� le ciel se mire. (Folio p.146)

What is striking about this description is its fragmentary nature; only those details which impinge upon Emma's consciousness are described. We have no `objective' account of the respective appearances of Charles and L�on, only Emma's subjective and emotive perception. Is Charles really so repulsive and L�on really so attractive or is it Emma's imagination that makes them appear so? Towards the end of the novel L�on is seen as being as repellent as Charles by Emma and at the end of the novel Charles is described - by an omniscient narrator-focaliser - in more flattering terms. Characters can even see themselves differently. After Emma's adultery with Rodolphe in the forest she returns home and looks at herself in the mirror, marvelling at the transformation she has undergone:

Mais, en s'apercevant dans la glace, elle s'�tonna de son visage. Jamais elle n'avait eu les yeux si grands, si noirs, ni d'une telle profondeur. Quelque chose de subtil �pandu sur sa personne la transfigurait. Elle se r�p�tait: `J'ai un amant' un amant'. Se d�lectant � cette id�e comme celle d'une autre pubert� qui lui serait survenue. Elle allait donc poss�der enfin ces joies de l'amour, cette fi�vre du bonheur dont elle avait d�sesp�r�. (Folio pp.218-219)

One detail in the novel which has attracted much critical discussion is the colour of Emma's eyes. Sometimes her eyes are black - as in the description above - but on other occasions they are blue and on one occasion they are brown. These differences can be explained when one considers the question of focalisation. Different men see Emma differently at different points in her life and their highly subjective perceptions of her change in time. But exactly what colour were Emma's eyes? This is an impossible question to answer as there is no authoritative source of knowledge to which one might turn, no onmiscient narrator to provide the definitive answer just a number of focalisers with different ways of seeing.

One important consequence of this mode of presentation is to suggest what R.J. Sherrington calls `the subjective and non-permanent nature of what is being described' (R.J. Sherrington: 1970 p.89). Flaubert appears to be suggesting that there are no stable truths, just different ways of looking at the world. This is one of Flaubert's innovations in the novel and one of the ways in which he both challenged the niaive mimetic pretensions of Realists like Duranty and Champfleury.

Further Reading

� G. Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuils, 1972)

� S. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983)

� R.J. Sherrington, Three Novels by Flaubert: A Study of Techniques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)

####### Concept: Charlie Mansfield, Text: Tony McNeill, Artwork: Carole Baker

#######

Generalisations in Madame Bovary

There are around 50 generalizations in Madame Bovary where the presence of the extra diegetic narrator (i.e. a narrator who is not part of the story) is conspicuous as his extra textual utterances punctuating the narrative in rhythmic fashion constitute an ideological fictional plane of abstract and absolute truths. The narrator's pithy and magesterial didacticisms lay claim to capturing the whole of a human reality in a verbal formula. What Stirling Haig calls Flaubert's `theolucutives' (Haig: 1986 pp.16-17) convey something permanent and universal. A characteristic of generalizations in Madame Bovary is the presence of the adverbs `toujours' and `jamais'. What he says aspires to scientific knowledge of human nature. Thus when Emma is betrayed by L�on the narrator intrudes to amend the shortcomings of her own speech by poeticizing a sense impression which Emma has but could never articulate:

Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles; la dorure en reste aux mains (Folio p.361)

Flaubert's ideal of a narrator present only by virtue of the shadow cast by his absence is an illusory one.

Further Reading

� S. Haig, Flaubert: The Gift of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

� D.A. Williams, `Generalisations in Madame Bovary' in Neophilologus, 62 (1978) 492-503

####### Concept: Charlie Mansfield, Text: Tony McNeill, Artwork: Carole Baker

#######

Horse Imagery in Madame Bovary

Horses are another recurrent motif in the novel. They feature strongly in the sentimental and romantic fictions Emma reads (see Folio pp.66-7) and at key moments in the romantic story she constructs for herself. They are also clearly related to the themes of escape, sexuality but also, crucially, to danger.

Horses figure strongly in Emma's adulterous liasons with other men. Horse riding in the forest is the pretext for Emma's assignations with Rodolphe and horses (in)famously feature in L�on's seduction of Emma in a fiacre in Rouen. Part of Emma's fanatasy for herself is to own `un tilbery bleu, attel� d'un cheval anglais, et conduit par un groom en bottes � revers' (Folio p.347) in order to visit Rouen. Typically, reality never lives up to her dreams and instead of the `tilbery bleu' she ends up with Charles who is, on one occasion), described as `[un] cheval de man�ge' (Folio p.31).

I mentionned earlier that horses are also symbolic of danger. Charles is awakened into Emma's world of fantasy by the noise of a horse - `le bruit d'un cheval' (Folio p.35) - come to summon medical assistance to her father who has broken his leg. Interesting, just as Charles enters Les Bertaux, the Roualt family farm, his horse suddenly takes fright and goes down on all fours: `son cheval eut peur et fit un grand �cart' (Folio p.37). This scene is clearly prophetic, anticipating the disaster Charles is embarking upon.

Further Reading

� A. Mourjani, `Madame Bovary's Eroticized Vehicle' in Neophilologus, 43 (1980) 346-53

#######

Emma and Hysteria

Throughout Madame Bovary Emma is seen to be constantly prone to dizzy spells, nervous attacks, anxiety, feelings of suffocation, instability, melancholia, and boredom. All of these conditions are symptomatic of hysteria. In the work of Sigmund Freud, hysteria is the expression of a failure to find a stable identity. This is how Stephen Heath relates its importance to Madame Bovary:

Emma is brought up against her social environment and so against her situation as a woman (...); refusing the one she refuses the other. Again, it is not a question of feminism, of which Emma has no awareness and for which Flaubert has no sympathy; rather, hysteria emerges as central to the novel inasmuch as it articulates, however inarticulately, an opposition to the society, that society against which Emma revolts and for which Flaubert has no sympathy either (Heath: 1992, pp.97-8)

A little later on in his argument Heath claims that:

Emma, woman, lives her existence in protest as hysteria, which is the available diagnosis and explanation of her ... refusing her identity, the hysteric runs against the terms of her identification as woman and so is forced into terms of male identification. (Heath: 1992, p.100)

Further Reading

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

#######

Italics in Madame Bovary

Italics are an important typographic feature of Madame Bovary. There are about 300 instances of italics in Madame Bovary, often used for the titles of books (Paul et Virginie), newspapers and periodicals (Sylphe des Salons, Le Fanal de Rouen), the name of an Opera (Lucie de Lamermoor), a play (Le Gamin de Paris), an Anglicism (cold cream), Italianisms, Latinisms, regional expressions (the famous cheminots) and phonetic renderings (the Charbovari of the uproarious school room scene).

However, 96 of the 300 or so instances of italics are attributable to the `collective voice' of a specific group - more often than not the provincial bourgeoisie in its various forms - which expresses its own beliefs, myths and prejudices. These utterances are italicised to assert the narrator's distance from them. The narrator will use italics whenever he wishes to be exempted from the responsibility of a particular utterance. The critical and ironical distance taken by the narrator highlights what a perverse deformation of reality the particular clich�, proverb or turn of phrase in italics is. Moreover, since italics are often part and parcel of citation for Flaubert the epitome of b�tise their typographical otherness acts like a kind of medicine, protecting the narrator's discourse from infection. Parts of Homais' speech are frequently italicized, to quote Stirling Haig, `like a dye stain identifying the diseased tissues of gangrenous speech' (Haig: 1988 p.18). The ubiquity of italicized utterances after Emma's death corroborates the insidious ascent of empty rhetoric.

Further Reading

� J. Culler, Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty (London: Elek, 1974)

157- 185

� S. Haig, Flaubert: The Gift of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

� H.H. Weinberg, `The Function of Italics in Madame Bovary' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 3 (1974-75) 99-111

#######

The Abuse of Language in Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is a novel which expresses a profound distrust of language and an deep understanding of its possible misuses. Language is lethal in Madame Bovary, infecting everyone and threatening to engulf every instance of genuine human emotion.

Sincerity, in the novel and in Flaubert's writings in general, appears to be inversely proportional to eloquence. Within Madame Bovary special sympathies lie with those whose refuse or who are unable to use language fluently. Charles's wordless grief at Emma's death; Emma's father's grief; Justin's bitter tears at Emma's grave are all accorded a respect not accorded to the speechifyers of the novel.

It is interesting to note that all the `sucessful' characters in the novel display advanced linguistic skills and put language - both written and spoken - in the service of social advancement. Lheureux's sales patter, Homais's journalism and incessant self-publicity are instances of this. By the same token, all the `failures' in the novel are those with minimal linguistic skills. Charles, for example, has no control over language. At school he is a hopeless stutterer and in later life can only pass his medical exams by learning the answers by heart. Moreover, he is a social failure at his own wedding because of his inability to join in the jokes and innuendos thrown at him by the wedding guests:

Charles n'�tait point de complexion fac�tieuse, il n'avait pas brill� pendant la noce. Il r�pondit m�diocrement aux pointes, calembours, mots � double entente, compliments et gaillardises que l'on se fit un devoir de lui d�cocher d�s le potage. (Folio p.57)

Emma is good at language on the other hand. She reads a lot, can understand difficult parts of the catechism at school and an compose elegant letters to Charles's clients. Moreover, she understands and is able to adapt to different social conventions quickly as shown at the ball at La Vaubyessard where she fits in whilst Charles spends five hours watching the guests play a game of cards whose rules he cannot understand. Emma's disillusionment with Charles is linguistic as much as it is anything else. At one point in the novel Emma thinks that `[l]a conversation de Charles �tait plate comme un trottoir de rue' (Folio p.72). She becomes particularly disgusted at him when, one day, he is unable to explain a horse riding term that she finds in a book (Folio p.). She falls in love with both L�on and Rodolphe because they are both in different ways adept manipulators of language; L�on is a peddler of reheated Romantic platitudes and Rodolphe of the conventional gallantries of the professional seducer. Rodolphe in particular, has a particularly astute understanding of the strategic value of words. When he first sees Emma his thoughts are:

�a baille apr�s l'amour comme une carpe apr�s l'eau sur une table de cuisine. Avec trois mots de gallanterie, cela vous adorerait, j'en suis s�r! ce serait tendre! charmant! ... Oui, mais comment s'en d�barasser ensuite (Folio p.180)

Rodolphe's first real attempt at seducing Emma is purely linguistic. He manages to dazzle Emma with words whose effects on the listener he has perfectly judged:

C'�tait la premi�re fois qu'Emma s'entendait dire ces choses; et son orgueil, comme quelqu'un qui se d�lasse dans une �tuve, s'�tirait mollement et tout entier � la chaleur de ce langage (Folio p.211)

Another of Rodolphe's linguistic tours de force takes place at the comices agricoles - the agricultural fair during which he pays court to Emma against the background of speeches made by local dignitaries. This scene is famous for its so- called `symphonic arrangement' in which Flaubert exploits a parallel between the official rhetoric of the region's grandees and Rodolphe's attempt to seduce Emma. Two different uses - or abuses - of language with ultimately the same deceptive function, two intances of rhetorical manipulation. One speech is made in honour of a peasant woman, Catherine Leroux, who receives a medal for her `demi-si�cle de servitude' (Folio p.205). She remains silent and immobile while the rest of the crowd absorb the platitudes of the speeches being made to the background of mooing cows. Due to `la fr�quentation des animaux' Catherine Leroux had taken on the leur mutisme et leur placidit�' (Folio p.205) but she rerpesents the positive moral value of silence over the self-importance verbosity of the region's self-important worthies.

Further Reading

� S. Haig, Flaubert: The Gift of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

� D. Knight, Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

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The Poverty of Language in Madame Bovary

An exploration of the poverty of language as an effective means of expression and communication is another way in which language is developed as a theme in Madame Bovary. Although the narrator in Madame Bovary tends not to make broad generalizing statements outlining the text's thematic concerns - unlike the Balzacian narrator - there is however one important generalization relating to the theme of language:

... la parole humaine est comme un chaudron f�l� o� nous battons des m�lodies � faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les �toiles. (Folio p.253)

Language is inherently inadequate in Madame Bovary. It is a source of division - Homais and Bournisien, for example, are often seen arguing over religion (Folio pp.283-6 and p.417) - and of mystification rather than of genuine communication. Homais's letter to M. Roualt to inform him of Emma's death is a good example of this:

Il n'avait re�u la la lettre du pharmicien que trente-six heures apr�s l'�v�nement; et, par �gard pour sa sensibilit�, M. Homais l'avait r�dig�e de telle fa�on qu'il �tait impossible de savoir � quoi s'en tenir. (Folio p.424)

When genuine communication does take place between characters it is often in the gaps or silences around words or else through physical gestures. There is a moment of communication during what might be called Emma and Charles's courtship when they are alone in the farmhouse and share a comfortable silence `... elle ne parlait pas, Charles non plus' (Folio p.47). Interestingly, Charles and Emma's father are also able to communicate without recourse to language. When Charles attempts to ask for permission to marry Emma, Monsieur Rouault, having seen Charles's `pommettes rouges pr�s de sa fille' (Folio p.49) interrupts his awkward stammering with the words `est-ce que je ne sais pas tout?' (Folio p.50)

During an meeting early in their relationship Emma and L�on exchange romantic platitides. Despite the derivative and second-hand nature of their exchange there is an element of genuine communication taking place. The conversation is described as:

... une de ces vagues conversations o� le hasard des phrases vous ram�ne toujours au centre fixe d'une sympathie commune. (Folio p.125)

When Emma and L�on return from the childminder the words they exchange are merely the surface noise taking place above a deeper level of communication:

N'avaient-ils rien d'autre chose � se dire? Leurs yeux pourtant �taient pleins d'une causerie plus s�rieuse; et, tandis qu'ils s'effor�aient � trouver des phrases banales, ils sentaient une m�me langueur les envahir tous les deux; c'�tait comme un murmure de l'�me, profond, continu, qui dominait celui des voix. (Folio pp.137-8)

There is another moment of meaningful silence later on in their relationship:

La conversation fut languissante, Mme Bovary l'abandonnant � chaque minute, tandis qu'il demeurait lui-m�me comme tout embarrass� ... Elle ne parlait pas; il se taisait, captiv� par son silence, comme il l'e�t �t� par ses paroles. (Folio p.150)

Parallel to a critique of the glib, easy eloquence of talkers like Homais and Rodolphe, there is an exploration of moments at the limits of language, in between or underneath speech, as it were, where real communication takes place. Real emotion and moments of understanding are to be found in silence not amongst the busy noise of speech.

Further Reading

� S. Haig, Flaubert: The Gift of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

� D. Knight, Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

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Gastronomic Symbolism in Madame Bovary

Victor Brombert (Brombert: 1966 pp.49-51) has written of the gastronomic symbolism in Madame Bovary, of the thematic importance of food in wedding feasts, collective meals, peasant revels and domestic suppers. References to food in Madame Bovary are, in part, related to the theme of Emma's hunger for experience, a hunger verging on gluttonly that ends with her death, fittingly, by stuffing arsenic powder in her mouth.

Meals in Madame Bovary often work thematically to underline the unappetizing and stale nature of provincial life. At Tostes, an unappealing onion soup is a regular item on the menu (Folio p.89). Emma cannot bear the slurping noises that Charles makes when eating this just as she cannot bear the smell of cooking that permeates the whole house including Charles's consulting room:

Mais c'�tait surtout aux heures de repas qu'elle n'en pouvait plus, dans cette petite salle au rez-de-chaus�e, avec le po�le qui fumait, la porte qui criait, les murs qui suintaient, les pav�s humides; toute l'amertume de l'existence lui semblait servie sur son assiette, et, � la fum�e du bouilli, il montait du fond de son �me comme d'autres bouff�es d'affadissement. (Folio p.101)

The unrefined provincial fare that Emma is served is a constant reminder of the the inadequacies of her existence but she still hungers and thirsts after the delicacies of another life. Shortly after her move to Yonville-l'Abbaye, Emma is seen musing on the disappointments in her life so far:

... la portion v�cue avait �t� mauvaise, sans doute ce qui restait � consommer serait meilleur. (Folio p.126)

Emma's disssatisfaction with her life is often expressed in these terms:

... la passion de Charles n'avait plus rien d'exorbitant. Ses expansions �taient devenues r�guli�res; il l'embrassait � de certaines heures. C'�tait une habitude parmi les autres, et comme un dessert pr�vu d'avance, apr�s la monotonie du d�ner. (Folio p.75)

In Madame BovaryEmma is constantly associated with a hunger and a thirst that is never satisfied:

Emma devenait difficile, capricieuse. Elle se commandait des plats pour elle, n'y touchait point, un jour ne buvait que du lait pur, et, le lendemain, des tasses de th� � la douzaine. (Folio p.102)

In one of the earliest scenes featuring Emma we find a hint or indication of her temperament. Charles, only recently bereaved, has come to visit Emma's father. As he is still out working in the fields Emma offers him a glass of cura�ao to be hospitable and pours herself a glass. However, as she is a woman she only pours herself a small glass:

Elle alla donc chercher dans l'armoire une bouteille de cura�ao, atteignit deux petits verres, emplit l'un jusqu'au bord, versa � peine dans l'autre, et, apr�s avoir trinqu�, le porta � sa bouche. Comme il �tait presque vide, elle se renversa pour boire; et la t�te en arri�re, les l�vres avanc�es, le cou tendu, elle riait de ne rien sentir, tandis que le bout de la langue, passant entre ses dents fines, l�chait � petits coups le fond du verre. (Folio p.47)

In this scene Emma expresses an appetite always exceeding that which she has been given and it is also highly suggestive of Emma's sensuality. Interestingly, it is Rodolphe who recognises Emma's hunger and thirst the very first time he sees her:

�a baille apr�s l'amour comme une carpe apr�s l'eau sur une table de cuisine. (Folio p.180)

At the ball at La Vaubyessard Emma's hunger and thirst is satisfied but only momentarily:

On versa du vin de Champagne � la glace. Emma frissonna de toute sa peau en sentant ce froid dans sa bouche. Elle n'avait jamais vu de grenades ni mang� d'ananas. Le sucre en poudre lui parut plus blanc et plus fin qu'ailleurs. (Folio p.82)

She also is also temporarily satisfied in her affairs with Rodolphe and L�on which are also notably for their gastromonic excess:

Ils �taient � l'H�tel de Bologne, sur le port. Et ils vivaient l�, volets ferm�s, portes closes, avec des fleurs per terre et des sirops � la glace, qu'on leur apportait d�s le matin. (Folio p.331)

... elle riait d'un rire libertin quand la mousse du vin de Champagne d�bordant du verre l�ger sur les bagues de ses doigts. (Folio p.342)

Elle rit, pleura, chanta, dansa, fit monter des sorbets, voulut fumer des cigarettes, lui [to L�on] parut extravagante, mais adorable, superbe. (Folio p.354)

Typically though, Emma's experiences never meet her expectations and her hunger and thirst remained unsatisfied. She has desires than can never be fulfilled. Her death is an grim echo of her hunger and thirst for experience:

... elle alla droit vers la troisi�me tablette, saisit le bocal bleu, en arracha le bouchon, y fourra la main, et la retirant pleine d'une poudre blanche, se mit � manger � m�me comme du sucre (Folio p.400)

The oral imagery suggestive of Emma's repressed sexuality is also present in the description of Emma's death:

Sa poitrine aussit�t se mit � haleter rapidement. La langue tout enti�re lui sortit hors de sa bouche (Folio p.411)

Further Reading

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

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The Narrator in Madame Bovary

Je veux qu'il n'y ait pas dans mon livre un seul mouvement, ni une seule r�flexion de l'auteur.

Letter to Louise Colet (8 February, 1852)

Madame Bovary n'a rien de vrai. C'est une histoire totalement invent�e je n'y ai rien mis ni de mes sentiments ni de mon existence. L'illusion (s'il y en a une) vient au contraire de l'impersonnalit� de l'oeuvre. C'est un de mes principes, qu'il ne faut pas s'�crire. L'artiste doit �tre dans son oeuvre comme Dieu dans la cr�ation, invisible et toutpuissant;

Letter to Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie (18 March, 1857)

It is not usually difficult to determine `who sees' in Madame Bovary but it is much more so to determine `who speaks'. The status and identity of the narrator in Madame Bovary is problematic. Several narrators recount Madame Bovary whose voices take over from one another so unobtrusively that we scarcely notice the shift of perspective and retain the impression that there is but one narrator.

Before we discuss the identity of the narrator in Madame Bovary let's look at the different kinds of narrators available. G�rard Genette has identified four types of narrators:

� extra diegetic hetero diegetic narrator an `external' narrator who is not a fictional character in the story he narrates. This is, of course, the third person omniscient narrator which one finds predominant in Madame Bovary.

� extra diegetic homo diegetic narrator an `external' narrator who narrates his own story (corresponding to a first person retrospective narrative, where the narrator is extra diegetic and his past experiencing self is intra diegetic the type of narrator in Manon Lescaut, for example.

� intra diegetic hetero diegetic narrator a fictional narrator who narrates events in which he does not participate.

� intra diegetic homo diegetic narrator a fictional narrator who tells his own story, such as we find in La Peste and oddly at the beginning of Madame Bovary.

The first six pages of Madame Bovary present us with the fourth type of narrator as defined by Genette. The very first pages of the novel reiterate the ambivalent status of narratorial authority. The denizen of the narrated world does not speak of himself but of another, of others, of all the others in fact, except himself. He is present, yet we do not see him; he is simply a point of reference, vision and a memory transmitting what he saw and learned at a certain moment. His identity is mysterious not only because of his reserve concerning his own person but because he speaks in the first person plural, which indicates that he is not one but several characters. He might be a collective narrator: the `nous' of the first chapter refers perhaps to the entire student body of the school or to a group of students. The intra diegetic narrator refers to himself only seven times. Throughout the whole of the first tableau Charles' arrival in the school room, the teasing, the episode of the `casquette', the punishment of the teacher in which the intra diegetic narrator's viewpoint dominant, it seems as though we are about to read a personal confession autobiography. In addition to giving the impression that the story he is telling is true, so fulfilling the mimetic thrust which realist writers aim at, the haziness surrounding his grammatical form facilitates his replacement by another the extra diegetic hetero diegetic narrator (the first type). He vanishes and his disappearance is not even noticed because he was very nearly invisible anyway. After Charles has joined the class, the omniscient narrator sketches in background material that the enigmatic `nous' could not possibly know. The plural narrator appears once more to recapitulate and then the omniscient narrator takes over for good.

