French novelist of the realist school, best-known for MADAME BOVARY (1857), a story of adultery and unhappy love affair of the provincial wife Emma Bovary. As a writer Flaubert was a perfectionist, who did not make a distinction between a beautiful or ugly subject: all was in the style. The idea, he argued, only exists by virtue of its form - its elements included the perfect word, cunningly contrived and verified rhythms, and a genuine architectural structure.

"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
"I have experienced it," she replied.
"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." (from Madame Bovary)

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen into a family of doctors. His father, Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, a chief surgeon at the Rouen municipal hospital, made money investing in land. Flaubert's mother, Anne-Justine-Caroline (née Fleuriot), was the daughter of a physician; she became the most important person in the author's life. Anne-Justine-Caroline died in 1872.

Flaubert started to write during his school years. At the age of fifteen he won a prize for an essay on mushrooms. Actually his work was a copy. A disappointment in his teens - Flaubert fell in love with Elisa Schlésinger, who was married and some 10 years his senior - inspired much of his early writing. His bourgeois background Flaubert found early burdensome, and eventually his rebel against it led to his expulsion from school. Flaubert completed his education privately in Paris.

In the 1840s Flaubert studied law at Paris, a brief episode in his life, and in 1844 he had a nervous attack. "I was cowardly in my youth," Flaubert wrote once to George Sand. "I was afraid of life." He recognized from suffering a nervous disease, although it could have been epilepsy. However, the diagnosis changed Flaubert's life. He failed his law exams and decided to devote himself to literature. In this Flaubert was helped by his father who bought him a house at Croisset, on the River Seine between Paris and Rouen.

In 1846 Flaubert met the writer Louise Colet. They corresponded regularly and she became Flaubert's mistress although they met infrequently. Colet gave in Lui (1859) her account of their relationship. After the death of both his father and his married sister, Flaubert moved at Croisset, the family's country home near Rouen. Until he was 50 years old, Flaubert lived with his mother - he was called ''hermit of Croisset.'' The household also included his niece Caroline. His maxim was: "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Although Flaubert once stated ''I am a bear and want to remain a bear in my den,'' he kept good contacts to Paris and witnessed the Revolution of 1848. Later he received honors from Napoleon III. From 1856 Flaubert spent winters in Paris.

Flaubert's relationship with Collet ended in 1855. From November 1849 to April 1851 he travelled with the writer Maxime du Camp in North Africa, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. It took several Egyptian guides to help Flaubert to the top of the Great Pyramid - the muscular, almost six feet tall author was at that time actually relatively fat. On his return Flaubert started Madame Bovary, which took five years to complete. It appeared first in the Revue (1856) and in book form next year. The realistic depiction of adultery was condemned as offensive to morality and religion. Flaubert was prosecuted, though he escaped conviction, which was not a common result during the official censorship of the Second Empire. When Baudelaire's provocative collection of verse, The Flowers of Evil, was brought before the same judge, Baudelaire was fined and 6 of the 100 poems were suppressed.

Madame Bovary was published in two volumes in 1857, but it appeared originally in the Revue de Paris, 1856-57. - Emma Bovary is married to Charles Bovary, a physician. As a girl Emma has read Walter Scott, she has romantic dreams and longs for adventure. "What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides." Emma seeks release from the boredom of her marriage from love affairs with two men - with the lawyer Léon Dupuis and then with Rodolphe Boulanger. Emma wants to leave her husband with him. He rejects the idea and Emma becomes ill. After she has recovered, she starts again her relationship with Léon, who works now in Rouen. They meet regularly at a hotel. Emma is in heavy debts because of her lifestyle and she poisons herself with arsenic. Charles Bovary dies soon after her and their daughter Berthe is taken care of poor relatives. Berthe starts to earn her living by working in a factory. - The novel created an outrage. Flaubert was even tried and acquitted on charges of immorality for it. The character of Emma was important to the author - society offered her no escape and once Flaubert said: "Emma, c'est moi." Delphine Delamare, who died in 1848, is alleged to have been the original of Emma Bovary.

