Saturday Rave: the wisdom of Gustave Flaubert.

 I was going to wax lyrical about Flaubert's style - it's what most people do, and he did spend years writing each of his novels, labouring to find mots justes to make up each perfectly accurate and harmonious sentence - but then I came across this photograph of the man and a new question began to obsess me: 

how on earth did he eat soup?

This may seem a frivolous question, but, really, how can you expect a man to write stuff worth reading if he can't cope with the practical essentials of life?

Flaubert himself recommended a dull steady life to allow room for imagining spectacular fiction, but there have been plenty of writers with highly irregular lives who have managed to whack out reams of thrilling tales. Anyway, Flaubert actually didn't really write all that much, dying as he did in his fifties and being a particularly painstaking writer. What he did write, though, has been a great influence on the modern novel: there are even those who claim Flaubert is the foundation of it.

Flaubert said I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings, whereas I think you'd be more likely to get run over by a truck; he also spoke of the in expressible charm of the abyss, which I have never experienced, myself.

But he worked hard for a long time and he produced Madame Bovary. He said the art of writing is the art of discovering what you think (which can be true, though I'm not sure it's an art) and he also said that anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough, which is a piece of great wisdom.

He never married or had children. He said he didn't want to burden anyone with existence; but, I don't know, perhaps it really does all come down to soup in the end. Soup was one of the causes of Madame Bovary's troubles:

...she was becoming more irritated with him...in taking soup he made a gurgling noise with every mouthful; and, as he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples.

What a perfect description of the way a relationship fails. 

But whether Life imitated Art in this case, or the other way round, I cannot say.

Word To Use Today: soup. This word is simple perfection. It is soupe in Old French, suppa in Latin and soppa in Old Norse. It is also, of course, the sound of a tentative slurp at something that might prove to be much too hot.