In quantitative terms the omniscient narrator has the principal responsibility in Madame Bovary and his attributes are omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. He moves about freely in time and space and the cardinal tactical decisions that determine the narrative strategy of Madame Bovary fall on his shoulders: he decides which facts are communicated to the reader a which are hidden from him and for how long, the temporal plane on which an episode, description or theme is situated, and at what moment in the narrative is transferred to one or another of the characters, or to their thoughts, feelings, movements, or to the natural setting and the things around them. The majority of the material narrated in the third person singular is recounted by an absence that speaks, a glacial, meticulous observer who does not allow himself to be seen. This invisibility is born, of course, of objectivity; the reader believes he does not exist; s/he has the impression that the narrative material is engendering itself before his/her eyes.

If no author before Flaubert had ever worked out such effective techniques for concealing the narrator's existence, his unshakeable ideas on the subject of impassibility and objectivity were happily not applied as though they were dogma. There are countless instances in Madame Bovary when the omniscient narrator ceases to be invisible; absence becomes presence.

Further Reading

� G. Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuils, 1972)

� S. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983)

� R.J. Sherrington, Three Novels by Flaubert: A Study of Techniques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)

####### Concept: Charlie Mansfield, Text: Tony McNeill, Artwork: Carole Baker

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Oral Imagary in Madame Bovary

Oral imagary is particularly important in the novel and Emma is often seen sucking her own fingers, biting her lips or putting things in her mouth as in the following examples:

Mlle Emma t�chait de coudre les coussinets. Comme elle fut longtemps avant de trouver son �tui, son p�re s'impatienta; elle ne r�pondit rien; mais tout en cousant, elle se piquait les doigts, qu'elle portait ensuite � sa bouche pour les sucer. (Folio p.38)

... ses l�vres charnues, qu'elle avait coutume de mordillonner � ses moment de silence (Folio p.39)

Souvent m�me, elle mettait entre ses dents le tuyau une grosse pipe qui �tait sur la table de nuit (Folio p.221)

Emma mordit ses l�vres bl�mes (Folio p.246)

Sa [L�on's] joue � l'�piderme sauve rougissant - pensait-elle - du d�sir de sa personne, et Emma sentait une invincible envie d'y porter ses l�vres. (Folio p.308)

This oral imagery relates, more often than not, to Emma's repressed vitality and sexuality. Emma's sexuality, however, as some of the above extracts illustrate, is often self-destructive. This is how Tony Tanner reads this network of symbolism:

I would suggest that just as the pricking of the fingers carries latent hints of self- piercing, so this sucking of the fingers adumbrates an appetitive drive that will only finally be satisfied by devouring the self (Emma's terminating act is precisely once again to put her fingers to her mouth; this time, of course, arrying poison - but the morphology of the gesture is the same). And the ouncturing of Emma's skin is continued after her death by no less an agent than M. Homais, for when Charles asks for a lock of Emma's hair, it is Homais who takes the scissors, but `il tremblait si fort, qu'il piqua la peau des tempes en plusieurs places'[Folio p.422]. (Tanner: 1979 p.350)

Further Reading

� T. Tanner, Adultery and the Novel: Contract and Transgression (Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1979)

#######

Emma Bovary and Paris

None of the action in Madame Bovary takes place in Paris and yet the capital is a place which casts a powerful spell over the minds of many of the characters, and none more so than Emma. On a number of occasions Emma is seen dreaming of another life in the metropolis:

Elle s'acheta un plan de Paris, et du bout de son doigt, sur la carte, elle faisait des courses dans la capitale. (Folio p.92)

Paris, plus vague que l'Oc�an, miroitait donc aux yeux d'Emma dans une atmosph�re vermeille (Folio p.93)

Elle souhaitait � la fois mourir et habiter Paris (Folio p.95).

Paris is, for Emma, the antithesis of the banality of her immediate surroundings - `campagne ennuyeuse, petits bourgeois imb�ciles, m�diocrit� de l'existence' (Folio p.93) - a place of distinction, imagination and passion. It is, perhaps, this last category that is most important. Paris is a place which promises sexual gratification, a place of erotic fulfillment. This is the lure of Paris for L�on too:

Paris alors agita pour lui, dans le lointain, la fanfare de ses bals masqu�s avec le rire de ses grisettes (Folio p.165)

At the beginning of their sexual relationship L�on persuades Emma to enter the cab in Rouen with him with the line: `Cela se fait � Paris!' (Folio p.315) eliciting the response: `Et cette parole, comme un irr�sistible argument, la d�t�rmina' (Folio p.315).

Although Paris exerts a special influence over Emma it is typical of her experience that she never reaches it. Doomed to stagnation in the provinces, the closest Emma gets to the `New Babylon' is Rouen. Rouen is, in Madame Bovary a parodic Paris, a sorry substitute for a dream that Emma is forever denied.

Further Reading

� A. Green, `Flaubert: Paris, Elsewhere' in Romance Studies, 22 (1993) 7- 15

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Emma Bovary: Victim of Patriarchy

Si mon livre est bon il chatouillera doucement mainte plaie f�minine; plus d'une sourira en s'y reconnaissant ... J'aurai connu vos douleurs, pauvres �mes obscures, humides de m�lancholie enferm�e, comme vos arri�re-cours de province, dont les murs ont de la mousse. G. Flaubert: Correspondance III, (Paris: Conard, 1926-33) p.11

Although many readers of Madame Bovary have seen in Emma a pattern valid for all human experience - high expectations followed by disappointement - this may be considered an inaccurate universalisation of an experience which is specific to women, or rather, to a certain class of woman in nineteenth-century France. Emma's downfall can be viewed as mainly due to her being a woman in a society in which women's roles were both limited and clearly circumscribed and in which any transgression was severely punished. One might argue that the central conflict in Madame Bovary is that of a woman who tries to shrug off the reductive definitions of woman conceived by patriarchy. Emma, of course, is not a particularly self-conscious character and does not conceptualize her dilemma in these terms. However, she does actively resist the position she is alloted in life and seeks a problematic fulfillment through adultery, an act which unsettles the stable categories of wife and mother.

Let's briefly consider the position of women in nineteenth-century France. Women in nineteenth-century France were denied most of the freedoms women enjoy today. Under the terms and conditions of the Napoleonic Code Civil women were regarded as perpetual minors. Fathers and husbands were the time-honored guardians of women. The Code Civil had transformed marriage from an essentially religious sacrement to a legal contract in which authority was henceforth invested in the husband. A law prohibiting divorce was passed in 1816 - which was to last until 1884 - making women the virtual prisoners of their husbands. There was no provision for secondary education until 1880 and what education was available to women was little more than ideological indoctrination since they were taught to become virtuous wives and mothers. The moral, intellectual and physical inferiority of women was inculcated in women from birth.

Women could play no active role in public life and were excluded from adopting professional responsabilities which would give them economic independance. Woman's place was in the home as wife and mother and, although we see working women in Madame Bovary, their work is usually related to the domestic sphere as wetnurses, servants, laundresses and the like. The only exception to this rule is Mme Lefran�ois whose business falls victim to the fierce competition offered by Lheureux's Favorites du commerce. Women had no positive role, only a passive one restricted to the confines of home and garden. Women were seen as possessions, as decorations to men's social standing and success. This is how Emma is seen by Charles and the inhabitants of Yonville-l'Abbaye:

Charles finissait par s'estimer davantage de ce qu'il poss�dait une pareille femme. Il montrait avec orgeuil, dans la salle, deux petits croquis d'elle � la mine de plomb, qu'il avait fait encadrer dans des cadres tr�s larges et suspendus contre le papier de la muraille � de longs cordons verts. Au sortir de la messe, on le voyait sur sa porte avec de belles pantoufles en tapisserie. (Folio p.73)

Flaubert was no feminist but he was critical of the ways in which women's lives were circumscribed by men. In his correspondance he produced an unorthodox and questionning view of women:

La femme est un produit de l'homme. Dieu a cr�� la femelle, et l'homme a fait la femme; elle est le r�sultat de la civilisation, une oeuvre factice. G. Flaubert: Correspondance III, (Paris: Conard, 1926-33) p.138

The point Flaubert appears to be making in this statement is similar to the distinction commonly made today between sex and gender: sex is a matter of biology and gender a matter of social conditioning. Flaubert's distinction between `femelle' and `femme' then anticipates contemporary feminist theories on sex and gender. Flaubert is doing something really quite radical for his age: he locates a fundamental problem for women, namely, that their identity has been defined by men. Although it would be quite wrong to claim that Flaubert was a feminist - for Flaubert all progressive movements such as feminism or socialism were forms of romantic illusion and b�tise - he does express an intelligent grasp of the conditions of women's lives in the nineteenth century. Men have provided models of feminine behaviour convenient to their own interests. Flaubert problematizes the whole question of male and female roles and shows social and cultural conditionning to be a major factor in gender behaviour.

The education and upbringing Emma receives offers her no scope to realize her potential. She attends convent school during which time her head is filled with a series of erroneous fictional models. Flaubert was particularly alert to the ways in which women, through their education, were susceptible to what Lucette Cyzba calls a `mythologie de l'amour' (Cyzba: 1983 p.66). At convent Emma assimilates the view that passion and joy may be found in marriage. This belief is at variance with her later experience. Charles can't swim, ride or shoot. Worst of all his conversation is boring. Whilst he finds some filfillment in his job Emma languishes at home, trapped like her greyhound running around in circles (Folio p.76). Later, Emma comes to see women as constantly held back by society and, on discovering that she is pregnant wishes for a son through whom she can fulfill her own desires:

Elle souhaitait un fils; il serait fort et brun; elle l'appellerait Georges; et cette id�e d'avoir pour enfant un m�le �tait comme la revanche en espoir de toutes ses impuissances pass�es. Un homme, au moins, est libre; il peut parcourir les passions et les pays, traverser les obstacles, mordre aux bonheurs les plus lointains. Mais une femme est emp�ch�e continuellement. Inerte et flexible � la fois, elle a contre elle les mollesses de la chair avec les d�pendances de la loi. Sa volont�, comme le voile de son chapeau retenu par un cordon, palpite � tous les vents, il y a toujours quelque d�sir qui entra�ne, quelque convenance qui retient.Elle accoucha un dimanche, vers six heures, au soleil levant.

- C'est une fille! dit Charles.

Elle tourna la t�te et s'�vanouit. (Folio p.130)

The story of Emma is in part about her attempts to resist a role she finds limiting. We see Emma refusing her identity as woman and adopting men's behaviour, dress codes and freedoms.

Further Reading

� L. Cyzba, Mythes et id�ologie de la femme dans les romans de Flaubert (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1983)

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: the End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

#######

Baudelaire on Balzac

J'ai maintes fois �t� �tonn� que la grande gloire de Balzac f�t de passer pour un observateur; il m'avait toujours sembl� que son principal m�rite �tait d'�tre visionnaire, et visionnaire passionn�.

Charles Baudelaire: Th�ophile Gautier (1859)

#######

Flaubert's Book about Nothing

During the composition of Madame Bovary, Flaubert declared the following ambition:

Ce qui me semble beau, ce que je voudrais faire, c'est un livre sur rien, un livre sans attache ext�rieure, qui se tiendrait de lui-m�me par la force interne de son style, comme la terre sans �tre soutenue se tient en l'air, un livre qui n'aurait presque pas de sujet ou du moins o� le sujet serait presque invisible, si cela se peut. Les oeuvres les plus belles sont celles o� il y a le moins de mati�re; plus l'expression se rapproche de la pens�e, plus le mot colle dessus et dispara�t, plus c'est beau. Je crois que l'avenir de l'Art est dans ces voies. Je le voit, � mesure qu'il grandit, s'�th�risant tant qu'il peut, depuis les pyl�nes �gyptiens jusqu'aux lancettes gothiques, et depuis les po�mes de vingt mille vers des indiens jusqu'aux jets d'eau de Byron. La forme, en devenant habile, s'att�nue; elle quitte toute lit�rgie, toute r�gle, toute mesure; elle abandonne l'�pique pour le roman, le vers pour la prose; elle ne se conna�t plus d'orthodoxie et est libre comme chaque volont� qui la produit.

G. Flaubert: Correspondance III, (Paris: Conard, 1926-33) p.345

A little later he made the less extreme claim that:

Si le livre que j'�cris avec tant de mal arrive � bien, j'aurai �tabli par le fait seul de son ex�cution ces deux v�rit�s, qui sont pour moi des axiomes, � savoir: d'abord que la po�sie est purement subjective, qu'il n'y a pas en litt�rature de beaux sujets d'arts, et qu'Yvetot donc vaut Constantinople; et qu'en cons�quence l'on peut �crire n'importe quoi aussi bien que quoi que ce soit. L'artiste doit tout �lever; il est comme une pompe, il a en lui un grand tuyau qui descend aux entrailles des choses, dans les couches profondes. Il aspire et fait jaillir au soleil en gerbes g�antes ce qui �tait plat sous terre et ce qu'on ne voyait pas.

G. Flaubert: Correspondance III, (Paris: Conard, 1926-33) p.249

During the composition of Madame Bovary Flaubert moves away from the original literary ambition of writing a book about nothing - non-mimetic and totally self- referential - and moves instead towards the concept of writing a novel in which content - story, character, drama etc. - is reduced to a minimum and made subordinate to form and style. A text in which the real is not so much transposed as transfigured.

The implication of this `devaluation of content', to use Jonathan Culler's phrase, is that for Flaubert `content' should be subordinate to the style, technique and the form of the composition. Flaubert thus heralds a new conception of fiction and of how fictions are related. Flaubert aim was not simply to transpose reality but to transfigure it. The suject-matter is banal but Flaubert imposes onto mediocrity a dazzling architecture. The characteristic tension of the novel is between a tightly orchestrated structure and the banal meandering subject-matter.

Further Reading

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

####### Concept: Charlie Mansfield, Text: Tony McNeill, Artwork: Carole Baker

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Emma Bovary: Victim of her own Romanticism

Madame Bovary is an unusual novel insofar as it has given its name to its own psychological condition: bovarysme. This may be defined as the condition by which we delude ourselves as to what we are and as to life's potential. The Petit Robert has the following definition of the term: `BOVARYSME - Insatisfaction romanesque; `pouvoir qu'a l'homme de se concevoir autre qu'il n'est' (Jules de Gaulthier: 1865)

For many critics Madame Bovary is essentially a study of this condition, the story of one woman's faulty perception of reality. In an early version of the novel Flaubert included a scene at the ball at La Vaubyessard in which Emma is seen looking out at the landscape surrounding the house through coloured panes of glass (`verres de couleurs'). This scene was clearly meant as a representation of Emma's projection onto the world around her of an illusory model of reality. Flaubert used a similar image in an early story called M�moires d'un fou: `Chacun de nous a un prisme � travers lequel il aper�oit le monde'.

Emma cannot see the world as it truly is - and, indeed, she cannot see herself as she truly is - because she is constantly imposing onto herself and her surroundings the criteria of Romantic literature. Enid Starkie has claimed that, in Madame Bovary, Flaubert sought to `study clinically the disease of Romanticism' (Starkie: 1967 p.297). This is a popular reading of the text: Flaubert has written a novel about the dangers of reading Romantic novels, a fiction about the dangers of Romantic fiction. Emma is essentially someone corrupted by what she has read, she is the inheritor of a second-hand set of attitudes and poses. It may be worth citing Enid Starkie in greater detail:

[Flaubert] ... wanted to study clinically the disease of Romanticism. He knew, from the effects on himself, its deliquescing nature, how it prevented any clear thinking, any clear and objective view of the self, and how it led to senseless dreaming which impeded all action. (Starkie: 1967 p.297)

What is so wrong with Romanticism, claims Starkie, is that it fosters a fundamentally false understanding of the world. It encourages expectations that have no reasonable hope of ever being realized. Soon after Emma's marriage to Charles in the first part of the novel she is seen musing on her disappointment:

Emma cherchait � savoir ce que l'on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de f�licit�, de passion et d'ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres (Folio p.63)

This sets up a pattern which recurs throughout the novel: Emma dreams of one thing but gets something else. The characteristic rhythm of her experience is of espoir followed by �chec. Marriage, motherhood, adultery all fall short of Emma's expectations and she seems constantly doomed to disillusionment. The flat Norman landscape that surrounds her is at odds with the exotic lands of Romantic fiction, (Swiss chalets, the Scottish highlands etc. Folio p.71); Tostes, Yonville-l'Abbaye and even Rouen are no match for the erotic and artistic promise of Paris (Folio pp.92-3); and Emma's men fail to correspond to her fantasies of the perfect lover despite their initial promise. Charles, for example, is no figure from Romantic adventure:

Il ne savait ni nager, ni faire des armes, ni tirer le pistolet, et il ne put, un jour, lui expliquer un terme d'equitation qu'elle avait rencontr� dans un roman.

Un homme ... ne devait-il pas tout conna�tre, exceller en des activit�s multiples, vous initier aux �nergies de la passion, aux raffinements de la vie, � tous les myst�res? (Folio p.72)

Even Rodolphe, who comes closest to fitting the bill, with his expensive riding boots, gloves and substantial income, is ultimately considered coarse and vulgar by Emma. And L�on - the very image of the young Romantic artist - leaves her when he is made `premier clerc' (Folio p.370) inciting Emma's disgust and realization that adultery contains `toutes les platitudes du mariage' (Folio p.371).

Although Starkie and other critics have taken the view that Emma's over- exposure to Romantic literature is largely responsible for her faulty perception of the world, this is not entirely accurate. Much of the responsibility for Emma's outlook lies with her convent school education. It is there that Emma is seduced by `les douceurs inattendues' (Folio p.65) of the sermons, prayers, masses and religious texts with their powerful images of a suffering Christ to which she is constantly exposed. Through the influence of an elderly spinster of a once powerful aristocratic family who would visit the convent to do the laundry Emma is introduced to the world of Romantic literature:

Ce n'�taient qu'amours, amants, amantes, dames pers�cut�es s'�vanouissant dans des pavillons solitaires, postillons qu'on tue � tous les relais, chevaux qu'on cr�ve � toutes les pages, for�ts sombres, troubles du coeur, serments, sanglots, larmes et baisers, nacelles au clair de lune, rossignols dans les bosquets, messieurs braves comme des lions, doux comme des agneaux, vertueux comme on ne l'est pas, toujours bien mis, et qui pleurent comme des urnes. Pendant six mois, � quinze ans, Emma se graissa donc les mains � cette poussi�re des vieux cabinets de lecture. Avec Walter Scott, plus tard, elle s'�prit de choses historiques, r�va bahuts, salle des gardes et m�nestrels. Elle aurait voulu vivre dans quelque vieux manoir, comme des ch�telaines au long corsage, qui, sous le tr�fle des ogives, passaient leurs jours le coude sur la pierre et le menton dans la main, � regarder venir du fond de la campagne un cavalier � plume blanche qui galope sur un cheval noir. (Folio p.66)

During Emma's adolescence her mother dies and her grief encourages her immersion into `les m�andres lamartiniens' (Folio p.68) of the the world of Romantic literature. Not long after her mother's death her father withdraws her from the convent but it is too late as Emma's sensibility has already been formed. She believes that she may find the passion she has read so much of in her later marriage to Charles but this proves to be a disappointment. Her experience at the elegant aristocratic ball at La Vaubyessard encourages her fantasies, as do both L�on and Rodolphe, who, in different ways, conform superficially to the stereotyped males of Romantic literature.

Emma's downfall is, in part at least, a result of a fundamental d�calage between expectation and reality fostered by readings of Romantic literature. Emma has allowed an unreal world of love and adventure to impose itself upon her consciousness and with which the real world cannot compete. Her suicide may be read as a negative value judgement on a life not worth living. This however, raises an interesting question: are Emma's expectations of life too high or is life fundamentally deficient? It is now perhaps time to consider another interpretation of Madame Bovary. For this click on Emma Bovary: Victim of the `Bourgeois Century'.

Further Reading

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

� A. Fairlie, Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: the End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

� E.F. Gray, `Emma by Twilight: Flawed Perception in Madame Bovary' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 6 (1978) 231-240

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

� D. Knight, Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

� E. Starkie, Flaubert: The Making of the Master (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1967)

� D.A. Williams, Psychological Determinism in Madame Bovary (Hull: University of Hull Publications, 1973)

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Spatial Imagery in Madame Bovary

The world described in Madame Bovary is a particularly enclosed and restricted one. Images of enclosure and entrapment are abundant from the very outset of Emma's marriage. Indeed, marriage is a kind of prison to Emma. Her first house is described as `trop �troite' (Folio p.153) and her marriage to Charles is likened to `l'ardillon pointu de cette courroie complexe qui la bouclait de tous les c�t�s' (Folio p.154). Perhaps the most potent image constriction and containment is the wooden contraption Charles makes to cure Hippolyte's club foot and which makes his leg turn gangrenous.