In the 1860s Flaubert enjoyed success as a writer and intellectual at the court of Napoleon III. Among his friends were Zola, George Sand, Hippolyte Taine, and the Russian writer Turgenev, with whom he shared similar aesthetic ideals - dedication to realism, and to the nonjudgmental representation of life. Their complete correspondence was published in English in 1985. ''The thought that I shall see you this winter quite at leisure delights me like the promise of an oasis," he wrote to Turgenev. "The comparison is the right one, if only you knew how isolated I am! Who is there to talk to now? Who is there in our wretched country who still 'cares about literature'? Perhaps one single man? Me! The wreckage of a lost world, an old fossil of romanticism! You will revive me, you'll do me good.'' (from Flaubert & Turgenev. A Friendship in Letters, edited and translated by Barbara Beaumont, 1985)

Flaubert was by nature melancholic. His perfectionism, long hours at his work table with a frog inkwell, only made his life harder. In a letter to Ernest Feydeau he wrote: "Books are made not like children but like pyramids... and are just as useless!" Flaubert's other, non-literary life was marked by his prodigious appetite for prostitutes, which occasionally led to venereal infections. "It may be a perverted taste," Flaubert said, "but I love prostitution, and for itself, too, quite apart from its carnal aspects." His last years were shadowed by financial worries - he helped with his modest fortune his niece's family after their bankruptcy. Flaubert died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 8, in 1880.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/flaubert.htm

What do you think are the ten greatest books of all time?  What would the list look like if it was compiled from the top ten choices of over one hundred of the top authors in the world?

Lev Grossman, in Time (Jan. 15, 2007), states, "...literary lists are basically an obscenity... Take it from me, a critic who has committed this particular sin many times over."  It's a fun read: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1578073,00.html

I say, let's see their top ten (compiled from their individual lists): 

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot

So, there you go.  What's your top ten (or is it obscene to ask?)?

I also suspect he had a special appreciation for Flaubert because of Flaubert’s boldness in taking on an extremely taboo subject:

Indeed, the novel was actually tried in a court of justice for obscenity. Just imagine that. As if the work of an artist could ever be obscene. I am glad to say that Flaubert won his case. That was exactly a hundred years ago. In our days, our times…But let me keep to my subject.

Not that Nabokov would know anything about morality-based criticisms of a novel, oh no.

For this particular lecture, Nabokov doesn’t only focus on the actual text of Madame Bovary but he brings in a discussion of Flaubert’s letters to his then lover, Louise Colet, written while Flaubert was holed away in Normandy writing the novel. That added input adds a whole new dimension to understanding Flaubert’s intent. We often wonder whether great writers do things on purpose in their books, or if critics see things or find connections/allusions/hidden meanings the writer created by accident or maybe wasn’t fully aware of. The excerpts of these letters show that Flaubert knew exactly what he was doing at all times. And also that he worked very hard to construct his novel in a particular way according to a set of particular intentions.

Nabokov taught Madame Bovary to his students at Wellesley and Cornell using a translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling (the daughter of Karl Marx) which is available at Gutenberg. I don’t know how many other translations were around at the same time, but Nabokov has nothing but angry criticism for “the translators”. He went so far as to re-translate huge sections for his classes and made lists of mistranslated words.

One of his more interesting criticisms is when he says that the translator incorrectly translates Flaubert’s use of the French imparfait (the imperfect form of the past tense), a device which allows Flaubert to express the notion of uninterrupted time, things a person "used to do", and any ruptures in that flow (all intentional constructs in his writing).

In Tostes Emma walks out with her whippet: "She would begin (not "began") by looking around her to see if nothing had changed since the last she had been there. She would find (not "found") again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, would wander (not "wandered") at random..."

 According to Nabokov, Flaubert used the imparfait to fill the entire book with a sense of suspended animation, giving weight to Emma’s feeling of dreary monotony. That a translator would so casually overlook this aesthetic decision must have driven Nabokov insane.

