Quotes About Flaubert

fast-thinkers ... think in cliches, in the "received ideas" that Flaubert talks about--banal, conventional, common ideas that are received generally. By the time they reach you, these ideas have already been received by everybody else, so reception is never a problem.

Plus l'artiste s'affirme comme tel en affirmant son autonomie, plus il constitue le « bourgeois », dans lequel on englobe, avec Flaubert, « le bourgeois en blouse et le bourgeois en redingote », comme « béotien » ou « philistin », inapte à aimer l'œuvre d'art, à se l'approprier réellement, c'est-à-dire symboliquement.

Baudelaire, ici encore, se montre beaucoup plus radical que Flaubert ; notamment à propos de George Sand : bête, lourde, bavarde, « elle a dans les idées morales la même profondeur de jugement […] que les concierges et les filles entretenues » ; « théologienne du sentiment », elle

Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.

I thought of writing books myself once. I had the ideas; I even made notes. But I was a doctor, married with children. You can only do one thing well: Flaubert knew that.

But what helps? What do we need to know? Not everything. Everything confuses. Directness also confuses. The full-face portrait staring back at you hypnotises. Flaubert is usually looking away in his portraits and photographs. He's looking away so that you can't catch his eye; he's also looking away because what he can see over your shoulder is more interesting than your shoulder.

Have you anything to declare? Yes, I'd like to declare a small case of French flu, a dangerous fondness for Flaubert, a childish delight in French road-signs, and a love of the light as you look north. Is there any duty to pay on any of these? There ought to be.

Pase lo que pase –escribió Flaubert cuando estalló la guerra franco-prusiana–, seguiremos siendo unos estúpidos.» ¿Simple pesimismo jactancioso? ¿O se trata de la necesaria aceleración de las expectativas, cuando aún no se puede pensar, actuar o escribir adecuadamente?

Flaubert: encerrar y sojuzgar al gran escritor, al gran burgués, al terror, al enemigo, al sabio. Un ataque al corazón puso punto final al primer proyecto; la ceguera abrevió el segundo.

mayor sueño de la democracia consiste en elevar al proletariado hasta el nivel de estupidez de la burguesía», escribió Flaubert.

Los críticos de nuestros días que, con tremenda pomposidad, dicen que todas las novelas, obras de teatro y poemas no son más que textos – ¡el autor de la guillotina!– no deberían olvidarse del caso de Flaubert. Un siglo antes que ellos ya estaba redactando textos y negando la significación de su propia personalidad.

There is a strong tradition in the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth of artists seeing marriage as the enemy of art. Love, yes; marriage, no. Flaubert took the wedding of any literary friend as a personal betrayal, and beyond that, a betrayal of their shared art.

In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?

La estupidez consiste en querer concluir», escribió Flaubert. Pocas veces se confirmaba esa afirmación como en las disputas, donde se identificaba al imbécil por su obsesión por querer tener la última palabra.

I do not admire Flaubert, yet when I am told that by his own admission all he hoped to accomplish in in Salammbo was to 'give the impression of the color yellow' and in Madame Bovary 'to do something that would have the color of those mouldy cornices that harbor wood lice' and that he cared for nothing else, such generally extra-literary preoccupations leave me anything but indifferent.

in Flaubert's eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of being able to think properly:

Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness.

Axiom : hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. But I include in the word bourgeois , the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone , that is to say the literary men , who are the people, or to say it better : the tradition of humanity.

Well, it made sense. If she could write a book, he would be out of a job. That's why Madame Bovary had to be too dumb and banal to write Madame Bovary: so Flaubert could have a great humane moment where he said he was Madame Bovary. But I wasn't dumb or banal, and I lived in the future. Nobody was going to trick me into marrying some loser, and even if they did, I would write the goddamn book myself.

As Gustave Flaubert said, "I defend the poor Republic but I don't believe in it.

manifiesta una constante sentimental de Flaubert: amar a mujeres mayores (sus tres amantes le llevaron varios años: Eulalie Foucaud, Elisa Schlésinger y Louise Colet).

Bovary, donde todo equidista de aquellos extremos y corresponde a la existencia sin brillo, chata y triste de las gentes comunes. No digo que Flaubert inició la representación novelesca de la pequeña burguesía, en tanto que la novela romántica había descrito un mundo feudal y aristocrático.

de fraternidad enemiga, de vecindad áspera (como la del olor de los limones y de la carroña humana en Jaffa), lo que hechiza a Flaubert.

Naturalmente, la comparación de lo ocurrido a Sartre en este libro con lo que le ocurrió a Flaubert en el último que escribió es obligatoria. ¿Cabe un parecido mayor, un fracaso tan igualmente admirable y por razones tan idénticas como el de L'Idiot de la famille y Bouvard et Pécuchet? Ambas son tentativas imposibles, empresas destinadas a fracasar porque ambas se habían fijado de antemano una meta inalcanzable, estaban