These images of constriction are clearly related to the reading of Emma's story as that of a women trapped by alienating and restrictive ideals of femininity. Emma feels trapped within the confines of the domestic sphere and sees no escape:

L'avenir �tait un corridor tout noir, et qui avait au fond sa porte bien ferm�e. (Folio p.98)

A recuurent image in the novel is that of Emma seated at the window dreaming of a realm beyond the bounded space of home and garden that constitutes her existence. Emma is constantly seen dreaming of escape to an idealized ailleurs (Folio p.71) as in the following extract:

Emma �tait accoud�e � sa fen�tre (elle s'y mettait souvent: la fen�tre, en province, remplace les th��tres et la promenade)(Folio p.177)

Emma is also often seen experiencing feelings of nausea and suffocation and runs to the open window for fresh air:

.. elle alla dans le corridor ourvrir la fen�tre et huma l'air frais pour se calmer (Folio p.97)

But, as Victor Brombert argues, images of Emma at the window also reaffirm her entrapment and powerlessness:

The window becomes ... in Madame Bovary the symbol of all expectation: it is an opening onto space through which the confined heroine can dream of escape. But it is also - for windows can be closed and exist only where space is, as it were, restricted - a symbol of frustration, enclosure and asphyxia. (Brombert: 1966, p.57)

Perhaps the most interesting window scene takes place at the ball at La Vaubyessard when some servants break a window to let in some fresh air and Emma sees a group of peasants looking in at the spectacle of luxury and indulgence taking place:

Un domestique monta sur une chaise et cassa deux vitres; au bruit des �clats de verre, Mme Bovary tourna la t�te et aper�ut dans le jardin, contre les carreaux, des faces de paysans qui regardaient. Alors le souvenir des Bertaux lui arriva. Elle revit la ferme, la mare bourbeuse, son p�re en blouse sous les pommiers, et elle se revit elle-m�me, comme autrefois, �cr�mant avec son doigt les terrines de lait dans la laiterie. (Folio p.85)

In this strange scene Emma is confronted with an image of herself - the peasants are a reminder of her own class origins - looking in at a world of elegance and excess that is forever denied. As Stephen Heath claims:

The window is the frame of Emma's dissatisfaction what, in fact, can she ever see from hers? - and then of her fantasy - she inside looking out beyond, seeking another life. (Heath: 1992, pp.61-2)

Further Reading

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

� L. Cyzba, Mythes et id�ologie de la femme dans les romans de Flaubert (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1983)

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

#######

The Structure of Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is organized into three parts of unequal length. Part I deals with Charles' early life, his first wife and his marriage to Emma and, in the Folio edition is only around 80 pages long. Part II covers the move to Yonville-L'Abbaye, Emma's growing disillusionment with her marriage, her adulterous liason with Rodolphe and ends with her meeting L�on again in the opera house in Rouen. This section lasts around 190 pages. Part III covers her adultery with L�on and then again with Rodolphe, her desperation and suicide and finally Charles' despair at her death. This final section takes up around 140 pages. As well as being of uneven length, the three parts don't actually appear to correspond to distinct phases in Emma's life. Up to a point, Part I is about life in Tostes, Part II about life in Yonville-L'Abbaye and Part III about Rouen but this is not an exact match by any means. Nor does the tripartite structure correspond exactly to the three men in Emma's life: Charles, Rodolphe, L�on. Moreover, the tripartite structure doesn't fit into the pattern of dramatic tragedy adopted by Balzac: exposition, action, d�nouement.

The structure of Madame Bovary signifies that we are in the presence of a text which differs radically from those produced by Balzac or Stendhal. It is a text whose deliberate slowness and obvious lack of drama assert its difference from all those novels which went before it and which makes greater demands on the part of the reader. Flaubert refuses to shape his material to the expectations of a typical nineteenth-century reader. Meanings are not signposted, they are not on the surface but must be sought elsewhere.

Looking closer at the organization of Madame Bovary it becomes possible to argue that the uneven tripartite structure of Madame Bovary actually disguises the text's pyramidal structure. The novel is composed, as it were, of nine structural blocks which form a sort of triangle or pyramid. The apex of this pyramid is Part II/Chapter - almost exactly halfway through the novel - which covers the disasterous scene in which Charles is persauded by Homais to perform an innovative operation on Hippolyte's club foot. This pyramidal structure which forms the main architecture of the text is exloited in a number of ways. What Flaubert does primarily with his pyramid is to set up a system of oppositions and parallels between scenes and characters on the two sloping planes of the pyramid. He constructs a network of suggestion and symbolism which ultimately reveals Emma's gradual undoing.

Each structural block gives a new focus to the novel. The first structural block consists of those chapters which focus on Charles, the second those on his marriage to Emma, the third on Emma's growing interest in L�on and the fourth on her interest in and adultery with Rodolphe. The fifth structural block - Part II/Chapter, the scene in which Charles performs the unsuccessful operation on Hippolyte's club foot provides the highpoint of the narrative, the point at which Emma becomes definitively disgusted by her husband's mediocrity and redoubles her rejection of him. The sixth structural block focuses on her adultery with and later disgust at Rodolphe, the seventh on her adultery and later disillusionment with L�on, the eighth on her suicide and the ninth on Charles and his despair.

By constructing this pyramid Flaubert creates a carefully orchestrated symmetrical structure in which the second half - that is to say structural blocks numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9 - echo or repeat in a degraded and debased form the episodes which take place in the first half - that is to say in structural blocks 1, 2, 3 and 4. The second half then is a muddy reflection of the first half, an ironical, cynical, retrospective commentary of the early aspirations of Emma and Charles. So, Flaubert then systematicaly sets up oppositions detween scenes which reveal a deterioration in Emma's life - what has been called r�p�tition d�grad�e. This pyramidal structure supports the novel's overall pattern of aspiration followed by disappointment, espoir followed by �chec. Moreover, it underlines Flaubert's pessimistic vision of life as a process of deterioration: `... life, in the Flaubertian context, is a steady process of decay' (Brombert: 1966, p.66). Victor Brombert, when writing of Flaubert's ironic contrasts makes the claim that:

[T]hese planned juxtapositions do ... point to the heart of the subject. They emphasize the basic theme of incompatibility. Their implicit tensions stress a fundamental state of divorce at all levels of experience. (Brombert:1966, p.53).

There are far too many ironic contrasts in the novel but here are just a few that you may wish to consider in more detail:

� Emma's father's cry of pain (Folio p.17)

� Her own cries on her death bed (Folio p.376)

� Emma licking Cura�ao with her tongue (Folio p.25)

� Emma's whole tongue stuck out in agony (Folio p.382)

� Emma's happy days at the convent school

� Later scene when she sits outside the convent musing on `cette insuffisance de la vie' (Folio p.363)

� Emma sees the powdered white sugar at La Vaubyessard (Folio p.82)

� Emma eats the white powder that is arsenic (Folio p.400)

� Emma's pseudo-romantic conversation with L�on in front of a fire at the Lion d'Or

� Their last meeting in a hotel bedroom where the fire is dead and they have nothing more to say to one another

Further Reading

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

� A. Fairlie, Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: the End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

� M.P. Ginsberg, Flaubert Writing: A Study in Narrative Strategies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986)

� D. Roe, Flaubert (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1989)

� R.J. Sherrington, Three Novels by Flaubert: A Study of Techniques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)

#######

The Virilization of Emma

Emma's appropriation of male dress codes is, I would argue, a rejection of her status as a woman and is linked to what has been called Emma's virilization, or Emma's masculinization. We often see Emma behaving in a what would be considered, by the standards of the nineteenth century at least, a manly way. Emma doesn't behave like women are supposed to behave. This is a point that Baudelaire noted in his review of Madame Bovary:

... malgr� son z�le de com�dien, il n'a pas pu ne pas infuser un sang viril dans les veines de sa cr�ature; et que madame Bovary, pour ce qu'il y a en elle de plus �nergique et de plus ambitieux, et aussi de plus r�veur, madame Bovary est rest�e un homme. Comme la Pallas arm�e, sortie du cerveau de Zeus, ce bizarre androgyne a gard� toutes les s�ductions d'une �me virile dans un charmant corps f�minin. (Baudelaire: 1976 p.81)

For example, the day after her wedding we are told that it is Charles who behaved like the virginal bride: `C'est lui plut�t que l'on e�t pris pour la vierge de la veille' (Folio p.57). She loathes to feel weak and dependant - `[l]'humiliation de se sentir faible' (Folio p.228) - and resents the mediocrity of her husband. Whereas dull, plodding Charles finds satisfaction in his job as a medical officer riding from village to village, intelligent, imaginative Emma languishes in the confines of domesticity and continually dreams of travel.

When Emma rebels against her lot through her adulterous liaisons she often adopts a more active role. Particularly in her relationship with L�on it is Emma who adopts the more dominant, the more `masculine' (according to the standards of the nineteenth century) role as the following extracts illustrate:

Elle rit, pleura, chanta, dansa, fit monter des sorbets, voulut fumer des cigarettes (Folio p.354)

... il [L�on] devenait sa ma�tresse plut�t qu'elle n'�tait la sienne (Folio p.356)

... il [L�on] �tait incapable d'h�ro�sme, faible, banal, plus mou qu'une femme (Folio p.361)

D'ailleurs, il se r�voltait contre l'absorption, chaque jour plus grande, de sa personnalit� (Folio p.362)

... le jeune homme se sentit faiblir sous la muette volont� de cette femme qui lui conseillait un crime (Folio p.380)

Further Reading

� C. Baudelaire, `Madame Bovary par Gustave Flaubert' in Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) 76-86

� L. Cyzba, Mythes et id�ologie de la femme dans les romans de Flaubert (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1983)

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

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Liquid Imagery in Madame Bovary

Water or liquid imagery is an important part of the symbolic infrastructure of Madame Bovary. Water is an integral part of the world Emma inhabits (rivers, ponds, the dampness of domestic interiors etc.) but its primary function is figurative. D.A. Williams describes water as a `primal symbol of sexual desire' (Williams: 1977 p.73) and argues that descriptions of water in the novel express something of Emma's sexual yearnings. This is made explicit in Part 2 of the novel when Emma begins her adulterous liaison with Rodolphe:

... l'amour, si longtemps contenu, jaillissait tout entier avec des bouillonnements joyeux. (Folio p.219)

Rodolphe's shrewdly cynical, but cruelly apt, appraisal of Emma as a fish out of water, gasping for its vital medium underlines this point:

�a baille apr�s l'amour comme une carpe apr�s l'eau sur une table de cuisine. (Folio p.180)

Descriptions of water are not particularly abundant in Part 1 of the novel which describes the early days of Emma's relationship with Charles. However, there is a key scene which takes place during Emma's excursion to Banneville when Emma's muses on her dissatisfaction with Charles (Folio pp.75-77). Emma is awakened by the `brises de la mer qui, ... apportaient, ... une fra�cheur sal�e' (Folio p.77) to another world of sensual experience. There is another scene in Part 2 of the novel in which Emma returns from La M�re Rollet's accompanied by L�on (Folio p.137). This moment of intimacy between the them is also notable for its references to water:

Elle [l'eau] coulait sans bruit, rapide et froide � l'oeil; de grandes herbes minces s'y courbaient ensemble, selon le courant qui les poussait, et comme des chevelures vertes abandonn�es s'�talaient dans sa limpidit�. (Folio p.137)

Water is also present in the scene of Rodolphe's seduction of Emma in the forest where `un petit �tang' (Folio p.217) of stagnant water provides the backdrop to Emma's adultery. There are references to water in the scene in the garden that takes place on the eve of their planned elopement (Folio p.261). A final key description of Emma near water takes place in Rouen during Emma and L�on's lune de miel (Folio p.331). On these five occasions Emma is seen near or next to water with men who are not her husband and illustrate Emma's immersion into the world of erotic experience, an abandonment to shifting currents of desire.

Beneath the calm and limpid surface of these descriptions however, there lurks an undertow of danger. Descriptions of Emma near water prefigure her death by `drowning' although, paradoxically, she needs water (love/eroticism) to survive. Emma's death portended as a symbolic drowning in the forest is reiterated as she actually expires. On the deathbed her l�vres and langue, ever thirsty for sensual gratification, now mimic the frantic attempts of a person drowning and gasping for air.

Elsewhere in the novel, descriptions of water, or more commonly liquids, have negative connotations. The catastrophically unsuccessful operation on Hippolyte's club foot represents the high point of Emma's disgust at her husband's mediocrity. It represents in many ways a point of no return. Emma commits herself to finding fulfilment outside of marriage and motherhood. As such, Emma embarks on a path that leads to her own destruction. In many ways the operation on Hippolyte's club foot anticipates her own death. There are many similarities between the physical symptoms of Hippolyte after the operation and Emma after having taken the arsenic. Here is a description of Hippolyte's leg: `[u]ne tum�faction livide s'�tendait sur la jambe, et, avec des phlyct�nes de place en place, par o� suintait un liquide noir' (Folio p.239). Compare this with the description of Emma's death throes in `[d]es gouttes suintaient sur sa figure bleu�tre' (Folio p.402) and of her dead body clothed in her white wedding dress which when propped up is covered in a black liquid which spills from her mouth: `un flot de liquides noirs sortit, comme un vomissement, de sa bouche' (Folio p.419).

Further Reading

� D.A. Williams, `Water Imagery in Madame Bovary' in Forum for Modern Language Studies, 13 (1977) 70-84

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Champfleury on Realism

... il a �t� tr�s-nettement �tabli:

Que le R�alisme proscrivait l'historique dans la peinture, dans le roman et dans le th��tre, afin qu'il s'y trouv�t aucun mensonge, et que l'artiste ne p�t pas emprunter son intelligence aux autres;

Que le R�alisme ne voulait, des artistes, que l'�tude de leur �poque; Que dans cette �tude de leur �poque, il leur demandait de ne rien d�former, mais bien de conserver � chaque chose son exacte proportion;

Que la meilleure mani�re de ne pas errer dans cette �tude, �tait de toujours songer � l'id�e de repr�senter le c�t� social de l'homme, qui est le plus visible, le plus compr�hensible et le plus vari�, et de songer ainsi � l'id�e de reproduire les choses qui touchant � la vie du plus grand nombre, que se passent souvent, dans l'ordre des instincts, des d�sirs, de passions;

Que le R�alisme attribue par l� � l'artiste un but philosophique pratique, utile, et non un but divertissant, et pas cons�quent le rel�ve;

Que, demandant � l'artiste le vrai utile, il lui demande surtout le sentiment, l'observation intelligente qui voit un enseignement, une �motion dans un spectacle de quelque ordre qu'il soit, bas ou noble, selon la convention, et qui tire toujours cet enseignement, cette �motion, de ce spectacle en sachant le repr�senter complet et la rattacher � l'ensemble social, de sorte que par exemple les reproductions � la Henry Monnier, isol�es, fragmentaires, doivent �tre rejet�es de l'art et du r�alisme bien qu'on ait voulu les y rattacher;

Que le public �tait juge d�finitif de la valeur des sentiments �tudi�s dans oeuvre, parce que la foule est tout aussi accessible � la piti�, au malheur � la col�re, etc., que l'�crivain qui s'adresse � elle ...

Champfleury: Extract from R�alisme No.2 December 1856

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Le chien et le flacon

`- Mon beau chien, mon bon chien, mon cher toutou, approchez et venez respirer un excellent parfum achet� chez le meilleur parfumeur de la ville.'

Et le chien, en fr�tillant de la queue, ce qui est, je crois, chez ces pauvres �tres, le signe correspondant du rire et du sourire, s'approche et pose curieusement son nez humide sur le flacon d�bouch�; puis, reculant soudainement avec effroi, il aboie contre moi en mani�re de reproche.

`- Ah! mis�rable chien, si je vous avais offert un paquet d'excr�ment, vous l'auriez flair� avec d�lices et peut-�tre d�vor�. Ainsi, vous-m�me, indigne compagnon de ma triste vie, vous ressemblez au public, � qui il ne faut jamais pr�senter des parfums d�licats qui l'exasp�rent, mais des ordures soigneusement choisies.'

Charles Baudelaire: Petits po�mes en prose

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France: 1789 TO 1871

1789: The French Revolution

First meeting of the Estates General on the 5th May. The middle-class Third Estate proclaims itself the National Assembly on 17th June which on 9th July establishes a constitutional monarchy. The Bastille is stormed on the 14th July launching popular unrest that soon spreads to the provinces. In August all feudal privileges are abolished (4th) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man made public (26th) laying the basis of a society of land-owning peasants.

1792: The Republic

On the 21st September the monarchy is abolished and the Republic proclaimed. The Revolutionary calendar is introduced and the Louvre Palace becomes a museum.

1793 - 1794: The Terror

Execution of Louis XVI (21st January). In March the uprising of Breton royalists (les Chouans) in Vend�e unleashes a wave of summary executions known as La Terreur. Marat is assassinated (27th July) and Robespierre put in power.

1795 - 1799: The Directory

Installation of the Directory, an executive body of five members. During this period General Napoleon Bonaparte wins a number of important military victories throughout Europe.

1799 - 1804: The Consulate

Napoleon seizes power on 9th November marking the beginning of the Consulate. Catholicism is restored as the official religion of France in 1801. The Code Civil is introduced in 1804.

1804 - 1814: The Rise of the Napoleonic Empire

Napoleon is crowned Emperor by Pope Pius VII at Notre Dame de Paris. Extensive military campaigns are waged in Europe by the Napoleonic armies. Establishment of the foundations of the modern centralized state (�lite educational system, pr�fets, Code Civil etc.). By 1814 however, Napoleon is defeated and relinquishes all territorial conquests made since the Revolution. First meeting of the Estates General on the 5th May.

1814 - 1830: The Restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy Louis XVIII (1814-1824) and Charles X (1824-1830)

Napoleon abdicates and goes into exile at Elba. Louis XVIII becomes king and grants a constitutional charter. He is momentarily ousted from the throne during Napoleon's return in 1815 but regains the throne after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. In 1824 Louis XVIII's brother, Charles X begins a reign marked by reactionary politics. Political alliance of throne and altar, restricted franchise, censorship of the press.

1830 - 1848: The July Monarchy (Louis-Philippe I)

The Revolution of 1830 (27-29th July, also known as Les Trois Glorieuses) puts an end to the reign of Charles X and marks the beginning of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe d'Orl�ans. He called himself le roi des Fran�ais and not le roi de France and used his power to bolster the influence of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the aristocracy.

1848: The Revolutions of 1848

On the 24th February rioting in the streets of Paris precipitates the fall of Louis-Philippe. The Second Republic is proclaimed and the vote given to males over 21. Between 22nd and 26th June a working-class uprising was brutally by a counter-revolution known as les journ�es de juin and the Second Republic veared to the right.

1848 - 1852: The Second Republic Following the fall of Louis-Philippe during the Revolution of 1848 the Second Republic is proclaimed (25th February). In June there is a reaction against it and on 10th December Louis Napoleon is elected president of the Republic. In 1849 a reactionary Legislative Assembly reverses earlier progressive legislation (universal suffrage, right to strike, freedom of the press etc.). On 2nd December 1851 Louis Napoleon seizes power in an administrative coup.

1852 - 1870: The Second Empire of Napoleon III

Following his coup d'�tat in 1851, Louis Napoleon declares himself Emperor Napoleon III. This period sees the Haussmanization of Paris, colonial expansion, the growth of department stores and of major financial institutions. The r�gime favoured industrial development and the bulk of the French railway system was built in this period.

1870: The Franco-Prussian War

France declares war on Prussia on 19th July, Napoleon III is defeated at Sedan on 2nd September, Paris is invaded on 18th September.

1871: The Paris Commune

Formation in Paris of a revolutionary government hostile to capitulation. Election in March of the Paris Commune dominated by radical republicans and socialists. It introduces the first socialist programme in Europe but is crushed in May by the returning French army (25,000 dead).

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Balzac and La Com�die humaine

Here are some claims Balzac made of La Com�die humaine in the 1830s and 1840s:

Faire concurrence � l'�tat civil

Honor� de Balzac: Avant-propos to La Com�die humaine (1842)

Vous ne figurez pas ce que c'est que La Com�die humaine. C'est plus vaste, litt�rairement parlant, que la cath�drale de Bourges architecturalement.

Honor� de Balzac: Letter to Zulma Carraud (1845)

L'homme, la soci�t�, l'humanit� seront d�crites, jug�es, analys�es sans r�p�titions, et dans une oeuvre qui sera comme Les Mille et Une Nuits de l'Occident.

Honor� de Balzac: Letter to Mme Hanska (1834)

Je crois qu'en 1838 les trois parties de cette oeuvre gigantesque seront, sinon parachev�es, du moins superpos�es, et qu'on pourra juger de la masse. Les �tudes de Moeurs repr�senteront tous les effets sociaux, sans que ni une situation de la vie, ni une physionomie, ni un caract�re d'homme ou de femme, ni une mani�re de vivre, ni une profession, ni une zone sociale, ni un pays fran�ais, ni quoi que ce soit de l'enfance, de la vieillesse, de l'�ge m�r, de la politique, de la justice, de la guerre, ait �t� oubli�.

Honor� de Balzac: Letter to Mme Hanska (1834)

La Soci�t� fran�aise allait �tre l'historien, je ne devais �tre que le secr�taire. En dressant l'inventaire des vices et des vertus, en rassemblant les principaux faits des passions, en peignant les caract�res, en choisissant les �v�nements principaux de la Soci�t�, en composant des types par la r�union des traits de plusieurs caract�res homog�nes, peut-�tre pouvais-je arriver � �crire l'histoire oubli�e par tant d'historiens, celle des moeurs. Avec beaucoup de patience et de courage, je r�aliserais, sur la France au dix- neuvi�me si�cle, ce livre que nous regrettons tous, que Rome, Ath�nes, Tyr, Memphis, la Perse, l'Inde ne nous ont pas malheureusement laiss� sur leurs civilisations, et qu'� l'instar de l'abb� Barth�lemy, le courageux et patient Monteil avait essay� pour le Moyen-Age, mais sous une forme peu attrayante.

Ce travail n'�tait rien encore. S'en tenant � cette reproduction rigoureuse, un �crivain pouvait devenir un peintre plus ou moins fid�le, plus ou moins heureux, patient ou courageux des types humains, le conteur des drames de la vie intime, l'arch�ologue du mobilier social, le nomenclateur des professions, l'enregistreur du bien et du mal; mais pour m�riter les �loges que doit ambitionner tout artiste, ne devais-je pas �tudier les raisons ou la raison de ces effets sociaux, surprendre le sens cach� dans cet immense assemblage de figures, de passions et d'�v�nements. Enfin, apr�s avoir cherch�, je ne dis pas trouv�, cette raison, ce moteur social, ne fallait-il pas m�diter sur les principes naturels et voir en quoi les Soci�t�s s'�cartent ou se rapprochent de la r�gle �t�rnelle, du vrai, du beau? Malgr� l'�tendue des pr�misses, qui pouvaient �tre � elles seules un ouvrage, l'oeuvre, pour �tre enti�re, voulait une conclusion. Ainsi d�peinte, la Soci�t� devait porter avec elle la raison de son mouvement.