Something Nabokov and I do not agree on is whether Charles knew about Emma’s infidelities. I mentioned this in my last post and after reading Nabokov’s essay I had to go back to the text to make sure I didn’t misunderstand something. But some time after Emma dies, Charles runs into Rodolphe (Emma’s first lover) in town and the two men go and drink a cider together. They’re talking but both men are looking at the other, just thinking of Emma. Suddenly Charles looks right at him and says, Je ne vous en veux pas, which means, I don’t hate you, or I don’t blame you. Flaubert, of course, turns the moment inside out by quickly switching to Rodolphe’s perspective and painting Charles in an awful, pathetic light – the same way Rodolphe treated him when he was secretly meeting with Emma.

I’m toying with the idea of picking up Flaubert’s L’Education Sentimentale, another I read in college but have nearly forgotten by now. It might be worth it after learning so much about Flaubert's writing technique from Nabokov.

Otherwise, I’ve got to read Longinus this week. And I started Richard Ford’s Wildfire, which is quite short and I think I’ll finish up this afternoon. I am relatively unfamiliar with Ford’s writing style except for one or two of his short stories. In this novel, he’s using the first person and writes these kind of serpentine sentences with lots of commas and movement to them. I like the technique and how it informs my understanding of the narrator. But more on that later!

I've just been extremely busy, with school in the morning and work the rest of the day. It's tough, but I'm surviving.

I'm currently reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. It's a bit slow (I've read only about 40 pages), but I'm sure that it will get better.

A few things on my mind:

1. CHURCH

I'm quite displeased with my church. I don't feel like I'm being refreshed or spiritually fed. My pastor's sermons consist of loquacious, corny jokes and a little exploration of a Bible verse. I don't feel intellectually or spiritually stimulated. I want to learn about how I can apply God's Word into my life especially since today the Bible is viewed as outdated. I want to be inspired to live for God everyday!

Of course, the responsibility for this falls not only on the church but also on myself. However, I do think it quite pointless to attend a church which does not foster my growth in Christ.

I'm still thinking about this.

2. REDA

To not get into a long story, an ex-coworker of mine owes me and my mom $700, and she fled to Arizona without paying me.

I still fret about whether or not she'll pay. I'm planning on going to a legal counsel place here in town and ask for advice.

Today, though, I heard that she didn't get the job she was hoping for in Arizona. It just goes to show God doesn't bless people who are wayward.

3. COLLEGE

I'm transferring to Fresno State this Fall, and right now I am one credit short of making my 60 transferable units. If anyone's reading this out there, please pray for me that the Cooperative Education department of Merced College lets me sign up for a work-credit program even though the summer semester's already half done. (Thanks.)

Also, I haven't gotten my financial aid for the school year 07-08 because I didn't have all the necessary paperwork. I'm getting the last of the delinquent paperwork, so I'm praying I get that money before the summer semester ends.

4. JOB

I applied to a Marriott in Fresno, and I'm hoping that they'll hire me. I'm stressing a bit because when the manager called me, my phone was acting up and not working, so I missed a lot of calls. I'm thinking of calling him back tomorrow morning, and I hope everything turns out well.

Well, there you go. Amidst this, the truth of which I can remind myself is: To God be the glory! Every decision I make in life and every breath and step I take should aim to glorify Him. Ultimately, this is my goal. :)

The reason I laughed is because I just finished Madame Bovary. And I think Aristotle would have taken Flaubert out and bought him champagne. Both Emma and Charles (and Rodolphe and Leon, for that matter) are so perfectly mediocre. Just earnest enough for us to sympathize with but just selfish, just cowardly enough for us to want to keep a weary distance.

I first read Madame Bovary in college. I remember enjoying it. I remember feeling sorry for Emma. I remember disliking lunky Charles and thinking it was so unfair she couldn’t just run off with the men she loved. To put it bluntly, I think I kind of missed the entire point.

Reading the novel again was fun. I still feel sorry for Emma, for her silly selfishness and desperate scheming, but I think Flaubert did something much more than write a scandalous account of adultery and feminine ruin. He characterized the maudlin yearnings of a mediocre bourgeoisie while criticizing the superficial sentimentality of mass culture. Two very scathing social assessments, both still relevant to a contemporary discussion.

