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Flaubert and Madame Bovary
Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait | Francis Steegmuller
3 posts | 1 read | 1 to read
Francis Steegmuller's beautifully executed double portrait of Madame Bovary and her maker is a remarkable and unusual biographical study, a sensitive and detailed account of how an unpromising young man turns himself into one of the world's greatest novelists. Steegmuller starts with the young Flaubert, prone to mysterious fits, hypochondriacal, at odds with and yet dependent on his bourgeois family. Then, drawing on Flaubert's voluminous correspondence, Steegmuller tracks his subject through friendships and love affairs, a trip to the Orient, nervous breakdown and tenuous recovery, and finally into the study, where a mind at once restless and jaded finds a focus in the precisely detailed reality of an imagined woman, utterly ordinary in her unhappiness, whose story was to revolutionize literature.
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merelybookish
merelybookish
Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait | Francis Steegmuller
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Took me a while but I thoroughly enjoyed this biography of Flaubert. Divided into three parts -- Romanticism, The Purge, Realism -- it charts Flaubert's development from an eccentric romantic youth to a serious artist exploiting bourgeois style to skewer the bourgeoisie. It helps that Flaubert is a truly entertaining (and inconsistent) character. Bios are not my usual cuppa but this one read like a good novel. Now to revisit Madame Bovary!

batsy Sounds great! I've been having the itch to revisit Madam Bovary again too but want to get a fancy edition of a different translation 🙂 1y
merelybookish @batsy Oooh what translation? (Not that I need to purchase a fancy new edition 💸) 1y
batsy I'm torn between the Adam Thorpe and Lydia Davis translations! Which translation have you read? I have the Penguin Popular Classics edition that I bought when I was a teen and haven't read a different one since. 1y
merelybookish @batsy I would have read something in university. Penguin Classics edition probably. I don't usually pay too much to translator as it can become another rabbit hole I can get lost in. (Even tho I can appreciate how important the translator is.) That said, Lydia Davis did the first volume of Proust, and so it would be tempting to read her version of Flaubert 1y
69 likes4 comments
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merelybookish
merelybookish
Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait | Francis Steegmuller
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Perfect example of #moodreading. Not sure why (after years of owning it), I decided I wanted to read this literary bio of Flaubert and his most famous character. And yet, here I am. (Perhaps I'm still in the mood for all things 🇫🇷.)
Considered one of the best examples of literary biography, it is proving an entertaining read so far. Plus, there is something to reading about a different time and realizing many of today's problems are not new.

Leftcoastzen It‘s weird how they call your name sometimes when they have been sitting on the shelves for years. 2y
merelybookish @Leftcoastzen Yes! It's why it's so hard to get rid of a book, even if it's been unread for years. 2y
57 likes2 comments
quote
temptingpersephone
temptingpersephone
Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait | Francis Steegmuller
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"You will thank me later, perhaps, for having had the courage to not be more tender."

That line about other stupid, frivolous women aside: Goodness gracious.

1 like