Honor� de Balzac: Avant-propos to La Com�die humaine (1842)

Further Reading

� P. Barberis, Balzac et le mal du si�cle (Paris: Gallimard, 1970)

� P. Barberis, Balzac, une mythologie r�aliste (Paris: Larousse, 1971)

� P. Barberis, Le Monde de Balzac (Paris: Arthaud, 1973)

� M. Bard�che, Une lecture de Balzac (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1964)

� M. Bard�che, Balzac, romancier (Geneva: Slaktine, 1967)

� D. Festa-McCormick, Honor� de Balzac (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979)

� B. Guyon, Le Pens�e politique et sociale de Balzac (Paris: Armand Colin,1967)

� H.J. Hunt, Balzac's Com�die humaine (London: The Athlone Press, 1959)

� F. Marceau, Balzac et son monde (Paris: Gallimard,1955)

� P.-L. Rey, Balzac: La Com�die humaine (Paris: Hatier, 1979)

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Balzac: The Complete French Novelist

What exactly did Balzac want to acheive with La Com�die humaine, what were his specific objectives? Well, although Balzac began writing novels in the 1820s it was not until the 1830s that his conception of his role as novelist became more ambitious and more systematic. He came to articulate the ambition of becoming the complete French novelist. He saw himself as producing a total picture of French society, a `history' more inclusive than any historian had ever achieved or indeed attempted. Balzac wanted to depict a society stratified by wealth and power. It should be noted here however, that, despite his ambition, Balzac was never really concerned to depict the urban working-class (this did not take place until the Naturalists attempted it in the 1870s and 1880s). For the sum of his work he chose the title La Com�die humaine, deliberately invoking comparison with The Divine Comedy (La Divina commedia) of Dante. Balzac's work is not a religious or metaphysical work - although there are elements of this - but a human and secular work which aimed to encompass the broad sweep of social types, the vast range of social situations and settings in the post-Revolutionary France. Balzac is central to the development of a Realist aesthetic in his fundamental belief in the project of representing the social world in its entirety. The key concept here, and its one discussed by the Marxist literary critic Georg Luk�cs is that of totality or a totalizing vision. We can briefly define the concept of totality as the attempt to show man and society in their completeness, as a complex network of interrelations. This totalizing impulse lies at the heart of the classificatory system of La Com�die humaine (its divisions and sub-divisions, its recurring characters etc.) and of Realist literature and art in general.

Further Reading

� P. Barberis, Balzac, une mythologie r�aliste (Paris: Larousse, 1971)

� P. Barberis, Le Monde de Balzac (Paris: Arthaud, 1973)

� M. Bard�che, Une lecture de Balzac (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1964)

� M. Bard�che, Balzac, romancier (Geneva: Slaktine, 1967)

� B. Guyon, Le Pens�e politique et sociale de Balzac (Paris: Armand Colin,1967)

� H.J. Hunt, Balzac's Com�die humaine (London: The Athlone Press, 1959)

� F. Marceau, Balzac et son monde (Paris: Gallimard,1955)

� P.-L. Rey, Balzac: La Com�die humaine (Paris: Hatier, 1979)

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Baudelaire: La Mort

This section concludes Les Fleurs du mal with the idea of death as being the only escape from the weary pain of life. The most important poem here is `Le Voyage' which is, of course, about death. Although the poems in the section La Mort are about death, death also haunts many of the other poems in the book. What shadows many of the love poems for example, is the consciousness that love and physical beauty are doomed to wither and die - `Une charogne' is a particularly good example of this. Death is also present in the morbid, brooding spleen poems. So, in Les Fleurs du mal on the whole, death is seen as something that frustrates happiness, it is a negative phenomena. In the section La Mort, death is seen as a source of happiness and consolation. If spleen can only be temporarily eluded through love, art, wine and vice, perhaps one can find lasting peace only in death. The poem `La Mort des pauvres' makes this explicit:

C'est la Mort qui console, h�las! et qui fait vivre;

C'est le but de la vie, et c'est le seul espoir

Qui, comme un �lixir, nous monte et nous enivre,

Et nous donne le coeur de marcher jusqu'au soir;

Death is perhaps best understood in Christian terms here. Death represents only the cessation of earthly life and, since the soul is immortal, it marks the beginnings of another form of existence. This is the approach expressed in `La Mort des amants'. In `La Mort des amants' death is seen as a form of reconciliation. Instead of the mutual misunderstandings and alienation we often find in the love poems, there is a real coming together, a mutuality expressed by terms like `nos deux coeurs', `deux vastes flambeaux', `leurs doubles lumi�res' and `miroirs jumeaux'. Moreover, the ideal of death as `an awfully big adventure' is expressed in the final poem `Le Voyage':

O Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l'ancre!

Ce pays nous ennuie, � Mort! Apareillons!

Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l'encre,

Nos coeurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons!

Verse-nous ton poison pour qu'il noue r�conforte!

Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous br�le le cerveau,

Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe?

Au fond de l'inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!

Further Reading

� A.E. Carter, Charles Baudelaire (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977)

� L.B. Hyslop, Charles Baudelaire Revisted (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992)

� D.J. Mossop, Baudelaire's Tragic Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961)

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Baudelaire and the Duality of Human Experience

Central to Baudelaire's conception of the human condition is the notion of homo duplex, the belief that the individual is irrevocably divided. At the centre of Baudelaire's experience of life and of his writing is the sense of human beings' double condition as both spirit and flesh, mind and body. Here is how he described it in Mon coeur mis � nu:

Il y a dans tout homme, � toute heure, deux postulations simultan�es, l'une vers Dieu, l'autre vers Satan. L'invocation � Dieu, ou spiritualit�, est un d�sir de monter en grade; celle de Satan, ou animalit�, est une joie de descendre.

This extract is the best known and most categorical expression of Baudelaire's fundamental experience of an inner duality: on the one hand an aspiration towards God and the spiritual life; on the other an enslavement to the earthly, to the pleasures of the flesh and of the senses. Man is caught in an ongoing struggle between animalit� and spiritualit�, love and lust, ideal and reality. Another aspect of Baudelaire's understanding of the duality of human experience is explained in the following passage:

Tout enfant, j'ai senti dans mon coeur deux sentiments contradictoires: l'horreur de la vie et l'extase de la vie.

This too is central to an understanding of Baudelaire's work. There is, in Les Fleurs du mal, a constant tension between the awareness of, on the one hand, l'id�al, the term Baudelaire uses to describe moments of vision, of contentment, mystical communion - `l'extase de la vie' and, on the other hand, spleen, the term he uses to designate those moments of near pathological depression, inertia, entrapment - `l'horreur de la vie'.

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Engels on Balzac

Balzac, whom I consider a far greater master of Realism than all the Zolas, past, present, or future, gives us in his Com�die Humaine a most wonderfully Realistic history of French `society', describing, chronicle fashion, almost year by year from 1816 to 1848, the ever-increasing pressure of the rising bourgeoisie upon the society of nobles that established itself after 1815 and that set up again, as far as it could (tant bien que mal) the standard of the vieille politesse fran�aise (old French manners). He describes how the last remnants of this, to him, model society gradually succumbed before the intrusion of the vulgar monneyed upstart or was corrupted by him. How the grande dame, whose conjugal infidelities were but a mode of asserting herself, in perfect accord with the way she had been disposed of in marriage, gave way to the bourgeoise, who acquired her husband for cash or cashmere. And around this central picture he groups a complete history of French society from which, even in economic details (for instance, the redistribution of real and private property after the French Revolution) I have learned more than from all the professional historians, economists and statisticians of the period together.

Well, Balzac was politically a legitimist; his great work is a constant elegy on the irreparable decay of good society; his sympathies are with the class that is doomed to extinction. But for all that, his satire is never keener, his irony never more bitter, than when he sets in motion the very men and woman with whom he sympathizes most deeply - the nobles. And the only men of whom he speaks with undisguised admiration are his bitterest political antagonists, the republican heroes of the Clo�tre Saint-Mery, the men who at the time (1830-36) were indeed representatives of the popular masses.

That Balzac was thus compelled to go against his own class sympathies and political prejudices, that he saw the necessity of the downfall of his favourite nobles and described them as people deserving no better fate; that he saw the real men of the future where, for the time being, they alone were to be found - that I consider one of the greatest triumphs of Realism, and one of the greatest features of old Balzac.

Friedrich Engels: Letter to Margaret Harkness (1888)

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Baudelaire: The Poet as Fencer

To open oneself to the creative potential of Paris is to invite a potential mutilation by a city which is, by turns, bizarre, grotesque and menacing. The shocks and jolts of the city threaten the poet and various strategies of self-defence need to be devised. In `Le Soleil' - in an image typical of Baudelaire's ironic heroicization of the lyric poet in the modern world - the poet describes himself as a fencer making offensive forays into - as well as defensive parries against - an aggressive urban scene:

Je vais m'exercer seul � ma fantasque escrime

The poet must retain a critical and protective distance from the city and its crowds. He must be forever on guard and make only sporadic attacks against the city and modern life. Are Baudelaire's city poems accounts of his duels with the modern metropolis?

Further Reading

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

� R. Chambers, `Baudelaire's Street Poetry' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 13 (1985) 244-259

� G. Chesters, `Introduction' in Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1995) ix-xviii

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Centralisation and Vaporisation in Baudelaire

De la vaporisation et centralisation du Moi. Tout est l�.

Charles Baudelaire: Mon coeur mis � nu

Le po�te jouit de cet incomparable privil�ge, qu'il peut � sa guise �tre lui- m�me et autrui. Comme ces �mes errantes qui cherchent un corps, il entre, quand il veut, dans le personnage de chacun.

Charles Baudelaire: Les Foules

Two terms central to Baudelaire's poetry are vaporisation and centralisation. Baudelaire used them to designate the way in which the poet could both indulge in introspection (centralisation) but could also transport himself to the outside world (vaporisation). The poet was capable of both concentration and dispersal, of inward as well as outward movements. Often Baudelaire's poetry expresses an imaginative sympathy with others. He is fascinated by the inhabitants - particularly les couches inf�rieures - of the `foumillante cit�' of Paris and depicts the misery of their conditions of life. However, this outward movement is frequently accompanied by a corresponding inward movement as the poet finds in the lives of other people a mirror image of his own suffering, his own exile and his own id�al. Baudelaire's imaginative sympathies for others are channelled into an essentially introspective study of his own dilemmas.

A key exemplification of this is to be found in the prose poem `Les Fen�tres':

Celui qui regarde du dehors � travers une fen�tre ouverte, ne voit jamais autant de choses que celui qui regarde une fen�tre ferm�e. Il n'est pas d'objet plus profond, plus myst�rieux, plus f�cond, plus t�n�breux, plus �blouissant qu'une fen�tre �clair�e d'une chandelle. Ce qu'on peut voir au soleil est toujours moins int�ressant que ce qui se passe derri�re une vitre. Dans ce trou noir ou lumineux vit la vie, r�ve la vie, souffre la vie.

Par-del� des vagues de toits, j'aper�ois une femme m�re, rid�e d�j�, pauvre, toujours pench�e sur quelque chose, et qui ne sort jamais. Avec son visage, avec son v�tement, avec son geste, avec presque rien, j'ai refait l'histoire de cette femme, ou plut�t sa l�gende, et quelquesfois je me la raconte � moi-m�me en pleurant.

Si c'e�t �t� un pauvre vieux homme, j'aurais refait la sienne tout aussi ais�ment.

Et je me couche, fier d'avoir v�cu et souffert dans d'autres que moi-m�me.

Peut-�tre me direz-vous: `Es-tu s�r que cette l�gende soit la vraie?' Qu'importe ce que peut �tre la r�alit� plac�e hors de moi, si elle m'a aid� � vivre, � sentir que je suis et ce que je suis.

Charles Baudelaire: Les Petits po�mes en prose

Further Reading

� G. Bocoholier, Baudelaire (Paris: Bordas, 1988)

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Flaubert and Romanticism

Despite being an avid reader of Romantic literature as a young man he later dismissed them as `avaleurs de clair de lune' (letter to Louise Colet 2.7.1853). Here is Flaubert on them in a letter written during the composition of Madame Bovary:

La litt�rature contemporaine est noy�e dans les r�gles de femme. Il nous faut � tous prendre du fer pour nous faire passer les chloroses gothiques que Rousseau, Chateaubriand et Lamartine nous ont transmises.

Letter to Louise Colet 15th January 1854

Further Reading

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

� A. Fairlie, Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: the End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

� E.F. Gray, `Emma by Twilight: Flawed Perception in Madame Bovary' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 6 (1978) 231-240

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

� D. Knight, Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

� E. Starkie, Flaubert: The Making of the Master (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1967)

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Baudelaire: Fleurs du mal

The section entitled Les Fleurs du mal is a short one with only nine poems. The theme that links them all is that of escape through the intensity of carnal love and through what we would now call sado-masochistic relationships. It is in this section that Baudelaire's attempt to escape spleen takes its most bizarre turn. Spleen must be avoided via an exploration of the extremities of human desire, through vice, sin and depravity, the `terribles plaisirs' and `affreuses douceurs' as Baudelaire described them in `Les Deux bonnes soeurs'.

There are three poems - `Lesbos', `Les Femmes damn�es' and `Delphine et Hippolyte' two of which were removed from the 1857 edition - about lesbian lovers. Baudelaire sympathizes with their illicit desires condemed by society. For Baudelaire, the lesbian is yet another double of the artist condemned by society and occupying its margins. They, like the artist, are explorers of the unknown, the twilight world of transgressive desire. They are `seekers of the infinite', driven by an overwhelming passion. They suffer the condemnation of society, of God but, most important of all, they suffer the sweet agonies of desire itself. Passion is the `delightful torment', the `sweet prison' to which we all willingly condemn ourselves. Here is Baudelaire in `Les Femmes damn�es':

O vierges, � d�mons, � monstres, � martyres,

De la r�alit� grands esprits contempleurs,

Chercheuses d'infini, d�votes et satyrs,

Tant�t pleines de cris, tant�t pleines de pleurs,

Vous que dans votre enfer mon �me a poursuivies,

Pauvres soeurs, je vous aime autant que je vous plains,

Pour vos mornes douleurs, vos soifs inassouvies,

Et les urnes d'amour dont vos grands coeurs sont pleins!

One final remark about Baudelaire's use or appropriation of lesbian desire in Les Fleurs du mal. Baudelaire does not see men and women as entering relationships with one another with complementary sets of desires. There is, in many of Baudelaire's love poems, a sense that men and women never truly communicate with one another and that the fulfillment of desire is impossible. Baudelaire's identification with his imagined lesbians is, in part, an acknowledgement of this.

In the section entitled Les Fleurs du mal vice and depravity is neither condemned nor condoned, but the conclusion is very much that they too are another dead end in the search for an escape from spleen. The section ends on a note of self- disgust with the poem `Voyage � Cyth�re' about an imagined journey to Venus's mythical island of love. The poem oscillates between optimism and pessimism, enjoying the ecstasy of physical pleasure yet aware that there is no ecape from the emptiness of life. Even in this paradise of carnal love the inevitability of death and physical decay is never far away as illustrated in the description of a filthy, putifying corpse hanging on a gibet. Its final line are particularly revealing:

- Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage

De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans d�go�t!

Further Reading

� J. Culler, `Introduction' in Charles Baudelaire: The Flowers of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) xiii-xlviii

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Baudelaire on Balzac

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Th�ophile Gautier on Nature

... je suis un Parisien complet, badaud, fl�neur, s'�tonnant de tout, et ne se croyant plus en Europe d�s qu'il a pass� la barri�re. Les arbres des Tuileries et des boulevards sont mes for�ts, la Seine mon Oc�an. Du reste, je vous avouerai franchement que je me soucie assez peu de tout cela; je pr�f�re le tableau � l'objet qu'il repr�sente ... et je ne trouve pas le soleil de beaucoup sup�rieur au gaz.

(...)

Je d�teste la campagne: toujours des arbres, de la terre, du gazon! Qu'est-ce que cela me fait? C'est tr�s pittoresque, d'accord, mais c'est ennuyeux � crever.

Th�ophile Gautier: Pr�face to Les Jeunes France (1833)

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Writer and Public in C19th France

Il me semble voir une s�paration, un ab�me de distance entre l'artiste et le public de nos jours. Dans les autres si�cles, un homme comme Moli�re n'�tait que la pens�e de son public. Il �tait pour ainsi dire de plein-pied avec lui. Aujourd'hui, les grands hommes sont plus haut et le public plus bas.

Edmond & Jules Goncourt: Journal (1887)

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Philippe Hamon on Realism and Naturalism

Pour la plupart des critiques th�oriciens ou historiciens de la litt�rature, le r�alisme ou le naturalisme sont simplement des �coles historiquement d�limit�es (le milieu du XIXe si�cle, approximativement), ou alors une vague `tendance' g�n�rale diffuse qui s'incarnerait ici ou l� chez des auteurs divers. Mais aucune �tude n'a essay� de v�rifier l'hypoth�se de l'existence d'un genre ou d'un `type' de discours r�aliste d�finissable par des pr�suppos�s, des projets et des buts pr�cis vis�s par les auteurs, par des th�mes et des personnages-types, par des contraintes internes sp�cifiques, par la constitution d'un certain statut de narrateur et de lecteur, (on peut alors parler de `pacte r�aliste'), par des tics stylistiques ou des sch�mas d'intrigues st�r�otyp�es, etc.

Quels sont les crit�res du projet r�aliste? Les �tudes sur l'�cole romanesque du XIXe si�cle, comme les �tudes sur les rapports du langage et de la r�alit�, ou l'histoire de la Mim�sis depuis la Po�tique d'Aristote, nous aident � en cerner empiriquement les grandes lignes. Pour Auerbach, l'un des scrutateurs les plus attentifs de ce concept de r�alisme, et que nous suivrons dans la plupart de ses conclusions th�oriques, le projet r�aliste se caract�rise par la volont�:

a) d'�tre s�rieux;

b) de m�ler les registres stylistiques;

c) de n'exclure la d�scription d'aucune classe sociale, d'aucun milieu, d'aucune cat�gorie socio-professionnelle;

d) de soumettre le texte au proc�d� dominant de l'hypotaxe, proc�d� que l'on peut d�finir de fa�on tr�s large comme la mise en oeuvre de tout ce qui vient souligner la lisibilit�, la coh�rence et la coh�sion logico-s�mantique interne du r�cit (r�p�titions, annonces, proc�dures de d�sambigu�sation diverse, rappels, etc.);

e) d'int�grer l'histoire des personnages dans le cours g�n�ral de l'Histoire contemporaine.

Nous ajouterions, pour notre part, en consid�rant la sp�cificit� du projet zolien:

f) la volont� de d�crire exhaustivement le r�el (ce qui nous obligera � tenir compte de cette forme, de cette `figure' stylistique particuli�re, qu'est la description), un r�el consid�r� de surcro�t comme `milieu agissant sur l'individu';

g) la volont� didactique de transmettre une certaine information (un certain savoir) objective (`vraie', `v�rifiable', authentifi�e par des garants, etc.) au lecteur, donc en consid�rant dans le texte m�me des marques ou un commentaire, implicite ou explicite, destin� � donner des `garanties' au lecteur sur la V�rit� du savoir assert�;

h) la confiance accord�e � une m�thode de cr�ation aux protocoles soigneusement r�gis, et fix�s � l'image de m�thodes appartenant � d'autres champs du savoir (la m�decine, la chimie, l'anthropologie); i) une conception, souvent implicite, de la langue comme nomenclature (une chose = un mot), et de l'�criture comme pure transparence au r�el et au document qu'elle est charg�e de v�hiculer.

Le r�alisme est donc, � la fois une linguistique (le mot, la forme est subordonn� � l'id�e), une esth�tique (celle de la Mim�sis, de la transparence au r�el, du vraisemblable r�f�rentiel), une philosophie (une th�orie de la personne d�t�rmin�e et influenc�e par l'action des milieux) et une m�thode de travail.

Philippe Hamon: Le Personnel du roman: le syst�me des personnages dans les Rougon-Macquart d'�mile Zola (Geneva: Droz, 1983) pp.28-9

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Luk�cs on the Post-Revolutionary Hero

The heroic epochs of the French Revolution and the First Empire had awakened, mobilized and developed all the dormant energies of the bourgeois class. This heroic epoch gave the best elements of the bourgeoisie the opportunity for the immediate translation into reality of their heroic ideals, the opportunity to live and die in accordance with those ideals. This heroic period came to an end with the fall of Napoleon, the return of the Bourbons and the July Revolution. The ideals became superfluous ornaments and frills on the sober reality of everyday life and the path of capitalism, opened up by the Revolution and by Napoleon, broadened into a convenient, universally accessible highway of development. The heroic pioneers had to disappear and make way for the humanly inferior exploiters of the new development, the speculators and racketeers.

[ ... ]

The drive of ideals, a necessary product of the previous necessarily heroic period, was now no longer wanted; its representatives, the young generation schooled in the traditions of the heroic period, were inevitably doomed to deteriorate. This inevitable degradation and frustration of the energies born of the Revolution and the Napoleonic era was a theme common to all novels of disillusionment of the period, an indictment common to them all of the prosaic scurviness of the Bourbon restoration and the July monarchy. Balzac, although politically a royalist and legitimist, yet saw this character of the restoration with merciless clarity.

Georg Luk�cs: Studies in European Realism (London: Hillway, 1950) p.48

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Baudelaire, Balzac and the Heroism of Modern Life

Le spectacle de la vie �l�gante et des milliers d'existances flottantes qui circulent dans les souterrains d'une grande ville, - criminelles et filles entretenues, - la Gazette de tribunaux et le Moniteur nous prouvent que nous n'avons qu'ouvrir les yeux pour conna�tre notre h�ro�sme.

[...]

Car les h�ros de l'Iliade ne vont qu'� votre cheville, � Vautrin, � Rastignac, � Birotteau ... et vous � Honor� de Balzac, vous le plus h�ro�que, le plus singulier, le plus romantique et le plus po�tique parmi tous les personnages que vous avez tir�s de votre sein.

Charles Baudelaire: De h�ro�sme de la vie moderne

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A Brief History of Les Fleurs du mal

1857 was the year of trials. Both Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal were in January and August 1857 respectively indicted for `offence to public and religious morality and to good morals'. Flaubert was fortunate and was acquitted with a reprimand whilst Baudelaire lost and was forced to make revisions. These revisions radically altered the work that we read today and so some description of the history and transformation of Les Fleurs du mal is needed here.