It’s hard to decide who is the more pathetic of the two – Charles or Emma. Charles seems unbelievably clueless for a long time, which is far less interesting, until just after Emma kills herself when there is an affecting scene between Charles and Rodolphe (Emma’s first lover) and it becomes quite apparent that he knew all along. I looked at Charles differently after that and it made me reconsider why Flaubert begins and ends the book with Charles.

Madame Bovary isn’t really a tragedy (Aristotle would have figured this one out much more quickly than I did) – it’s a satire. Charles is an anti-hero, Emma a false heroine. It’s sad when she dies but not unexpected – and Charles mourns her, but it seems fairly dismal to mourn the woman who never really loved you. Like Revolutionary Road (a modern meditation on a similar theme) the real tragedy befalls Berthe – their daughter. Unloved, unwanted, and uncared for, she ends up an impoverished worker at a cotton mill.

I deliberately avoided reading the Nabokov essay until I’d written up my thoughts but I’m eager to get started and see what he has to say. There are also several film versions of Madame Bovary but two I am particularly interested in finding – a 1949 Minnelli with Jennifer Jones playing Emma and the most recent, from 1991 with the lovely Isabelle Huppert and an apparently outstanding performance by Jean-Francois Balmer as Charles. 

Non ha fondo. Immagine dell’infinito.
Dà grandi ispirazioni. Sulla riva del mare
bisogna sempre saper guardare lontano. Contemplandolo esclamare:
“Quanta acqua! Quanta acqua!”

Gustave Flaubert, 1850

foto: © M.G.

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

I took the original formatting style and made it a bit more complicated.  Spicing up these sorts of projects is the only path to redemption.  Strike-through entries have been read; bolded entries have been thoroughly enjoyed; under-lined have been partially read; and italicized may be read soon.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Several comments:

* Why is Hamlet on the list when the Complete Works of Shakespeare is on the list as well?

* Who is this Bill character that wrote Notes from a Small Island?

* Why is the Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe on the list when the Chronicles of Narnia is on the list too?

* Why isn't Madame Bovary higher?!

* I hope that no one thinks this list is comprehensive.  The whole thing, in my opinion, is a concentric flaw.  Props to furthering inner-Anglo canon isolation.  Cheers to such cowardly fragmentation.  The next "survey" should include Middle Eastern and Eastern books, a better selection of American Literature, and definitely some more of the translated work (a la Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Nikolai Gogol--you know, all those stapling giants . . .?) that has defined so much history, culture, and humanity (or lack thereof).

* The number of completed entries equals twenty-eight.  Should I be proud or ashamed that this number is so low?

Paul Auster:
A menudo me pregunto porqué escribo. No es sólo para crear obras hermosas o relatos entretenidos. Es una actividad que parezco necesitar para sobrevivir. Me siento muy mal cuando no lo hago. No es que escribir me produzca un gran placer, pero es mucho peor si no lo hago.
(…)
Escribir, en cierto sentido, es una actividad que me ayuda a aliviar la tensión de esos secretos sepultados. Recuerdos ocultos, traumas, cicatrices infantiles…es evidente que las novelas surgen de una parte inaccesible de nosotros mismos.

John Dos Passos:
Al escribir te aligeras mucho el pecho, echas fuera emociones, impresiones, opiniones. La curiosidad te empuja a continuar, es la fuerza conductora. Hay que librarse de lo que se ha reunido; es algo que hay que decir acerca de la literatura. Hay mucho alivio en un volumen grueso.

Franz Kafka:
Flaubert escribe en una carta que su novela era una roca a la cual se aferraba para no desparecer bajo las olas del mundo que le rodeaba (…) Sólo que en mi caso resulta algo complicado este asunto. Con ayuda de mis garabateos huyo de mí mismo, para llegar a atraparme a mí mismo en el punto final. No logro escapar de mí.

