{"id":32296,"date":"2020-03-24T20:38:11","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T19:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=32296"},"modified":"2023-04-13T18:30:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T16:30:52","slug":"madame-bovary-cest-nous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/literature\/madame-bovary-cest-nous\/","title":{"rendered":"Madame Bovary, that's us!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les bouquins du mardi - Special edition \u00abLes coronar\u00e9trospectives de la litt\u00e9rature\u00bb - Jonas Follonier<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was looking forward to one day writing about Madame Bovary<\/em>, my favorite novel, even though I've never actually read it (see below). In my opinion, there is nothing of importance that has been written that is not contained in this work by Flaubert. A book about nothing, but where everything is present, against a backdrop of boredom and repetition. Commentary.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Madame Bovary<\/em>, which Flaubert wrote in fifty-three months. The Charterhouse of Parma<\/em> in fifty-three days, draw whatever conclusions you like), recounts the daily life of Emma Bovary, a woman married to a provincial doctor who pursues adulterous relationships to alleviate her boredom. But the repetitive nature of Emma's bovarysm - a psychological phenomenon of dissatisfaction named after Flaubert's classic - perpetuates rather than kills boredom. Beyond the plot, which is not a plot at all, centered around the main character and her actions, it is the province that is Flaubert's literary material in this novel. A novel which, incidentally, is not subtitled \u00abnovel\u00bb and which strips Emma of her identity by naming her \u00abMadame Bovary\u00bb in the title, thereby demonstrating her status as an example among others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boredom, a gift from God<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Everything in Madame Bovary<\/em>, is boredom. Starting with the reading. What an ordeal for the reader to read this book as a book, from beginning to end! It's undoubtedly because of the boredom intrinsic to Flaubert's tale of nothing - for yes, it's a \u00abbook about nothing\u00bb, by the author's own admission - that I've never read this book. It's my bible, but I've never read it. I'm exaggerating, it was for the word: I've read it, but never continuously. I have read Madame Bovary<\/em> in fragments, perhaps I've even read it dozens of times in total, but I've never read it. Anyway, moving on. In addition to the lack of interest in the fate of this provincial woman who spends her life expecting to live better than she is living, it's Flaubertian writing itself that conveys this omnipresent boredom: use of the imperfect subjunctive, description of biotopes to the point of saturation, duration of unimportant actions - the important ones, on the other hand, take from zero to one sentence each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read also: <\/strong>Stlaker<\/em><\/strong>, a metaphorical\nTarkovsky's metaphorical film to (re)discover<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is enlightening to recall the genesis of Madame Bovary<\/em>Flaubert went to Egypt with Maxime Du Camp, who was there to take photographs, and was so bored by the trip that he came up with the idea of a bored woman in Normandy, as he sailed down the Nile (according to Du Camp). All he needed was a plot: Flaubert was a lucky man, with a story whisked to him by Louis Bouilhet, his other great friend. In any case, for Flaubert, it's not the story that counts, it's the form! \u00abL'histoire d'un pou vaut bien celle d'Alexandre\u00bb, he said. And so it is that boredom is central to a work that was itself spawned by a period of boredom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

On this subject, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Beigbeder, who is interviewed in our magazine edition to be published next month<\/a>, The world is unreal, except when it's boring\u00ab. And it's true. Flaubert pulled off the brilliant trick of creating his work - and his character - in his own image: Emma is bored in her hole, just as Flaubert was bored on the waters of the Nile. \u00bbMadame Bovary is me,\u00ab exclaims the writer somewhere in a letter. The most evocative image of Emma Bovary's universal boredom is her eternal posture at the window. Flaubert believes that country people stand at their windows the way city dwellers go to the theater. Ennui, quand tu nous tiens! There's also something sensual behind that feeling of pleasure with her forehead against the window. But Emma's sensuality, Fabrice will explain it better than I can.<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Automatons that\nthat we are!<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Another central matrix of Madame Bovary<\/em> - which has nothing theoretical about it, the reader gets it right in the face: repetition, linked to boredom. Another value of the imperfect, you'll note. Let's take a step back. What is Madame Bovary<\/em>, if not a masterpiece of the 19th-century cultural and artistic movement of realism.th<\/sup> century? Well, realism, as Flaubert claims, is designed to produce an effect of reality. Contrary to what we've heard all too often, this literary genre aims to reproduce reality. likely<\/em>  - that is, what the public is likely to believe - not reality. This literature is not based on reality, but on itself, like all literature in the end. For what better place to find examples of the illusion of reality than in illusion itself, namely art? All literature, then, thinks only in its own terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n