The first edition of Les Fleurs du mal was published in 1857 and contained 100 poems thematically arranged into five sections:

� Spleen et Id�al

� Le Vin

� Fleurs du Mal

� R�volte

� La Mort

The first edition, however, brought both Baudelaire and his publisher to court on charges of immorality and blasphemy. Baudelaire was fined and six of the poems were removed by order. These six poems remained censored until 1949 when an attorney named Falco convinced a court of appeal to overturn the decision. In 1861 a second edition was published which included the necessary ommissions and which added thirty-two new poems and a new section entitled Tableaux parisiens. Only a few of the new poems were included in this new section with another eight coming from the section called Spleen et Id�al. The format of the second edition was as follows:

� Spleen et Id�al

� Tableaux parisiens

� Le Vin

� Fleurs du Mal

� R�volte

� La Mort

In 1868 a third and final edition of Les Fleurs du mal was posthumously published with a preface by the poet Th�ophile Gautier and with some additional poems not hitherto included added to the volume.

Further Reading

o A. Fairlie, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (London: Edward Arnold, 1960)

o J-P. Giusto, Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984)

o F.W. Leakey, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

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Flaubert and Impersonality

One of Flaubert's avowed aims in writing Madame Bovary was to get away from the obtrusive narrator of the novel who gives a running commentary of characters and events. He wanted to find an alternative to the voice which directs our attention, explain events and motives and proffers moral judgements. In short, he wished hide the very process of narration, to allow, rather, the story to tell and to interpret itself as far as this was possible. Of central importance to Flaubert's aesthetic of the novel was the notion of `impersonality' and its consequent removal of the intrusive narrator common to most nineteenth-century fiction who makes broad, generalizing and synthesizing statements regarding the themes of the story and an ongoing comentary on the characters, their actions and motivation. Flaubert made a number of claims on this matter:

Un romancier ... n'a pas le droit de dire son avis sur les choses dans ce monde. Il doit, dans sa cr�ation, imiter Dieu dans la sienne, c'est-�-dire, faire et se taire. Correspondance V, (Paris: Conard, 1929-33) p.227

C'est un de mes principes qu'il ne faut pas s'�crire. L'artiste doit �tre dans son oeuvre comme Dieu dans la cr�ation, invisible et tout puissant; qu'on le sente partout mais qu'on ne le voie pas. Correspondance V, (Paris: Conard, 1929-33) p.22

Madame Bovary is a critique of both Emma's faulty perception and of the mediocrity of the society she inhabits. But the question arises as to how exactly this critique is articulated in the novel given the absence of a narrator who makes explicit statements. It could be argued that this critique is articulated through the novel's structure and through certain recurrent motifs which form what one might call the novel's symbolic infrastructure. For further details of this click on The Structure of Madame Bovary and The Symbolic Infrastructure of Madame Bovary.

Further Reading

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

� A. Fairlie, Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)

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Henry James on Balzac

This overmastering sense of the present world was of course a superb foundation for the work of the realistic romancer, and it did so much for Balzac that one is puzzled to know where to begin to enumerate the things he owed to it. It gave him in the first place a background - his mise-en-sc�ne. This part of the story had with Balzac an importance - his rendering of it a solidity - which it had never enjoyed before, and which the most vigorous talents in the school of which Balzac was founder have never been able to restore to it. The place in which an event occurred was in his view of equal moment with the event itself; it was part of the action; it was not a thing to take or to leave, or to be vaguely and gracefully indicated; it imposed itself; it had a part to play; it needed to be made as definite as anything else. There is accordingly a very much greater amount of description in Balzac than in any other writer, and the description is mainly of towns, houses and rooms. Descriptions of scenery, properly so called, are rare, though when they occur they are often admirable.

Henry James: Honor� de Balzac (1875)

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Harry Levin on Balzac and Stendhal

The deepest disagreement between Blazac and Stendhal rests on the fact that Balzac's world-view was essentially influenced by these newer trends, while Stendhal's world-view was at bottom an interesting and consistent extension of the ideology of pre-Revolutionary Enlightenment. Thus Stendhal's world-view is much clearer and more progressive than that of Balzac, who was influenced both by romantic, mystic Catholicism and a feudalist Socialism and strove in vain to reconcile these trends with a political monarchism based on English models and with poetic interpretation of Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire's dialectic of spontaneous evolution.

This difference of world-view is quite in keeping with the fact that Balzac's last novel were full of profound pessimism about society add apocalyptic forebodings regarding culture, while Stendhal, who was very pessimistic regarding the present and criticised it so wittily and with such profound contempt, optimistically expected his hopes regarding bourgeois culture to be realised around 1880.

Stendhal's hopes were no mere wistful dreams of a poet unappreciated by his own time; they were pregnant with a definite conception of the evolution of bourgeois society, although of course an illusory conception. In Stendhal's view, in pre-revolutionary times there had been culture and a section of society able to and judge cultural and a section of society able to appreciate and judge cultural products. But after the revolution, the aristocracy goes in eternal fear another 1793 and has hence lost all its capacity for sound judgement. The new rich, on other hand, are a mob of self-seeking and ignorant upstarts indifferent to cultural values. Not until 1880 did Stendhal expect bourgeois society to have reached the stage gain permitting a revival of culture - a culture conceived in the spirit of enlightenment.

We can observe the same contrast in the portrayal of the main types of the restoration period. Stendhal hates the restoration and regards it as the era of petty baseness, which has unworthily supplanted the heroic epoch of the revolution and Napoleon. Balzac in contrast, is personally an adherent of the restoration, and although he flays the policy of the nobility, he does so only because he thinks it was not the policy by means of which the nobility could have prevented the July revolution. But matters stand quite otherwise when we turn to the worlds created by the pens of the two great writers. Balzac the writer understands that the restoration is merely a backdrop for the increasing capitalisation of France and that this process of capitalisation is carrying the nobility along with it with irresistible force. So he proceeds to put before us all the grotesque, tragic, comic and tragicomic types engendered by this capitalist development. He shows how the demoralising effect of this process must of necessity involve the whole of society and corrupt it to the core. Balzac the monarchist can find decent and sincere adherents of the ancient regime only among born� and outdated provincials such as old d'Esgrignon in the Cabinet of Antiques and old DuGuenic in Beatrix. The ruling aristocrats, who keep up with the times, have only smiles for the honourably narrow-minded backwardness of these types.

They themselves are concerned only with making the best use if their rank and privileges in order to derive the greatest possible personal advantages from this capitalist development. Balzac the monarchist depicts his beloved nobles as a gang of gifted or ungifted careerists and climbers, empty-headed nitwits, aristocratic harlots, etc..

Further Reading

� H. Levin, The Gates of Horn (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977)

#######

Luk�cs on Balzac and Stendhal

The deepest disagreement between Balzac and Stendhal rests on the fact that Balzac's world-view was essentially influenced by these newer trends, while Stendhal's world-view was essentially influenced by all these newer trends, while Stendhal's world-view was at bottom an interesting and consistent extension of the ideology of pre-Revolutionary Enlightenment. Thus Stendhal's world-view is much clearer and more progressive than that of Balzac, who was influenced both by romantic, mystic Catholicism and a feudalist Socialism and strove in vain to reconcile these trends with a political monarchism based on English models and with poetic interpretation of Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire's dialectic of spontaneous evolution.

This difference of world-view is quite in keeping with the fact that Balzac's last novel were full of profound pessimism about society and apocalyptic forebodings regarding culture, while Stendhal, who was very pessimistic regarding the present and criticised it so wittily and with such profound contempt, optimistically expected his hopes regarding bourgeois culture to be realised around 1880. Stendhal's hopes were no mere wistful dreams of a poet unappreciated by his own time; they were pregnant with a definite conception of the evolution of bourgeois society, although of course an illusory conception. In Stendhal's view, in pre-revolutionary times there had been culture and a section of society able to and judge cultural and a section of society able to appreciate and judge cultural products. But after the revolution, the aristocracy goes in eternal fear of another 1793 and has hence lost all its capacity for sound judgement. The new rich, on other hand, are a mob of self- seeking and ignorant upstarts indifferent to cultural values. Not until 1880 did Stendhal expect bourgeois society to have reached the stage again permitting a revival of culture - a culture conceived in the spirit of enlightenment.

[...]

We can observe the same contrast in the portrayal of the main types of the restoration period. Stendhal hates the restoration and regards it as the era of petty baseness, which has unworthily supplanted the heroic epoch of the revolution and Napoleon. Balzac in contrast, is personally an adherent of the restoration, and although he flays the policy of the nobility, he does so only because he thinks it was not the policy by means of which the nobility could have prevented the July revolution. But matters stand quite otherwise when we turn to the worlds created by the pens of the two great writers. Balzac the writer understands that the restoration is merely a backdrop for the increasing capitalisation of France and that this process of capitalisation is carrying the nobility along with it with irresistible force. So he proceeds to put before us all the grotesque, tragic, comic and tragicomic types engendered by this capitalist development. He shows how the demoralising effect of this process must of necessity involve the whole of society and corrupt it to the core. Balzac the monarchist can find decent and sincere adherents of the ancient regime only among born� and outdated provincials such as old d'Esgrignon in the Cabinet of Antiques and old DuGuenic in Beatrix. The ruling aristocrats, who keep up with the times, have only smiles for the honourably narrow-minded backwardness of these types. They themselves are concerned only with making the best use if their rank and privileges in order to derive the greatest possible personal advantages from this capitalist development. Balzac the monarchist depicts his beloved nobles as a gang of gifted or ungifted careerists and climbers, empty-headed nitwits, aristocratic harlots, etc.

Georg Luk�cs: From `Balzac and Stendhal' in Studies in European Realism (London: Hillway, 1950) pp.77-79

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Marx & Engels on Modernity

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Further Reading

o E.J. Ahearn, `Marx's Relevance for Second Empire Literature: Baudelaire's "Le Cygne"' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1986) 269-277

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Materialism and Death in Balzac

Balzac's novels ... are as full of scenes of denuding and dispossession, as they are of acquiring and amassing, and there are always the vuture figures of nineteenth-century life to help in this process (...). Again and again in Balzac's novels characters dream of the possibility of arresting time, of reversing time, of stretching time, and always with the purpose in mind of preserving goods, of retaining the capacity for material pleasures. But the frantic desire for `material possession' itself saps the energies of individuals, shortens their lives and leaves them like empty shells. Both bourgeois acquisitiveness and decadent excess hasten the process of the wearing out of the self. When Goriot dies, having long since passed through the process of denuding and dispossession, he leaves the boarding house as a pathetic, destitute corpse, propped up on two chairs out on the open pavement in the deserted street, reduced to a `zero', a piece of human `debris'.

B. Rigby: `Things, Distinction and Decay in Nineteenth-century French Literature' in B. Rigby (ed.), French Literature, Thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: A Material World (London: MacMillan, 1993) p.98

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Baudelaire: po�te maudit

Many of the so-called `cycle of art' poems in Les Fleurs du mal portray the poet as a doomed outcast, rejected by the mass of humanity. A lonely outsider forever doomed to be misunderstood. Gifted with vision and sensitivity but incomprehensible to his fellow men and women. The concept of the poet as an outsider, as maudit may be related to certain key historical developments in France. The nineteenth century was essentially the century of the bourgeoisie. The revolution of 1789 was essentially a `bourgeois revolution' (Andr� Lef�bvre) it was this class that became the main beneficiary of revolution and its retomb�es. The bourgeoisie was ideally positioned to monopolize positions in government, administration and the military vacated by the aristocracy. Opportunities arose for men of initiative, education and wealth rather than birth - `la carri�re ouverte aux talents'. Although Baudelaire was born into bourgeoisie he felt alienated from its culture and its politics. The progressive pretentions of the bourgeoisie, their stress on conformity and commodities all revolted him. Little wonder then that Baudelaire should so frequently characterize himself as an outcast, a pariah out of synch with his time.

Further Reading

� G. Chesters, `A Political Reading of Baudelaire's "L'Artiste inconnu" ("Le Guignon")' in Modern Language Review, 79 (1984) 64-79

� H. Stenzel, `Les �crivains et l'�volution id�ologique de la petite bourgeoisie dans les ann�es 1840: le cas de Baudelaire' in Romantisme, 17-18 (1977) 79-91

#######

The Meanings of Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is the portrait of a woman trapped in an unsatisfactory marriage in a prosaic bourgeois town. Her attempts to escape the monotony of her life through adulterous liaisons with other men are ultimately thwarted by the reality that the men she has chosen are shallow and self-centered and that she has overstretched herself financially. In despair, Emma resolves her predicament by taking her own life.

What should we make of this rather slight story, initially based on the life of a real woman who, like Emma, scandalized her village with her affairs with other men and her extravagant lifestyle? Is there a lesson or a moral to be drawn from Emma's folly and the tragedy of her death? Part of the difficulty - and, indeed, of the pleasure - of reading Madame Bovary is that Flaubert refuses to embed the narrative within an overriding moral matrix, refuses explicitly to tell the reader what lesson s/he should draw from the text. Madame Bovary was a novel shocking to its contemporaries because it did not appear to articulate a clear and unambiguous moral viewpoint and it is because of the ambiguity of the novel's moral stance that Madame Bovary found itself taken to court for its offence to public and religious morality. The challenge today's readers are left with is how to make sense of Emma's story.

A common interpretation of the novel maintains that Emma Bovary's downfall is due to the fact that she is both foolish and romantically inclined. Emma comes to a tragic end because she has been self-dramatizing and impulsive and, above all, because she has believed in the ideals of the Romantic literature of which she has been an avid consumer since adolescence. This is the view adopted by many critics who have viewed Emma as mediocre and trite, her dreams shoddy, second-hand and second- rate. The literary critic Allen Tate, for example, described Emma as a `silly, sad and hysterical woman' (quoted in Brombert: 1966, p.84). For further discussion of this reading click on Emma: Victim of her own Romanticism. Another view holds that Emma is an essentially tragic figure, a figure of epic proportions whose ideals are thwarted by a petty and money-grabbing society. The poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, however, saw Emma as a heroic creation and described her as `tr�s sublime dans son esp�ce, dans son petit milieu et en face de son petit horizon' (Baudelaire: 1976, p.83). She is a truly epic heroine in thrall to an excessive but splendid passion. She has heroic potential - Baudelaire was a writer keen to discover and celebrate what he called `l'h�ro�sme de la vie moderne' - but who has the misfortune of inhabiting a mediocre environment far too small for her considerable energies. In this particular interpretation Emma stands out as a figure representing a challenge to the sterility and materialism of the new `bourgeois century'. Emma is almost an artist, almost a rebel in her challenge to the priorities and ideals of her age. As such, she is ultimately an awe-inspiring and tragic figure. For further discussion of this reading click on Emma and the Bourgeois Century.

Another possible interpretation of Emma's downfall is that it is primarily due to her being a woman and not to her being foolish. In this essentially feminist reading, Emma is a victim of patriarchy, destroyed by a society that can conceive of no other role for women than that of wife and mother. Emma is essentially in revolt against the patriarchal order, although, of course, she lacks the insight and the vocabulary to conceive it in those terms. For further discussion of this reading click on Emma: Victim of Patriarchy.

Further Reading

� C. Baudelaire, `Madame Bovary' in Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) pp.76-86

� V. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)

� A. Fairlie, Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)

� E. Gans, Madame Bovary: the End of Romance (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)

� S. Heath, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

� D. Knight, Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

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Money and Le P�re Goriot

Money is a major preoccupation in Le P�re Goriot. In fact it is the preoccupation. The other deep thematic link that joins Goriot to Vautrin to Rastignac is money, the lack of it, the desire for it, the desparate need for it. Indeed, if La Com�die humaine may be said to have a single thematic core it is the omnipresence and omnipotence of money. Amongst the most frequently recurring fictional characters in La Com�die humaine are the Baron de Nucingen (a banker) and Gobseck (a money-lender).

I can't mention in detail every single reference to money in Le P�re Goriot since there are far too many. However here are a few key references. Firstly, from the very beginning of the novel money assumes a vital importance:

Ces sept pensionnaires �taient les enfants g�t�s de madame Vauquer, qui leur mesurait avec une pr�cision d'astronome les soins et les �gards, d'apr�s le chiffre de leurs pensions. (Folio p.31-2)

Here, brutally and bluntly articulated, is a society where you are what you own, where �tre is avoir, where human worth is measured in financial terms. The concern and favours Madame Vauquer dishes out to her boarders are directly proportional to how much they spend in her establishment. You are what you spend. Here is another intersting reflexion made by Rastignac:

Il vit le monde comme il est: les lois et la morale impuissantes chez les riches, et vit dans la fortune l'ultima ratio mundi. (Folio p.118)

Articulated in blunt and brutal terms is the belief that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Justice is a commodity to be purchased and wealth a license to transcend the moral standards of the rest of society. Money and the desire to amass money corrupts and corrupts absolutely. Even the character who most represents goodness in the novel, Goriot, is shown to be a man who made his fortune by exploiting famine and natural disaster to his own financial gain. Rastignac borrows money from his destitute family and even takes Goriot's money at the end. Vautrin is forever on the lookout for a quick deal and dreams of being a rich plantation-owner in America. Madame Vauquer is constantly cutting corners to maximize her profits. Both Poiret and Mademoiselle Michonneau conspire to `shop' or `sell out' (financial metaphors are particularly appropriate here) Vautrin to the police for material gain. Baron de Nucingen is constantly involved in shady business dealings, investing borrowed money in illegal ventures and the like. Gobseck is constantly lending money to the grandes dames of smart society, Maxime de Trailles is constantly `poncing off' (the prostitutional metaphor is intended) his mistresses to pay off his gambling debts.

At the very end of the novel at the funeral of Goriot, Rastignac has to pay the priest for the funeral service (70fr) and he is forced to borrow 20 centimes from Christophe to pay the grave digger a small tip. Abandonned by his daughters to a solitary and pauper's funeral, this moment symbolizes the moral debasement of individuals by their own frenetic desire for wealth.

Further Reading

� M. Kanes, P�re Goriot: Anatomy of a Troubled World (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993)

� C. Prendergast, Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)

� B. Rigby, `Things, Distinction and Decay in Nineteenth-Century French Literature' in B. Rigby (ed.) French Literature, thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1993) 86-104

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Balzac and Napoleon

Balzac was, like Stendhal, a great admirer of Napoleon. In his flat on the rue Cassini he kept a plaster statuette of the Emperor on his mantlepiece and onto whose base he had pasted a piece of paper with the words:

Ce qu'il a entrepris par l'�p�e, je l'accomplirai par la plume.

What Napoleon had undertaken with his grande arm�e, Balzac would achieve through his writing. For Balzac the pen was at least as mighty as the sword. Balzac then had aspirations to imperial grandeur. He was, if you will, a literary megolamaniac. He wanted to be the self-styled Napol�on des lettres.

Further Reading

� G. Gengembre, Balzac, le Napol�on des lettres (Paris: Gallimard, 1992)

#######

Balzacian Realism: Experience and Order

In his book Qu'est-ce que la litt�rature?, Jean-Paul Sartre makes the claim that the nineteenth-century novel is told from the viewpoint of experience and wisdom and listened to from the viewpoint of order. Order is everywhere. The narrator evokes the spectacle of a past disorder, but it cannot cause uneasiness because he has understood it and will bring his audience to understand it also. Sartre's paradigm is the narrator seated with friends, in surroundings which affirm the presence and reality of the social order, and recounting the vicissitudes of his or another's past. The experience, as presented has an order, its essence has been distilled, its meaning extracted. Emotion has been recalled in tranquillity and named, described and analysed from a viewpoint of tranquillity so that the tale offers up some kind of moral or psychological law. The narrator has mastered the world, whether in the role of social historian or of an individual who looks back all passion spent. This is a good description of Balzacian fiction which is obsessed with order and with making sense of the apparent disorder and mystery of the world.

Further Reading

� C. Prendergast, Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)

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Assommons les pauvres!

Pendant quinze jours je m'�tais confin� dans ma chambre, et je m'�tais entour� des livres � la mode dans ce temps l� (il y a seize ou dix sept ans); je veux parler des livres o� il est trait� de l'art de rendre les peuples heureux, sages et riches, en vingt quatre heures. J'avais donc dig�r�, - aval�, veux je dire, - toutes les �lucubrations de tous ces entrepreneurs de bonheur public, - de ceux qui conseillent � tous les pauvres de se faire esclaves, et de ceux qui leur persuadent qu'ils sont tous des rois d�tr�n�s. - On ne trouvera pas surprenant que je fusse alors dans un �tat d'esprit avoisinant le vertige ou la stupidit�.

Il m'avait sembl� seulement que je sentais, confin� au fond de mon intellect, le germe obscur d'une id�e sup�rieure � toutes les formules de bonne femme dont j'avais r�cemment parcouru le dictionnaire. Mais ce n'�tait que l'id�e d'une id�e, quelque chose d'infiniment vague.

Et je sortis avec une grande soif. Car le go�t passionn� des mauvaises lectures engendre un besoin proportionnel du grand air et des rafra�chissants.

Comme j'allais entrer dans un cabaret, un mendiant me tendit son chapeau, avec un de ces regards inoubliables qui culbuteraient les tr�nes, si l'esprit remuait la mati�re, et si l'oeil d'un magn�tiseur faisait m�rir les raisins.

En m�me temps, j'entendis une voix qui chuchotait � mon oreille, une voix que je reconnus bien; c'�tait celle d'un bon Ange, ou d'un bon D�mon, qui m'accompagne partout. Puisque Socrate avait son bon D�mon, pourquoi n'aurais je pas mon bon Ange, et pourquoi n'aurais je pas l'honneur, comme Socrate, d'obtenir mon brevet de folie, sign� du subtil L�lut et du bien avis� Baillarger?

Il existe cette diff�rence entre le D�mon de Socrate et le mien, que celui de Socrate ne se manifestait � lui que pour d�fendre, avertir, emp�cher, et que le mien daigne conseiller, sugg�rer, persuader. Ce pauvre Socrate n'avait qu'un D�mon prohibiteur; le mien est un grand affirmateur, le mien est un D�mon d'action, ou D�mon de combat.