Textos extraídos del libro El oficio de escritor (selección de Ana Ayuso -- ediciones y talleres de escritura creativa Fuentetaja)

So my plan is to start getting a few more boxes ready tonight, a few more tomorrow, a good lot on Thursday then the brunt on Friday. Saturday we make small trips in the car, and Sunday, the big guns come to carry our couch for us. Perhaps I shall sit on it while they carry it and make them earn that completely ludicrous $600 estimate. They think it is going to take them four hours and three guys to move 24 items down two flights of stairs, over two miles of road, then up one flight into the new place. I say two guys two hours, max. They don't know I've done this 13 times in 12 years. Yes, I shit you not.

In the meanwhile, to soothe myself I have been reading The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. Now, maybe this makes me a bad lesbian, but this is the first time I am reading the book in my entire 36 years. Nevertheless, I have to tell you this book is incredible. Hall is a great writer. She has a keen perspective on social, religious and political topics and somehow is able to weave them into this incredibly tender story without it seeming blatant, nor you feeling preached to. She writes it like a secret, and as I read it I somehow feel like I am doing something bad, like sneaking cakes on Atkins, or having an affair. There's something about the way our main character must hide but cannot hide herself that Hall has been able to capture in the tone, mood and language. The book emanates this clandestine feeling just as much as the story in the book itself does. I'm completely in love with it. I am taking note how she writes about nature, and how her descriptions of nature play such a critical role in understanding human nature. As I told L, I think this book is an excellent companion book to Madame Bovary - the main difference being in Hall's book, the woman is actively powerful, not passive. I am taking lots, and lots, of notes.

On that note, here's the Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness quote of the day, which feels especially pertinent today:

On the wedding day not a few eyes would be wet at the sight of so youthful a man and maiden 'joined together in an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency.' For such ancient traditions - in spite of the fact that man's innocency could not even survive one bite of an apple shared with a woman - are none the less apt to be deeply moving.

Amen.

5 - 7 de mayo

  Un 8 de mayo nacieron personalidades de la cultura como el cineasta Roberto Rossellini, la escritora Julieta Campos y el jazzista Keith Jarrett; murieron el novelista Gustave Flaubert, el pintor Paul Gauguin, el filósofo Oswald Spengler y la poetisa Guadalupe Amor.

    1880.- Muere el novelista francés Gustave Flaubert, considerado el padre del género realista de la literatura. Autor de la novela "Madame Bovary" , que genera gran escándalo en su época. Nace el 12 de diciembre de 1821.

    1932.- Nace la escritora cubana Julieta Campos, ganadora del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia 1974 (México) por su libro "Se llama Sabina" . Otras de sus obras son "La herencia obstinada: análisis de cuentos nahuas" y "Muerte por agua" .

    1945.- Nace el jazzista estadounidense Keith Jarrett, a quien se considera un estilista del piano. Ha tocado al lado de reconocidos músicos como Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd y Miles Diavis.

     2000.- Muere la poeta mexicana Guadalupe "Pita" Amor, musa de varios intelectuales. En sus obras refleja su controvertida personalidad, temperamental e irreverente. Nace el 30 de mayo, algunas fuentes citan que de 1918 y otras de 1920.

È il racconto della vita della domestica Félicité. Nella sua esistenza non ci sono grandi eventi, o accadimenti particolari. Si alzava all’alba per non perdere la messa, dice Flaubert, e lavorava fino a sera senza fermarsi un istante. Poi, terminata la cena, messe in ordine le stoviglie e sprangata la porta, sepolto il ceppo nel camino con la cenere, si addormentava davanti al focolare con il rosario in mano. Aveva lavorato da sempre, sin da bambina, quando, morti i suoi genitori, era stata presa da un fattore che l’aveva messa a badare alle mucche in campagna. Una breve e infelice storia d’amore era stata la sua unica parentesi romantica. Una volta assunta come domestica dalla signora Aubain, lì era rimasta per cinquant’anni.
La sua intera vita è dedicata agli altri (la sua padrona, i figli di lei, un nipote) alla Chiesa (la cui dottrina Félicité segue con la passione, l’innocenza e l’ingenuità di una bimba), alla casa, al suo adorato pappagallo Loulou. Vive le gioie e i lutti con la stessa intensità, la stessa muta adesione alle leggi della Natura. Apre il suo cuore a chiunque e, seppur spesso ferita o ingannata, in questa dedizione a ogni essere vivente, Félicité trova la sua ragione di esistere. Così come ha sempre vissuto sola, termina la sua vita da sola. Si spegne nel suo letto, dopo una malattia dolorosa, molti stenti, un po’ di follia, regalandoci però la fulgida e rara intuizione di un’anima pura, buona, semplice, e infine necessaria.