Or, sa voix me chuchotait ceci: `Celui l� seul est l'�gal d'un autre, qui le prouve, et celui l� seul est digne de la libert�, qui sait la conqu�rir.'

Imm�diatement, je sautai sur mon mendiant. D'un seul coup de poing, je lui bouchai un oeil, qui devint, en une seconde, gros comme une balle. Je cassai un de mes ongles � lui briser deux dents, et comme je ne me sentais pas assez fort, etant n� d�licat et m'�tant peu exerc� � la boxe, pour assommer rapidement ce vieillard, je le saisis d'une main par le collet de son habit, de l'autre, je l'empoignai � la gorge, et je me mis � lui secouer vigoureusement la t�te contre un mur. Je dois avouer que j'avais pr�alablement inspect� les environs d'un coup d'oeil, et que j'avais v�rifi� que dans cette banlieue d�serte, je me trouvais, pour un assez long temps, hors de la port�e de tout agent de police.

Ayant ensuite, par un coup de pied lanc� dans le dos, assez �nergique pour briser les omoplates, terrass� ce sexag�naire affaibli, je me saisis d'une grosse branche d'arbre qui tra�nait � terre, et je le buttis avec l'�nergie obstin�e des cuisiniers qui veulent attendrir un beefsteak.

Tout � coup, - � miracle! � jouissance du philosophe qui v�rifie l'excellence de sa th�orie! je vis cette antique carcasse se retourner, se redresser avec une �nergie que je n'aurais jamais soupconn�e dans une machine si singuli�rement d�traqu�e, et, avec un regard de haine qui me parut de bon augure, le malandrin d�cr�pit se jeta sur moi, me pocha les deux yeux, me cassa quatre dents, et, avec la m�me branche d'arbre, me battit dru comme pl�tre. - Par mon �nergique m�dication, je lui avais donc rendu l'orgueil et la vie.

Alors, je lui fis force signes pour lui faire comprendre que je consid�rais la discussion comme finie, et me relevant avec la satisfaction d'un sophiste du Portique, je lui dis: `Monsieur, vous etes mon �gal! veuillez me faire l'honneur de partager avec moi ma bourse; et souvenez-vous, si vous �tes r�ellement philanthrope, qu'il faut appliquer - tous vos confr�res, quand ils vous demanderont l'aum�ne, la th�orie que j'ai eu la douleur d'essayer sur votre dos.'

Il m'a bien jur� qu'il avait compris ma th�orie, et qu'il ob�irait � mes conseils.

Charles Baudelaire: Les Petits po�mes en prose

Further Reading

� R.D.E. Burton, Baudelaire and the Second Republic: Writing and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)

� W. Drost, `Baudelaire between Marx, Sade and Satan' in M. Bowie, A. Fairlie & A. Finch (eds.), Baudelaire, Mallarm�, Val�ry: New Essays in Honour of Lloyd Austin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 38-57

� H. Stenzel, `Les �crivains et l'�volution id�ologique de la petite bourgeoisie dans les ann�es 1840: le cas de Baudelaire' in Romantisme, 17-18 (1977) 79-91

� G. Van Slyke, `Dans l'intertexte de Baudelaire et de Proudhon: Pourquoi faut-il assommer les pauvres?' in Romantisme, 45 (1984) 57-77

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The `Plot' of Les Fleurs du mal

One way of reading Les Fleurs du mal is to see the arrangement of poems as thematic. Baudelaire has constructed a kind of plot or metaphorical itinerary. The notion of a `voyage' or `parcours' is central in this particuar reading. This itinerary or journey might be said to be the journey of the human soul through the modern world and all its temptations. Les Fleurs du mal can be read as a prolonged meditation on the human condition from birth to death. The first poem `B�n�diction' concerns the birth of the poet and his subsequent rejection and the last poem `Le Voyage' is about death.

Further Reading

� D.J. Mossop, Baudelaire's Tragic Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961)

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Baudelaire's Poems about Art

The first twenty-one poems of Les Fleurs du mal all relate to the question of art, to the problems encountered by the artist and to the nature of beauty. They provide a complex portrait of the artist as hero and victim, gifted and cursed, in communion with the cosmos yet alienated from the bulk of humanity. `B�n�diction' and `L'Albatros', for example, portray the poet as an outcast, a victim, an outsider, an exile from society. Other poems, however, deal with the positive forces art can generate. `�l�vation', `Les Phares' and `Correspondances' give the poet's vision of ecstasy. The poet is gifted with the faculty to perceive beauty, harmony and illumination. This is similar to the Romantic concept of the poet as `voyant' or `visionnaire' gifted - or cursed - with an extraordinary intelligence or sensitivity. In the poem `Boh�miens en voyage' a band of wandering gypsies is described. In the poem, these nomadic and essentially solitary individuals have the gift of prophecy, are visionaries able to pierce the mysteries of the universe and are just one of many doubles of the poet who is, of course, himself is a kind of `voyant' or `visionnaire'. The other main point of similarity between the wandering gypsies and the poet is their sense of melancholy at having experienced fleeting happiness: `les yeux appesantis/Par le morne regret des chim�res absentes'. This is, of course, the poet who finds himself torn between id�al and spleen. The poet as seer is also the main theme of the poem `Correspondances'.

In other poems in the section we find many of the themes Baudelaire will pursue in his later writing: namely, the position of the poet in the modern world and the commercialization of the art object. The untitled poem beginning `J'aime le souvenir de ces �poques nues' is significant for its pessimistic recoil from the squalor and ugliness and the modern world and a turning towards the world of classical antiquity. However, the poem complicates this general movement towards the classical by making the surprising claim that amidst the ugliness of the modern world can be found `des beaut�s inconnues'. This theme of finding the beautiful in the ugly will recur throughout Les Fleurs du mal.

Another poem about art with a distinctively `modern' feel is `La Muse v�nale' which shows the poet at the mercy of the marketplace, obliged sell his wares to vulgar crowd who are unable to understand the beauty of his art. The poet likens himself to a street acrobat whose hides his tears behind his clowning. This theme is given a comic treatment in the prose poem `Le chien et le flacon' from where the poet allows his dog to sniff from a bottle of exquisite perfume that he has just purchased. The dog however, recoils in disgust provoking the poet's anger and the comparison that the dog is like the mass audience who prefer excrement to exquisite scent. This poem reveals Baudelaire's feelings about the position of the artist or intellectual with regards to mass culture.

Baudelaire was very much like Flaubert in that they were both men who suffered and struggled for their art. They dedicated their lives to their art and refused to let it become debased by pandering to popular tastes, even if this meant a drastically reduced readership. They both refused the commodification and commercialization of their art, insisting that art should occupy an autonymous realm uncorrupted by the prevailing tastes of the marketplace. The idea of the artist driven to create a work of pure beauty, and to suffer in the process is very much the theme of the poem entitled, unsurprisingly, `La Beaut�'. Beauty is described as a kind of immortal goddess. At times, beauty is articulated in the poem as a cold, immutable monument against whose chest many artists have injured themselves (lines 2-4). Moreover, the presence of the verb `consumer' (line 11) suggests the self-destruction of the artist in his/her attempt to fix beauty, to set beauty down on paper. A poem which needs to be read alongside `La Beaut�' is `L'Id�al' in which the poet defines his ideal of beauty negatively, that is to say, by what it is not.

The final poem in the cycle of art, `Hymne � la beaut�' deserves special attention for its conceptualization of beauty. The first part of the poem comprizes of two pairs of stanzas, each of which beginning with an either/or question regarding the origins of beauty:

Sors-tu du gouffre noir ou descends-tu des astres?

The poet answers the question with the assertion that the question is in fact irrelevant:

De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sir�ne,

Qu'importe, si tu rends, - f�e aux yeux de velours,

Rythme, parfum, lueur, � mon unique reine! -

L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?

Although the poem begins with an apparent acceptance of certain moral value hierarchies (heaven and hell, good and evil) it ultimately concludes with a subversion of such a binary logic. The whole question of an absolute moral value hierarchy is irrelevant to the artist. The poet in his search for beauty must be indifferent to questions of morality. The poet must bracket or suspend all moral values. The artist must be morally agnostic since la beaut� may be encountered in vice, sin, transgression. This particular concept helps explain some of the ambiguities of the title, Les Fleurs du mal which can be translated, as it often is, as `flowers of evil' but also `flowers from evil' or `flowers out of evil'. Beautiful flowers may be found in evil. There is no link between morality and aesthetics.

Further Reading

L.B. Hyslop, `Baudelaire's "Hymne � la beaut�"' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 7 (1979) 202-212

R. Klein, `"B�n�diction"/"Perte d'aur�ole": Parables of Interpretation' in Modern Language Notes, 85 (1970) 515-528

V.L. Rubin, `Two Prose Poems by Baudelaire: "Le vieux saltimbanque" and "Une Mort h�roique' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1985-86) 51-60

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Baudelaire: The Poet as Prostitute

Qu'est-ce que l'art? Prostitution.

C. Baudelaire, Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) p.649

Je n'ai pas pour ma�tresse une lionne illustre

La Gueuse de mon �me emprunte tout son lustre,

Invisible aux regards de l'univers moqueur,

Sa beaut� ne fleurit que dans mon triste coeur -

Pour avoir des souliers elle a vendu son �me;

Mais le bon dieu riait si pr�s de cette inf�me

Je tranchais du Tartufe, et singeais la hauteur,

Moi qui vends ma pens�e, et qui veux �tre auteur.

C. Baudelaire, `Je n'ai pas pour ma�tresse une lionne illustre'

Baudelaire knew what the true situation of the man of letters was: he goes to the marketplace as a fl�neur, supposedly to take a look at it, but in reality to find a buyer. (Benjamin: 1983 p.34)

On a number of occasions Baudelaire compared the artist with the prostitute. The commercialization of art and the book market which began to emerge at the end of the eighteenth century - what one might call the commodification of culture - created new markets and new career opportuities for writers. The growth of feuilletons, in particular, in 1830s created a mass market and real opportuities for writers to make real money (see Benjamin: 1983 pp.27-34).

Art was a commodity in an increasingly commercial society dominated by commercialism and materialism. The artist was someone who sold personal intimacy and could therefore be likened to a prostitute. One might add here that, in Baudelaire's view, the poet was a particularly devalued commodity.

Further Reading

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

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The Prose Poem

The term `prose poem' is something of an oxymoron, since we associate poetry with the ressources of verse (rhyme, metre etc.). However, since the middle of the nineteenth century, the prose poem emerged as a popular form of writing. Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la nuit (1842) is generally held to be the first collection of prose poems although the form was taken up by such major poets and literary innovators as Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Lautr�amont. Most of the major French poets of the twentieth century also adopted the form (Apollinaire, Claudel, Val�ry, Ponge etc.) and the influence of Rimbaud's Illuminations is generally cited.

Prose poems tend to be short and autonomous. Descriptive, anecdotal and mimetic, they are often snapshots of a situation or event, an "autonomous piece[s] of lyrical poetry devoid of verse structure" (quoted in M. Beaujour, `Short Epiphanies: Two Contextual Approaches to the French Prose Poem' in Mary Ann Caws and Hermine Riffaterre (eds.) The Prose Poem in France: Theory and Practice, New York, Columbia U.P. 1983 p.40).

Here is a useful definition by one major critic of the genre:

Un po�me en prose a pour n�cessit� vitale la bri�vet�, condition sine qua non de l'unit� d'effet, que le Po�me en prose se caract�rise par la concentration, la gratuit�, l'intensit�...le po�me est un monde clos, ferm� sur soi, se suffisant � soi-m�me et en m�me temps une source de block irradiant, charg� sous un faible volume d'une infinit� de suggestions et capable d'�branler notre �tre en profondeur.

Suzanne Bernard: Le Po�me en prose de Baudelaire jusqu'� nos jours (Paris: Nizet, 1959) p.439

Further Reading

� S. Bernard, Le Po�me en prose de Baudelaire jusqu'� nos jours (Paris: Nizet, 1959

� M. A. Caws/H. Riffaterre (eds), The Prose Poem in France: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press 1983)

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Baudelaire: The Poet as Rag-picker

Contemplons un de ces �tres myst�rieux, vivant pour ainsi dire des d�jections des grandes villes; car il y a de singuliers m�tiers. Le nombre en est immense. J'ai quelquefois pens� avec terreur qu'il y avait des m�tiers qui ne comportaient aucune joie, des m�tiers sans plaisir, des fatigues sans soulagement, des douleurs sans compensation. Je me trompais. Voici un homme charg� de ramasser les d�bris d'une journ�e de la capitale. Tout ce que la grande cit� a rejet�, tout ce qu'elle a perdu, tout ce qu'elle a d�daign�, tout ce qu'elle a bris�, il le catalogue, il le collectionne. Il compulse les archives de la d�bauche, le capharna�m des rebuts. Il fait un triage, un choix intelligent; il ramasse, comme un avare du tr�sor, les ordures qui, rem�ch�es par la divinit� de l'Industrie, deviendront des objets d'utilit� ou de jouissance. Le voici qui, � la clart� sombre des r�verb�res tourment�s par le vent de la nuit, remonte une des longues rues tortueuses et peupl�es de petits m�nages de la montagne Sainte-Genevi�ve. Il est rev�tu de son ch�le d'osier avec son num�ro sept. Il arrive hochant la t�te et butant sur les pav�s, comme les jeunes po�tes qui passent toutes leurs journ�es � errer et � chercher des rimes. (C. Baudelaire: `Du vin et du hachisch' in Oeuvres compl�tes I p.381)

When the new industrial processes had given refuse a certain value, ragpickers appeared in the cities in larger numbers. They worked for middlemen and constituted a sort of cottage industry located in the streets. The ragpicker fascinated his epoch. The eyes of the first investigators of pauperism were fixed on him with the mute question as to where the limit of human misery lay. (W. Benjamin: 1983 p.19)

The metropolis creates increasing quantities of desirable objects, but also of material rubbish, as the increased rhythms of selling demand an increased rhythm of disposal. Baudelaire identifies with the rag-picker, collecting the curious flotsam of the new Babylon ... (P. Collier: 1985 p.26)

... in one of his preferred self-images as rag-picker, hunting out his rhymes in the debris of city life, Baudelaire positions himself as a poet firmly at the end of the cycle of the production, consumption, disposal and recuperation of material objects, which is the cycle that so deeply preoccupied nineteenth-century writers, and, perhaps, Balzac most of all. (B. Rigby: 1993 p.88)

Baudelaire's city poems are characterized by a fascination with figures who inhabit the margins of Paris, the `heroic' figures of the city's bas-fonds. Amongst the beggars, prostitutes and scavengers, it is the rag-picker that seems to fascinate Baudelaire the most. Rag-pickers were the men who would sift through the detritus of the city streets - les d�bris d'une journ�e de la capitale - in search of objects of value - des objets d'utilit� ou de jouissance - which they then might sell to make a living.

Baudelaire's fascination with the rag-picker - like his fascination with so many other Parisian marginaux - is inward-looking. Baudelaire sees in the rag-picker a double of the poet. He makes this explicit in `Le Vin des chiffoniers':

On voit un chiffonnier qui vient, hochant la t�te,

Butant, et se cognant aux murs comme un po�te,

What links the rag-picker to the poet is his marginal status with regard to the main economic activity of society and his largely nocturnal, and some might say, parasitical existence on the edges of modern life. The poet, like the rag-picker, is not, nor can ever be, totally removed from its workings. More important still, the poet, like the ragpicker, is a connoisseur of the intimacies of human leftovers, fascinated by aspects of life from which others avert their gaze. He delves into the refuse of the city's dark neglected crevices to discover something of value.

Further Reading

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

� R.D.E. Burton, Baudelaire and the Second Republic: Writing and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) 220-275

� P. Collier, `Nineteenth-Century Paris: Vision and Nightmare' in E. Timms & D. Kelly (eds.), Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985) 25-44

� B. Rigby, `Things, Distinction and Decay in Nineteenth-Century French Literature' in B. Rigby (ed.) French Literature, Thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1993) 86-104

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Balzac and the Reading Public

Balzac brought to the novel a seriousness that was, in France at least, without precedent. He had grandiose ambitions for the novel at a time when the novel was still considered by many to be a lesser literary form lacking the dignity and high aspirations of drama and poetry. He redefines the novel in historical and philosophical terms never seen before. But Balzac was also - and this is a point that we should not forget - a genuinely popular novelist with a wide readership that eagerly sought his latest publication. One of the most striking cultural developments taking place in post-revolutionary France was the extension of the reading public. The influential nineteenth-century critic Sainte-Beuve wrote of what he called `l'invasion de la d�mocratie litt�raire'. A number of reasons explain this new phenomena: demographic explosion, the growth and increasing power of the bourgeoisie, the expansion of the urban working-class, a general improvement in literacy thanks to the 1833 primary education act and the development of the commercial press. It is the early nineteenth century then, that witnesses the beginning of `mass culture' and `mass communications' and the split between so-called `high culture' and `popular culture'. All these developments led to a transformation of the nature of the reading public. This change in the reading public was particularly influential to the development of the novel which becomes in the nineteenth century the most widely read literary form. Novels were not read, as they are now, in single volumes. Rather, they were read in installments published in various newspapers and magazines and known as roman-feuilletons. Without going to much into the details, in the 1830s there was a commercial battle between the old established newspapers which were relatively expensive and new daily newspapers which sold for half the price. The only way these new newspapers could make a profit was through advertizing. Since advertizers needed to reach a high target audience the new newspapers included stories published in serial form. Thus le roman-feuilleton was born and Balzac's La Vieille Fille was in fact the very first.

The reading public was no longer a tiny, highly educated �lite but a genuinely mass and heterogenous mix. This created some new problems for writers. How were writers to respond to this new situation? Should they write for a mass audience at the risk of compromising their artistic standards? Should writers seek to educate and enlighten this new mass audience? Or else, should they shun popular acclaim and retreat to the ivory tower of pure art? At the risk of greatly oversimplifying literary history, these were the three responses available to writers in nineteenth-century France. Writers like Eug�ne Sue, Fr�d�ric Souli� and Alexandre Dumas took the first option and capitulated to the pressures of the market. Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny and Leconte de Lisle all took the second option and developed the notion of the writer as a kind of leader or educator, a deeply �litist view in itself with its distinction between the `leader' and the `herd'. Lisle, in fact, described writers as `�ducateurs d'�mes' and Vigny as `les ma�tres de la pens�e et les guides �loquents des grandes nations'. Finally, the third option was taken by writers like Th�ophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and Flaubert (`Il faut vivre pour sa vocation, monter dans sa tour d'ivoire') who deliberately turned their backs on a mass audience and cultivated an aloof, quasi-aristocratic aestheticism. One might also add at this point that Stendhal probably fits into this last group. Despite his republican sympathies, Stendhal tended to address his works to an �lite or to an imagined posterity. It is in this spirit that he dedicates La Chartreuse de Parme to the `Happy Few'.

And where does Balzac fit into this scheme of things? Well, Balzac was a popular novelist and a novelist with serious philosophical ambitions. And his work seems to me to be a curious mixture: in some repects he craves the attention of a mass audience, deliberately writes to please them and yet, he also wants to confer on the novel a high moral seriousness that it had never had before. It is possible to argue in fact that Balzac uses popular literary forms to make a serious point about the world. There are strands of populism running throughout Balzac's writing, in particular his taste for the comic and most of all, for the melodramatic. Melodrama may be defined as a dramatic piece characterized by sensational incident and violent appeals to the emotions but with a happy ending. In formal terms melodrama is organized by a limited number of devices: antithesis, hyperbole, stereotype, mystery, coincidence and poetic justice. Although melodrama was essentially a theatrical genre it played a decisive influence on the development of prose fiction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This influence was two way, as by the 1830s and 1840s most popular melodramas were dramatic adaptations of novels by Scott, Ainsworth and Dickens in England and Balzac, Sue and Dumas in France.

Further Reading

� C. Prendergast, Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)

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Balzac: Realist and Romantic

The work of Balzac is relevant to both of the two literary trends or movements: Realism and Romanticism. Balzac is the principal figure in the development of Realist fiction in nineteenth-century Europe. Although he never actually called himself a Realist as the term only came to be used in the 1840s his work may be seen as articulating some of the problems of a Realist aesthetic. He is also a principal figure in French Romanticism although his Romanticism is less the melancholy, maudlin mal du si�cle of many his contemporaries and is more interested in the mysteries that lie beneath the surface of social life, the passions and desires of individuals in the social world. Indeed, the American novelist and critic Henry James wrote of Balzac's `overmastering sense of the present world'. In some respects Balzac's work might be seen as a meeting point for the preoccupations of both Realism and Romanticism. Balzac is not at all introspective or introverted like many other Romantics but is fascinated by the real world, in particular the real world of Paris: its buildings, its streets, its people its moral and social codes. He is fascinated by power and many of his novels - Le P�re Goriot is no exception here - are studies in monomania - a single, obsessive overriding passion that acts as a dramatic spur to all kinds of extraordinary actions. He is fascinated by social ambition that makes women ruthless and cruel and by the omnipotence of money which makes men power hungry and unfeeling.

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Baudelaire: R�volte

The poems in R�volte are all characterized by their angry denunciation of God, the creator of human suffering. There is also - and for this Baudelaire is infamous - a certain turning towards Satan who appears as the true representative of a humankind condemned to suffering. Satan is, in `Les Litanies de Satan':

Le p�re adoptif de ceux qu'en sa noire col�re

Du paradis terrestre a chass�s Dieu le P�re,

This taking sides with unconventional figures is continued in the poem `Ca�n et Abel'. It tells the story of the children of Adam and Eve. Cain was a farmer and Abel a shephard and they both made a sacrifice to God. However, Cain's offering was rejected and he slew his brother in his anger. In turn, God punished Cain by making his a fugitive and by branding him so that he would be recognized wherever he went. In some interpretations and in some religious paintings, Cain and Abel are seen as anticipating Christ and Judas. Traditionally then, Abel has represented good and Cain evil. Baudelaire, however, inverts this. In Baudelaire's poem, it is Cain who is the hero for his angry defiance of God. Cain is the perfect symbol for the oppressed and the exiled. Cain should rise up and complete his initial rebellion by overthrowing God.

Although Baudelaire's Satanism has often been dismissed by critics as a remnant of Gothic Romanticism, his championning of both Satan and Cain can be interpreted as having a political significance too. In the mid-nineteenth century both Satan and Cain were used by writers and artists as symbols of the dispossessed, the alienated, of all those excluded by and opposed to the prevailing order of things. (see Burton: 1991 pp.196-199). The poems in R�volte contain potentially revolutionary meanings in their images of Satan and Cain taking the side of the dispossessed and rising up to challenge the status quo. Satan as the `Prince de l'exil' and the `race de Ca�n' are clearly the exploited working class. As Walter Benjamin wrote:

Cain, the ancestor of the disinherited, appears as the founder of a race, and this race can be none other than the proletariat. (W. Benjamin: 1983 p.22)

In the nineteenth century all discussion of social, political and economic issues inevitably involved consideration of spiritual or religious concerns. The separation of politics and religion was unthinkable to such radical thinkers as Lamennais, Fourier and Proudhon. Baudelaire was, of course, influenced by these debates and in particular by such works as Proudhon's De la Cr�ation de l'ordre dans l'humanit� (1843) and Philosophie de la mis�re (1846). Philosophie de la mis�re was a particularly influential text in its critique of Christianity as fostering an attitude of resignation and acceptance of the ways things are. Christ, according to Proudhon, failed to combat fully injustice in the world and suceeded only in making suffering a necessary precondition for entry into Heaven. Here is a short extract from it to give you a feel of its polemical force:

Dieu, c'est sottise et l�chet�; Dieu, c'est l'hypocrisie et mensonge; Dieu, c'est tyrannie et mis�re; Dieu, c'est le mal ... Esprit menteur, Dieu imb�cile, ton r�gne est fini ... Dieu retire-toi! car des aujourd'hui, gu�ri de ta crainte et devenu sage, je jure, la main �tendue vers le ciel, que tu n'es que le bourreau de ma raison, le spectre de ma conscience. (quoted in Burton: 1991 p.199)

Many of the French Romantics shared this view of a tyrannical God governing the universe but took a more sympathetic view of Christ. Through his apparent abandonnement by God in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, Christ became the very embodiment of the dispossessed. This is certainly the case in poems like Lamartine's `Le d�sespoir', Vigny's `Le Mont des Oliviers', Gautier's `T�n�bres' and Nerval's `Le Christ aux Oliviers'. This is Baudelaire's view too in `Le Reniement de Saint Pierre':

- Ah! J�sus, souviens-toi du jardin des Olives!

Dans ta simplicit� tu priais � genoux

Celui qui dans son ciel riait au bruit des clous

Que d'ignobles bourreaux plantaient dans tes chairs vives,

Lorsque tu vis cracher sur ta divinit�

La crapule du corps de garde et des cuisines,

Et lorsque tu sentis s'enfoncer les �pines

Dans ton cr�ne o� vivait l'immense Humanit�;

Christ is seen here as the representative of suffering humanity and yet the poem ends with the conclusion that Saint Peter was right to deny him. Some explanation of the scene is needed here. Saint Peter was the leader of the twelve apostles and the one closest to Christ. After the Christ's arrest by Roman soldiers he denied knowing him, as Christ had earlier predicted. Saint Peter denied knowing Christ three times and on each occasion a cock crowed - again, just as Christ had earlier predicted. When Saint Peter understood that Christ's prophesy had been realized he burst into tears and repented.

In `Le Reniement de Saint Pierre' Baudelaire claims that Saint Peter was right in denying Christ. Why did Christ accept his fate? Why didn't he live and bring justice and joy to the world instead of meekly capitulating to a tyrannical father? The angry, militant Christ who healed the sick (including such depised groups as women, Samaritans and, on one occasion, a Roman soldier's servant) on the Sabbath, thereby contravening one of the Ten Commandments, who drove the money-lenders from the temple and who constantly challenged prevailing social and religious values is preferred to the passive martyr of the Catholic Church. Baudelaire's `Le Reniement de Saint Pierre' is an angry rejection of a Christ who refuses to continue his struggle against injustice on earth and is very much part of the radical questionning of Christianity as undertaken by Proudhon and others in the nineteenth century.

Further Reading

� L.B. Hyslop, `Baudelaire, Proudhon and "Le Reniement de Saint Pierre"' in French Studies, 30 (1976) 273-286

#######

Baudelaire: The Poet as Street Acrobat

L'homme de lettres remue des capitaux et donne le go�t de la gymnastique intellectuelle.

`Fus�es' in Oeuvres compl�tes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) p.652

Central to Baudelaire's theory of poetic composition are the notions of effort and exertion. Intellectual exercise, practice and training are the prerequisites of great poetry. In this respect, the poet is like a street acrobat who must undergo years of training before performing in front of an audience. Baudelaire makes this comparison in the essay `Conseils aux jeunes litt�rateurs' where he claims that:

... le g�nie (...) doit, comme le saltimbanque apprenti, risquer de se rompre mille fois les os en secret avant de danser devant le public; ... l'inspiration, en un mot, n'est que la r�compense de l'exercise quotidien.

C. Baudelaire, Oeuvres compl�tes II (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) p.183

This comparison appears in his poetry too; the prose poem `Le Vieux saltimbanque' (Petits po�mes en prose) and the verse poem `La Muse v�nale' (Les Fleurs du mal) both feature street acrobats performing their art before an unappreciative crowd. In this respect too they ressemble the po�te maudit whose work is rejected by the vulgar mass. Here is the text of `Le Vieux saltimbanque' in full:

Le Vieux saltimbanque

Partout s'�talait, se r�pandait, s'�baudissait le peuple en vacances. C'�tait une de ces solennit�s sur lesquelles, pendant un long temps, comptent les saltimbanques, les faiseurs de tours, les montreurs d'animaux et les boutiquiers ambulants, pour compenser les mauvais temps de l'ann�e.

En ces jours-l� il me semble que le peuple oublie tout, la douleur et le travail; il devient pareil aux enfants. Pour les petits c'est un jour de cong�, c'est l'horreur de l'�cole renvoy�e � vingt-quatre heures. Pour les grands c'est un armistice conclu avec les puissances malfaisantes de la vie, un r�pit dans la contention et la lutte universelles. L'homme du monde lui-m�me et l'homme occup� de travaux spirituels �chappent difficilement � l'influence de ce jubil� populaire. Ils absorbent, sans le vouloir, leur part de cette atmosph�re d'insouciance. Pour moi, je ne manque jamais, en vrai Parisien, de passer la revue de toutes les baraques qui se pavanent � ces �poques solennelles.

Elles se faisaient, en v�rit�, une concurrence formidable: elles piaillaient, beuglaient, hurlaient. C'�tait un m�lange de cris, de d�tonations de cuivre et d'explosions de fus�es. Les queues-rouges et les Jocrisses convulsaient les traits de leurs visages basan�s, racornis par le vent, la pluie et le soleil; ils lan�aient, avec l'aplomb des com�diens s�rs de leurs effets, des bons mots et des plaisanteries d'un comique solide et lourd comme celui de Moli�re. Les Hercules, fiers de l'�normit� de leurs membres, sans front et sans cr�ne, comme les orangs-outangs, se pr�lassaient majestueusement sous les maillots lav�s la veille pour la circonstance. Les danseuses, belles comme des f�es ou des princesses, sautaient et cabriolaient sous le feu des lanternes qui remplissaient leurs jupes d'�tincelles.

Tout n'�tait que lumi�re, poussi�re, cris, joie, tumulte; les uns d�pensaient, les autres gagnaient, les uns et les autres �galement joyeux. Les enfants se suspendaient aux jupons de leurs m�res pour obtenir quelque b�ton de sucre, ou montaient sur les �paules de leurs p�res pour mieux voir un escamoteur �blouissant comme un dieu. Et partout circulait, dominant tous les parfums, une odeur de friture qui �tait comme l'encens de cette f�te.

Au bout, � l'extr�me bout de la rang�e de baraques, comme si, honteux, il s'�tait exil� lui-m�me de toutes ces splendeurs, je vis un pauvre saltimbanque, vo�t�, caduc, d�cr�pit, une ruine d'homme, adoss� contre un des poteaux de sa cahute; une cahute plus mis�rable que celle du sauvage le plus abruti, et dont deux bouts de chandelles, coulants et fumants, �clairaient trop bien encore la d�tresse.

Partout la joie, le gain, la d�bauche; partout la certitude du pain pour les lendemains; partout l'explosion fr�n�tique de la vitalit�. Ici la mis�re absolue, la mis�re affubl�e, pour comble d'horreur, de haillons comiques, o� la n�cessit�, bien plus que l'art, avait introduit le contraste. Il ne riait pas, le mis�rable! Il ne pleurait pas, il ne dansait pas, il ne gesticulait pas, il ne criait pas; il ne chantait aucune chanson, ni gaie ni lamentable, il n'implorait pas. Il �tait muet et immobile. Il avait renonc�, il avait abdiqu�. Sa destin�e �tait faite.

Mais quel regard profond, inoubliable, il promenait sur la foule et les lumi�res, dont le flot mouvant s'arr�tait � quelques pas de sa r�pulsive mis�re! Je sentis ma gorge serr�e par la main terrible de l'hyst�rie, et il me sembla que mes regards �taient offusqu�s par ces larmes rebelles qui ne veulent pas tomber.

Que faire? � quoi bon demander � l`infortun� quelle curiosit�, quelle merveille il avait � montrer dans ces t�n�bres puantes, derri�re son rideau d�chiquet�? En v�rit�, je n'osais; et d�t la raison de ma timidit� vous faire rire, j'avouerai que je craignais de l'humilier. Enfin, je venais de me r�soudre � d�poser en passant quelque argent sur une de ses planches, esp�rant qu'il devinerait mon intention, quand un grand reflux de peuple, caus� par je ne sais quel trouble, m'entra�na loin de lui.

Et, m'en retournant, obs�d� par cette vision, je cherchai � analyser ma soudaine douleur, et je me dis: Je viens de voir l'image du vieil homme de lettres qui a surv�cu � la g�n�ration dont il fut le brillant amuseur; du vieux po�te sans amis, sans famille, sans enfants, d�grad� par sa mis�re et par l'ingratitude publique, et dans la baraque de qui le monde oublieux ne veut plus entrer!

C. Baudelaire, Petits po�mes en prose

Further Reading

� V.L. Rubin, `Two Prose Poems by Baudelaire: "Le vieux saltimbanque" and "Une Mort h�roique' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1985-86) 51-60

#######

Balzac and the Natural Sciences

Balzac grounds his claim to be a historian in what he considers to be scientific theory. Backed up by various biological and physical theories prevalent in the early nineteenth century - theories elaborated by scientists like Buffon, Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire - Balzac asserts the validity of the idea of unity of substance. All animal life shares a common essence which is modified by certain environmental conditions. Society too might be said to resemble nature in this respect insofar as human beings too are influenced by environmental conditions. Just as there are zoological species, so are there social species, though their operation is more complex. It is interesting to note here that Le P�re Goriot is dedicated to the zoologist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire who originally elaborated the notion of unity of substance. The novelist is concerned with men, women and things, bound together in society which plays an essential role in forming them and shaping their destinies. These two extracts from the Avant-propos to La Com�die humaine make clear Balzac's creative debt to the natural sciences:

Cette id�e vint d'une comparaison entre l'Humanit� et l'Animalit� ... La Soci�t� ne fait-elle pas de l'homme, suivant les milieux o� son action se deploie, autant d'hommes diff�rents qu'il y a de vari�t�s en zoologie? Les diff�rences entre un soldat, un ouvrier, un administrateur, un avocat, un oisif, un savant, un homme d'�tat, un commer�ant, un marin, un po�te, un pauvre, un pr�tre, sont, quoique plus difficile � saisir, aussi consid�rables que celles qui distinguent le loup, le lion, l'�ne, le corbeau, le requin, le veau marin, la brebis, etc. Il a donc exist�, il existera donc de tout temps des Esp�ces Sociales comme il y a des Esp�ces Zoolologiques. Si Buffon a fait un magnifique ouvrage en essayant de repr�senter dans un livre l'ensemble de la zoologie, n'y avait-il pas une oeuvre de ce genre � faire pour la Soci�t�? Honor� de Balzac: Avant-propos to La Com�die humaine (1842)

Le cr�ateur ne s'est servi que d'un seul et m�me patron pour tous les �tres organis�s. L'animal est un principe qui prend sa forme ext�rieure, ou, pour parler plus exactement, les diff�rences de sa forme, dans les milieux o� il est appel� � se d�velopper. Honor� de Balzac: Avant-propos to La Com�die humaine (1842)

Further Reading

� P. Barb�ris, Balzac et le mal du si�cle (Paris: Gallimard, 1970)

� P. Barb�ris, Balzac, une mythologie r�aliste (Paris: Larousse, 1971)

� P. Barb�ris, Le Monde de Balzac (Paris: Arthaud, 1973)

� M. Bard�che, Une lecture de Balzac (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1964)

� M. Bard�che, Balzac, romancier (Geneva: Slaktine, 1967)

� D. Festa-McCormick, Honor� de Balzac (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979)

� B. Guyon, Le Pens�e politique et sociale de Balzac (Paris: Armand Colin,1967)

� L-F. Hoffmann, `Les M�taphores animales dans Le P�re Goriot' in L'Ann�e balzacienne (1963) 91-106

� H.J. Hunt, Balzac's Com�die humaine (London: The Athlone Press, 1959)

#######

The Seduction of Things in Balzac

But if Balzac positively set out to include all ordinary material culture in his novels, he none the less reenacted endlessly in these novels [La Com�die humaine] the desperate attempts of the characters themselves to achieve wealth and success in order to live lives filled exclusively with expensive and luxurious material goods, to acheive `distinction' and thereby leave behind them their earlier existences of poverty and deprivation spent in the company of only the most meagre, tasteless and even sordid material things. In the endless quest for `distinction' in Balzac's novels a very special place is reserved for things. In his theories of elegance and dandyism (the new aristocratic ethos of the nineteenth century), Balzac considered that distinction was now demonstrated by an individual's instinctive capacity to choose beautiful things with which to express and decorate the self and with which to furnish the milieu surrounding the self.

B. Rigby: `Things, Distinction and Decay in Nineteenth-century French Literature' in B. Rigby (ed.), French Literature, Thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: A Material World (London: MacMillan, 1993) p.95

#######

Benjamin on Baudelaire or Shocks of the City

Walter Benjamin claims that `Baudelaire placed the shock of experience at the very centre of his artistic work.' (W. Benjamin: 1992 p.159). Benjamin argues that consciousness is alert to screen the incoming shocks, shocks which the big city constantly generates. Baudelaire meets this shock in a combative way with his verse. Benjamin cites 'Le Soleil' from Tableaux parisiens:

Quand le soleil cruel frappe � traits redoubl�s

Sur la ville et les champs, sur les toits et les bl�s,

Je vais m'exercer seul � ma fantasque escrime,

Flairant dans tous les coins les hasards de la rime,

Tr�buchant sur les mots comme sur les pav�s,

Heurtant parfois des vers depuis longtemps r�v�s.

In this opening stanza are several images of shock or conflict. The sun lashes the city, the poet-narrator collides and fences with rhyme and verse, even stumbling over words which he says are like the cobbles of the street itself. The texture of the city, the unyielding stone which may only be encountered in a shock or blow is the central image in this verse. In Baudelaire's dedication to Houssaye in Spleen de Paris, he speaks of the `soubresauts de la conscience' and says that the poetic-prose which can adapt to these shocks will grip those who are at home in the giant cities and the `croisement de leurs innombrables rapports'. Is Baudelaire then proposing a shock-proof literary form to grip the metropolitan?

Benjamin points out that this dedication `tells us about the close connection in Baudelaire between the figure of shock and contact with the metropolitan masses' (W. Benjamin: 1992 p.161). Later in Tableaux parisiens in 'A une passante', the theme again is of the poet meeting head-on the mass of people in the street. Using metonymic imagery he links words, people, and the actual street itself in the opening line:

La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.

Here the conflation of the hard stone of the street and the source of the screaming words hurl themselves at the poet with such violence that they deafen him. Busy city, so replete with source words that the poet is shocked even as he collects them for his verse.

Then later in stanza 3 of 'A une passante':

Un �clair ... puis la nuit! - ...

Nothing gradual here in Baudelaire's city, no time to order and prepare. His poems are anxieties, the preparations for shock.

Further Reading

� Walter Benjamin, `On Some Motifs in Baudelaire' in Illuminations (London: Fontana Press, 1992) 152-196

####### Concept: Charlie Mansfield, Text: Charlie Mansfield, Artwork: Carole Baker

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Baudelaire on the Sonnet

Quel est donc l'imb�cile ... qui traite si l�g�rement le sonnet et n'en voit pas la beaut� pythagorique? Parce que la forme est contraignante, l'id�e jaillit plus intense. Tout va bien au sonnet, la bouffonnerie, la galanterie, la passion, la r�verie, la m�ditation philosophique. Il y a l� la beaut� du m�tal et du min�ral bien travaill�s. Avez-vous observ� qu'un morceau du ciel, aper�u par un soupirail, ou entre deux chemin�es, deux rochers, ou par une arcade, etc. ..., donnait une id�e plus profonde de l'infini qu'un grand panorama vu du haut d'une montagne? Quant aux longs po�mes, nous savons ce qu'il faut en penser; c'est la ressource de ceux qui sont incapables d'en faire de courts!

Charles Baudelaire: Lettre � Armand Fraisse (18 f�vrier, 1860)

Further Reading

� D.H.T. Scott, Sonnet Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century France: Sonnets on the Sonnet (Hull: University of Hull Publications, 1977)

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Baudelaire on Spleen et Id�al

In Baudelaire's `spleen' poems - this starts with `La cloche f�l�e' and continues until the end of the section entitled `Spleen et id�al' - there is a constant tension due to an awareness of the opposition between l'id�al, the term Baudelaire uses to describe moments of ecstasy, vision and mystic communion (`les minutes heureuses' of `Le Balcon') and spleen, the term Baudelaire uses to describe moments of pathalogical depression. There are a number of poems which describe this experience and the struggle of the poet to overcome spleen and to produce art. Here are some definitions that Baudelaire made in his correspondance and his journal of these opposing states:

Spleen:

... ce que je sens, c'est un immense d�couragement, une sensation d'isolement insupportable, une peur perp�tuelle d'un malheur vague, une d�fiance compl�te de mes forces, une absence totale de d�sirs, une impossibilit� de trouver un amusement quelconque ... Je me demande sans cesse: � quoi bon ceci? A quoi bon cela? C'est l� le v�ritable esprit de spleen.

Charles Baudelaire: Lettre � Madame Aupick

L'id�al:

Le surnaturel comprend la couleur g�n�rale et l'accent, c'est-�-dire, intensit�, sonorit�, limpidit�, vibrativit�, profondeur, relentissement dans l'espace et dans le temps.

Il y a des moments de l'existence o� le temps et l'�tendue sont plus profondes, et le sentiment de l'existence immens�ment augment�.

Charles Baudelaire: Fus�es

Although it is possible to see spleen as Baudelaire's own term for the familiar Romantic mal du si�cle, it may be interpreted as having a political significance. The feelings of helplessness, frustration, entrapment, inertia, disillusionment and alientation that define spleen may all be read as a response to the political events of 1848 and after. The malaise of the poet is not individual but social.

Further Reading

� R.D.E. Burton, Baudelaire in 1859: A Study in the Sources of Poetic Creativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)

� A. Fairlie, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (London: Edward Arnold, 1960)

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The Structure of La Com�die humaine

In his plan of La Com�die humaine, Balzac decided to adopt three major classifications of novel, each with its own sub-categories. The major division was to be between:

� �tudes de Moeurs (Novels of Manners)

� �tudes Philosophiques (Philosophical Novels)

� �tudes Analytiques (Analytical Novels)

He made most progress on the �tudes de Moeurs and little on the second and the third. The section entitled �tudes de Moeurs (Novels of Manners) is by far the most important section - this is the importance Flaubert is acknowledging when he gives Madame Bovary the subtitle Moeurs de province - and is itself divided into smaller sub-sections:

� Sc�nes de la vie priv�e (Scenes of Private Life)

� Sc�nes de la vie de province (Scenes of Provincial Life)

� Sc�nes de la vie parisienne (Scenes of Parisian Life)

� Sc�nes de la vie politique (Scenes of Political Life)

� Sc�nes de la vie militaire (Scenes of Military Life)

� Sc�nes de la vie de campagne (Scenes of Country Life)

Further Reading

� P. Barb�ris, Le Monde de Balzac (Paris: Arthaud, 1973)

� M. Bard�che, Balzac, romancier (Geneva: Slaktine, 1967)

� D. Festa-McCormick, Honor� de Balzac (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979)

� P.-L. Rey, Balzac: La Com�die humaine (Paris: Hatier, 1979)

#######

The Structure of Les Fleurs du mal

Baudelaire attached a lot of importance to the overall shape and organisation of Les Fleurs du mal. This raises the important question of how we should read such a collection of poetry. Can we read the poems contained in a collection in any order we choose or is there a specific order the author designed for us to follow? Is Les Fleurs du mal just a collection of isolated poems or does it make more sense to see it as a deliberately arranged sequence with its own internal order? In short, are Baudelaire's `flowers of evil' haphazardly planted or arranged into a neat formal garden?

Not long after the book's publication the writer Barbey d'Aur�villy put forward the notion of a hidden architecture - `une architecture secr�te' - informing the organisation of the collection and, in a letter to the poet Alfred de Vigny in 1861, Baudelaire himself wrote of Les Fleurs du mal that:

Le seul �loge que je sollicite pour ce livre est qu'on reconnaisse qu'il n'est pas un pur album et qu'il a un commencement et une fin. Tous les po�mes nouveaux ont �t� adapt�s � un cadre singulier que j'avais choisi.

The important question that is raised by both Barbey d'Aur�villy's notion of `une architecture secr�te' and Baudelaire's reference `un cadre singulier' is the precise nature of this organisation. What is the meaning of the stucture of Les Fleurs du mal and how does it effect how we read it? In the brief bibliography below there are a few references to a number of short(ish) texts that may help you you in your exploration of this problem.

Further Reading

� G. Chesters, `Introduction' in Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1995) ix-xviii

� J. Culler, `Introduction' in Charles Baudelaire: The Flowers of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) xiii-xlviii

� A. Fairlie, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal (London: Edward Arnold, 1960)

� F.W. Leakey, `Poet - or `Architect' in F.W. Leakey, Baudelaire: Collected Essays 1953-1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 60-69

� D.J. Mossop, Baudelaire's Tragic Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961)

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Baudelaire and Symbolist Poetry

Symbolist poets like St�phane Mallarm� and Paul Verlaine took the view that a poem was a self-expressive gesture - self-sufficient and self-justifying. It did not refer to anything outside of itself, was not really `about' anything but its status as language and its expressive potential. One way of making poetry more expressive lay in the exploitation of language's musical properties. It is no surprise then, that the ideal of Symbolist poetry was music. Poets should cultivate the `music' of poetry - the delicate harmonies and subtle dissonances and assonances of vowels and of consonants. Paul Verlaine was particularly successful in cultivating the `music' of poetry in this first sense in such works as Po�mes saturniens (1866), F�tes galantes (1869) and Romances sans paroles (1874). The first impression the reader receives upon first reading a Verlaine poem is not of meaning but of words arranged in subtle and elaborate harmonies as in the following example:

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l'automne

Blessent mon coeur

D'une langueur

Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et bl�me, quand

Sonne l'heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

Et je pleure;

Et je m'en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m'emporte

De�a, del�,

Pareil � la

Feuille morte.

`Chanson d'automne' in Romances sans paroles

The second idea is that poetry should have the power to evoke complex states of feeling in much the same way as music. Feeling and thought should be present in such a way as prevented the reader from defining precisely what those feelings or thoughts are. Poetry should be like music insofar as its meanings are undefinable or untranslatable, a point Mallarm� makes in one of his poems:

Le sens trop pr�cis rature

Ta vague litt�rature

`Toute l'�me resum�e' in Po�sies

Further Reading

� G. Chesters, Baudelaire and the Poetics of Craft (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)

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Baudelaire: Tableaux parisiens

Tableaux parisiens was not present in the original 1857 edition of Les Fleurs du mal and only appeared in the later 1861 edition. It is the most significant amendment to the original text insofar as it privileges the experience of modern urban living - something with which Baudelaire later came to be associated. Between 1857 and 1861 Baudelaire undertook a methodical examination of Paris as a potential source of poetic inspiration. He began the volume of prose poems called Les Petits po�mes en prose (they are sometimes referred to as Le Spleen de Paris) which was posthumously published in 1869 and at the same time he began work on an essay on modern art - Peintre de la vie moderne - an important aesthetic tract on the now forgotten artist Constantin Guys.

The mid to late nineteenth century witnessed a massive increase in the size of the urban population and a corresponding decrease in the size of the rural population. Urban subjects had, by the early to mid nineteenth century, penetrated the novel - in particular Eug�ne Sue and Balzac - but not really poetry or the visual arts. I say not really because, of course, Victor Hugo wrote a number of poems about urban injustice and what we would now call inner-city deprivation. Nonetheless, until Baudelaire at least, the city's poetic potential had not been fully realized. Baudelaire wanted to change this situation and bring modernity into poetry and painting. The term `tableau' is clearly drawn from the visual arts and in the poems the poet turns outward (rather than inward) to contemplate the metropolis and its citizens. The poems thus stand in distinct contrast to the unabated introspection of Spleen et Id�al.

Baudelaire is frequently seen nowadays as a quintessentially urban poet. Indeed, much of Baudelaire's literary innovations stem from his desire to make the city a suitable source of poetic inspiration rather than finding it in the world of nature. Baudelaire, in fact, is seen as a poet like Th�ophile Gautier who despises nature and who attempts to construct a self-consciously anti-natural aesthetic. More important than the fashionable, dandyish anti-natural aesthetic is the belief, prevalant in Baudelaire's various writings that modern life is primarily urban. The fact that the majority of people are now town or city dwellers is the key characteristic of modernity, of modern living. The modern individual was an urban dweller susceptible to the shocks of modernity. The German critic Walter Benjamin writes of Baudelaire's own sensitivity to the traumatic shocks of the modern city. The decline in collective festivals and traditions left individuals exposed, without the necessary understanding and experience to comprehend and come to terms with the rapid pace of modern urban existence. One key phenomena of modern life was the crowd. Old, stable communities broke down and people henceforth began to live their lives around strangers. It is the city that best illustrates the fragmentation of modern living. The consciousness of the individual in the modern world is constantly confronted with disparate, dissonant experiences, with objects and encounters that do not seem to go together: the fragrant and the foul, the luxury and the squalor of the city streets and so no. Modernity is characterized by a sense of physical, social and spiritual fragmentation, by a loss of wholeness, a shattering of human connection, a destruction or disintegration of permament value - `all that is solid melts into air'.

Perhaps the best way of dealing with modernity, with modern life, Baudelaire suggests, is to try to develop a aesthetic response to it, to take pleasure in the shock juxtapositions, jolts, strangeness and uncertainty that modern (urban) life throws up. One should try to become a connoisseur of the fragmented experience of modernity. To quote Eugene W Holland:

Baudelaire ... appears as a lyric poet whose conditions of experience threaten to preclude the possibility of writing lyric poetry. ... The disintegration of experience provokes a desperate battle waged by Baudelaire to salvage some form of experience from the ravages of modernity. (Holland: 1993 p.114)

That `desperate battle' takes place in Tableaux parisiens. Tableaux parisiens is composed of both diurnal (day) and nocturnal (night) poems and there is thus some kind of interal coherence. As well as the allusion to painting, the title also evokes a popular minor literary prose genre, the tableaux de Paris in which a casual stroller observes the swirling city scene and makes some kind of moral observation. This minor genre is perfectly suited to Baudelaire's intention to make snap sense of the fleeting and unfamiliar experiences of the city. The first three poems of the Tableaux parisiens in some ways develop the theme develpoed at the end of the so-called `art cycle' in Spleen et Id�al: the possibility of poetic will to transform the ugly or the everyday. One might argue here, as Eugene W. Holland has done, that Tableaux parisiens ends with the poet's acknowledgement of the hopelessly unrealistic nature of this project. The first poem, `Paysage', sees the artist as someone trapped, emprisoned in an increasingly industrialized and overpopulated metropolis. In the first 12 lines of `Paysage' we find the poet in his garret contemplating Paris which he regards as a sort of urban idyll. A communion between the cosmos and the human world is implied:

Il est doux, � travers les brumes, de voir na�tre

L'etoile dans l'azur, la lampe � la fen�tre,

Later in the poem winter arrives and the poet constructs an imaginary landscape. The poet turns away from nature, bypasses it to construct a parallel or virtual reality in competition with the real world. This is very much a poem about the triumph of poetic will to create beauty. It is a poem about the victory of artifice over nature. An important passage in the poem which stresses this point is to be found on lines 23-26:

Car je serai plong� dans cette volupt�

D'�voquer le Printemps avec ma volont�,

De tirer un soleil de mon coeur, et de faire

De mes pensers br�lants une ti�de atmosph�re.

`Paysage' shows the beginnings of an attempt to forge an urban aesthetic. However, it does shows the poet in a position of detached superiority, deliberately dissociating himself from the life of the metropolis. In `Le Soleil' Baudelaire comes closer to defining what his urban aesthetic might be about. The poet no longer closes himself off from the city. The poet is shown as a fl�neur actually walking the city street at night, stumbling across strange sights and unexpected contrasts. The city is a place of accidental discovery, a living, dynamic source of inspiration:

Je vais m'exercer seul � ma fantasque escrime,

Flairant dans tous les coins les hasards de la rime,

Tr�buchant sur les mots comme sur les pav�s,

Heurtant parfois des vers depuis longtemps r�v�s.

It is in the chance encounters of the metropolis that the poet may find the stuff of his art, however humble the experiences and sights might initially seem. Both poet and the sun can ennoble the most banal:

Quand, ainsi qu'un po�te, il descend dans les villes,

Il ennoblit le sort des choses les plus viles,

Et s'introduit en roi, sans bruit et sans valets,

Dans tous les h�pitaux et dans tous les palais.

What is interesting about Baudelaire's comparison here is that the sun is likened to the poet and not the other way round. It is poetic artifice and not nature that is the key term here. What Baudelaire seems to be arguing in this poem is the superiority of poetic harmony over natural beauty. Key exemplifications of this aesthetic can be seen in the poems `Le Cr�puscule du soir' and `Le Cr�puscule du matin' but it is best illustrated in the next poem `A une mendiante rousse' in which a poor beggar-girl is described. She exemplifies the chance encounters and the shock juxtapositions of the city being both wretched and beautiful, squalid and exquisite, a object of reverie and idealization as well as of financial exchange. However, in terms of Baudelaire's program to assert poetic will, `A une mendiante rousse' represents an acknowledgement of its failure. The poet cannot `ennoble' all he sees and the poem seems to conclude, as Eugene W. Holland has summarized it, with the admission that `the real is what resists ennobling imagination'. On one level Baudelaire's project is a failure but on another level it opens up a whole new subject for modern poetry; namely, the difficulty of writing poetry in the modern world and poetry's inability to transform that very world into something beautiful. Perhaps typically Tableaux parisiens ends with the poet's defeat from the cacophonous and illegible urban scene:

Exasp�r� comme un ivrogne qui voit double

Je rentrai, je fermai ma porte, �pouvant�,

Malade et morfondu, l'esprit fi�vreux et trouble,

Bless� par le myst�re et par l'absurdit�!

Further Reading

� W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983)

� M. Berman, `Baudelaire: Modernism on the Streets' in M. Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Verso, 1993) 131- 171

� R.D.E. Burton, The Context of Baudelaire's `Le Cygne' (Durham: Durham Modern Language Series, 1980)

� R.D.E. Burton, `The Unseen Seer, or Proteus in the City: Aspects of a Nineteenth- Century Parisian Myth' in French Studies, 42 (1988) 50-68

� R. Chambers, `Baudelaire's Street Poetry' in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 13 (1985) 244-259

� P. Collier, `Nineteenth-Century Paris: Vision and Nightmare' in E. Timms & D. Kelly (eds.), Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985) 25-44

� E.W. Holland, Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics of Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

� C. Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

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Baudelaire's Theory of Poetry

One of the most important claims Baudelaire made about poetry was that:

Il n'y a pas de hasard dans l'art, pas plus qu'en m�canique

Baudelaire is making a simple but important point here: art involves conscious effort and reflexion. The artist or poet is someone who produces his work after a long apprenticeship and after careful deliberation. There is no room for chance, art is about the careful and elaborate production of objects of beauty. In his writings on art, words like `travail', `labeur', `pr�cision', `logique', `apprentissage' constantly reappear. Baudelaire was a particular admirer of the American poet Edgar Allen Poe, and in particular, his work The Philosophy of Composition in which he explained the processes by which he came to write his long poem, The Raven. In fact, in 1859, Baudelaire translated it as Gen�se d'un po�me. Baudelaire also - in a clear sideswipe at the early French Romantics - made a scornful reference to `les amateurs du d�lire'. For the Romantics, poetry was a matter of a `fine frenzy', a divinely inspired moment of vision, an inspired delirium. For Baudelaire however, poetry should be born of a long deliberation and should contain deliberately constructed effects. By maintaining this, Baudelaire broke with the Romantic view of the poet as someone who suffers - although he is at times guilty of this - and replaces it with the image of the poet as someone who toils for his art. The poet as master craftsman, technician, specialist.

Further Reading

� G. Chesters, Baudelaire and the Poetics of Craft (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)

� R. Lloyd, Baudelaire's Literary Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)

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The Topography of Le P�re Goriot

The Paris of Balzac's lifetime was largely mediaeval, based as it was on a mediaeval street pattern and largely unchanged. It was not until the 1850s with the modernization programme commissioned by Napol�on III and carried out by Baron Haussmann that the modern Paris we know today took shape. Balzac's Paris was one of glitter, ferment and temptation since the capital became a magnet for the concentraion of wealth and power. Yet it was also one of squalid streets, dark alleys and poor hygiene.

By and large, the Paris depicted by Balzac in his novels conforms to this historical reality. Paris, in Le P�re Goriot is divided according to social, economic and moral differences. The description of the Pension Vauquer at the beginning of the novel with its hierarchy of levels and rooms for the comparatively rich and the comparatively poor represents the Parisian social space in miniature. Balzac's Paris is then, one of economic difference and social and moral distinction.

Let's now take a more detailed look at the topography (the division and organization of space) of the novel. David Bellos (1987) claims that Balzac's Paris is composed of three distinct and interrelated worlds:

� The Faubourg Saint-Marceau (left bank)

� The Faubourg Saint-Honor� (right bank)

� The Faubourg Saint Germain (left bank)

These three separate social spaces correspond, respectively, to the following social orders:

� The Faubourg Saint-Marceau (an impoverished urban sprawl populated by les mis�rables: Mme Vauquer, le p�re Goriot etc.)

� The Faubourg Saint-Honor� (the haute bourgeoisie of bankers and businessmen as well as the `new' aristocracy: Baron de Nucingen, M. Taillefer etc.)

� The Faubourg Saint Germain (old aristocracy: Madame de Beaus�ant; Madame de Restaud etc.)

Although this division illustrates Balzac's sensitivity to the new economic shifts in the capital it may be simpler to draw a distinction between just two worlds:

� La Pension Vauquer

� Le grand monde

This is undoubtedly the more dramatic ordering of social space since it leaves no room for half measures or being in-between. Indeed, this is the conceptual opposition that Balzac establishes and then systematically undermines throughout the novel. It provides the two separate battlegrounds on which the novel's three main protagonists (Goriot, Vautrin and Rastignac) struggle for supremacy, or in the case of Goriot, for survival. However, running through these two clearly defined territories is a deep seam or trammel of mystery and clandestine financial transactions. This seam or trammel undermines or destabilizes the hierarchy, the binary division of social space revealing not difference or separation but similarity and connection. Where, superficially, there appears to be difference, there is in fact sameness. In terms of the functionning of the plot the character of Rastignac is pivotal since his presence helps to reveal the secret connections of these two ostensibly autonomous realms. Part of Rastignac's bildung is thus the discovery of the underlying organizing principle of society. The underlying organizing principle of society is, of course, money. One of the key scenes in the novel is when Rastignac meets Anastasie and Monsieur de Restaud for the first time and he commits the embarassing social error of mentionning the name of le P�re Goriot. (Folio pp.94-5). Through this apparently innocent act of verbal awkwardness he strumbles unwittingly into an area of secrecy and taboo. He articulates the deep connectedness of the classes, particularly the middle and upper classes of the Restoration. Goriot's fortune has bought his daughter an advantageous marriage into the aristocracy but the aristocracy's reliance on the fortunes of the bourgeoisie must never be mentionned. Goriot, the visible reminder of dubious origins must be hidden from sight and never mentionned.

The superficial separation between the social worlds of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie is revealed to be illusory, it simply doesn't exist. The `high' and `low' worlds described in the novel are unified and united by an under the surface system of dehumanized financial relations. Money is the point of contact behind apparent social divisions, but it is a travesty of the real human bonds.This is the moral pattern underlying the superficial topography of the novel.

Further Reading

� D. Bellos, Balzac: Old Goriot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)

� C. Prendergast, Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama (London: Edward Arnold, 1976)

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�mile Zola on Stendhal

Stendhal est avant tout un psychologue. [...] Pour Stendhal l'homme est uniquement compos� d'un cerveau, les autres organes ne comptent pas [..] ce que je veux surtout retenir, c'est son d�dain du corps, son silence sur les �l�ments physiologiques de l'homme et sur le r�le des milieux ambiants. Nous le verrons bien tenir compte de la race dans La Chartreuse de Parme; il fera ce premier pas de nous donner des Italiens r�els et non des Fran�ais d�guis�s; seulement, jamais le paysage, le climat, l'heure de la journ�e, le temps qu'il fait, la nature en un mot n'interviendra et n'agira sur le personnage. La science moderne n'a �videmment point encore pass� par l�.

�mile Zola: `Stendhal' in Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881)

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Th�ophile Gautier on Art for Art's Sake

Il n'y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir � rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid; car l'expression de quelque besoin; et ceux de l'homme sont ignobles et d�go�tant, comme sa pauvre et infirme nature.

Th�ophile Gautier: Pr�face to Mademoiselle de Maupin (1834)

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Baudelaire: Le Vin

Poetry and wine - no less than revolution - are `utopian' expressions of human desire; they are all forms of revolt against the limitations and miseries of the Real, challenges issued by the human imagination to `un monde o� l'action n'est pas la soeur du r�ve'. Wine, poetry, and the collective action of the crowd all generate a particular form of `ivresse' that negates things as they are and awakens the vision of a Promised Land in which all human longings would at last be satisfied. (Burton: 1991 p.190)

The section entitled Le Vin deals with the search for escape and some form of inner peace through les paradis artificiels, the artificial paradises of stimulants like alcohol and drugs. It is a relatively short section of only five poems. As Baudelaire himself put it in the prose poem `Enivrez-vous':

Il faut toujours �tre ivre. Tout est l�: c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos �paules et vous penche sur la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans tr�ve.

Mais de quoi? de vin, de po�sie ou de vertu, � votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.

Alcohol and drugs are perfect stimulants for Baudelaire since they enduce both a heightened perception or apprehension of reality, a transformation of life's dull grey surfaces as well as bringing about a certain loss of self which erases inhibitions and creates a sensation of powerfulness. It is this transformation of both self and world that Baudelaire cherishes in wine. In `L'�me du vin' stages the voice of wine singing the praises of its magical powers to liberate and revivify. It claims to be the remedy to the ills of the overworked and underpaid as well as a valuable stimulant to artistic creation. Although Baudelaire's politics are notoriously hard to define, there is an element of social protest in `L'�me du vin' and, indeed, in all of the wine poems which are characterized by their language of working-class fraternity and rebelliousness. Alcohol abuse is the refuge of an exploited and alienated urban underclass driven to drink themselves into a state of oblivion, forgetting the cares of their wretched lives. In their inebriated state they dream dreams of revenge against those who dominate them and see, albeit momentarily, a better world.

Another important poem in Le Vin is `Le Vin des chiffonniers'. In the poem alcohol confers a sense of power and pride onto one of the city's most downtrodden and marginalized figure, the rag-picker, who makes his living scavenging amongst the litter of Paris. This poem - which might equally well go in the Tableaux parisiens section - is yet another self-conscious theorization of the creation of poetry. The rag-picker who picks up what has been disgarded on the city streets is like the poet who also picks up on the d�bris of urban life and turns it into something of artistic value. In fact, in the poem there are the lines `On voit un chiffonnier qui vient, hochant la t�te,/Butant, et se cognant aux murs comme un po�te' which makes the connection explicit.

In `Le Vin de l'assassin' wine soothes the pain and anger of the man who has just murdered his wife. Wine then offers a release from the pains inflicted by an injust social order, a cruel God but also, and this is an important point to stress, from the self-created sufferings we inflict upon ourselves. Baudelaire, in the poem `L'H�autontimoroum�nos' (from the Greek meaning self-executioner) from Spleen et Id�al described himself - and by implication all humankind - as both victim and executioner:

Je suis la plaie et le couteau!

Je suis le soufflet et la joue!

Je suis les membres et la roue!

Et la victime et le bourreau!

Wine in these poems is an ambivalent substance: it is described in `L'�me du vin' as a gift of God to mankind (`grain pr�cieux jet� par l'�ternel Semeur') but in both `Le Vin des chiffonniers' and `Le Vin de l'assassin' it is a man-made creation which offers an escape from a cruel world created and then abandonned by God. Those who drink wine feel themselves to be god-like and, as R.D.E. Burton has suggested (Burton: 1991 p.196), this auto-deification challenges the divine order and anticipates the poems in `R�volte'. In `Le Vin des chiffonniers', a cruel God touched by remorse gives the wretched the gift of sleep and forgetfulness but the man-made gift of wine offers the only real consolation to `ces vieux maudits qui meurent en silence'. The other thing alcohol and drugs provide is a brief glimpse of l'id�al, and as such, may be seen as analogues or even alternatives to artistic creation. The negative pull of spleen may be resisted - albeit momentarily - by indulging in the intoxicating pleasures of wine.

Further Reading

� R.D.E. Burton, Baudelaire and the Second Republic: Writing and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) 185-219

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Baudelaire on Balzac

J'ai maintes fois �t� �tonn� que la grande gloire de Balzac f�t de passer pour un observateur; il m'avait toujours sembl� que son principal m�rite �tait d'�tre visionnaire, et visionnaire passionn�.

Charles Baudelaire: Th�ophile Gautier (1859)

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Raymond Williams on the Nineteenth-Century City

For a number of social and historical reasons the metropolis of the second half of the nineteenth century and of the first half of the twentieth century moved into a quite new cultural dimension. It was now much more than the very large city, or even the capital city of an important nation. It was the place where new social and economic and cultural relations, beyond both city and nation in their older senses, were beginning to be formed: a distinct historical phase which was in fact to be extended, in the second half of the twentieth century, at least potentially, to the whole world.

Raymond Williams: `The Metropolis and Modernism' in E. Timms and D. Kelley (eds.) Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985) p.20

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�mile Zola on Stendhal

Stendhal est avant tout un psychologue. [...] Pour Stendhal l'homme est uniquement compos� d'un cerveau, les autres organes ne comptent pas [..] ce que je veux surtout retenir, c'est son d�dain du corps, son silence sur les �l�ments physiologiques de l'homme et sur le r�le des milieux ambiants. Nous le verrons bien tenir compte de la race dans La Chartreuse de Parme; il fera ce premier pas de nous donner des Italiens r�els et non des Fran�ais d�guis�s; seulement, jamais le paysage, le climat, l'heure de la journ�e, le temps qu'il fait, la nature en un mot n'interviendra et n'agira sur le personnage. La science moderne n'a �videmment point encore pass� par l�.

�mile Zola: `Stendhal' in Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881)

Texts: Tony McNeill. Concept and the text �Benjamin on Baudelaire or Shocks of the City�: Charlie Mansfield. Art: Carole Baker