L'appuntamento è per il 10 maggio alle 21.00. L'ingresso è di 10 euro, 8 euro ridotto (studenti e pensionati).

Per informazioni e prenotazioni: 0773.841508, 329.2068078

info@teatrofellinipontinia.com

http://www.teatrofellinipontinia.com/

Imaginer la réalité d'une Emma à Yonville, en un printemps normand anormalement neigeux et victime d'un assassinat qui n'avait, au fond même pas lieu d'être, voilà bien une belle trouvaille. Philippe Doumenc nous renvoie dans le décor et la vie remodelés des personnages de Flaubert à la suite d'un jeune inspecteur plein d'entrain et d'émois à la recherche d'une vérité... qui se confirme dans l'oeuvre de Gustave.

Mais on sent chez l'auteur un tel plaisir à cisailler le détail d'une oeuvre qu'il connaît à l'évidence par coeur, réinventant ici ou là quelques traits, chargeant quelque peu, mais avec la grâce du langage, des caractères déjà passablement médiocres, cupides, lubriques ou obséquieux, que c'est aussi pour le lecteur un réel plaisir de suivre ce Rémi, émule de Rouletabille. Au gré de toutes ses hypothèses et interrogations, entre le roman vrai et un possible et dérisoire imaginaire, il nous fait passer un délicieux moment.

Une occasion, aussi, de revenir à l'oeuvre initiale, celle de toute une vie, où de découvrir, autre bijou ce Quelque chose à déclarer **de Julien Barnes, autre fin connaisseur de Gustave Flaubert et amoureux indéfectible de la France, et surtout de l'esprit français, dont Philippe Doumenc témoigne ici une fois encore.

*Actes sud, 2007

** Folio

**

Gustave Flaubert.

Throughout Madame Bovary, the theme of hope is continually under discussion; whether consciously or not. Emma’s continual boredom (the ennui) is repeatedly juxtaposed with the stagnant lifestyle of Charles. Even the prose, which follows Emma’s life with a very malleable mood, seems to become lively when she is excited and drawn out when she is bored. While Charles seems to be perfectly content with his easy, bourgeois existence, Emma finds the same daily routine to be a sort of eternal recurrence; the ultimate Nietzschean nightmare. And I agree with her. Throughout the time spent reading this book, everyone I have spoken with has recoiled in horror at the despicable individual of Emma Bovary. But this is a very typical, and I think somewhat naïve, reaction. Those who question the status quo, especially in a Kierkegaardian “the crowd stifles the individual” type of approach, are always labeled as sinners and traitors (similar to the way Flaubert was treated by the French government after having the novel published). Emma Bovary’s questioning of the bourgeoisie is not the problem in Madame Bovary; it is the way in which she reacts to this most harmful of problems that should be under criticism. And this leads us to the question of hope.

Emma’s boredom springs from an innate, and very Christian, desire to be released from the grips of an evil world’s system of conformity. She finds the class system boring and unsatisfying. The endless flow of capital and the rise of social status is a hellish and never-ending ladder to climb, and inevitably it leads to nowhere. The problem is inherently eschatological. Her plea is similar to that of the writer of Ecclesiastes: “All is vanity and grasping for the wind”. Life as currently constituted by the powers-that-be is not worth living. This is the prophet’s cry. It is only a prophetic imagination that can understand that the powers of this world hold people in subjugation through mindless repetition, a sort of devil’s liturgy. Only this prophet can agree with Chesterton that boredom is the prolegomena to the answer from God; that “a yawn is a silent shout”.

And here we see that the three Madame Bovary’s are all hoping for something. They understand that something from outside themselves must enrapture them and bring them harmony (the one thing that Romanticism understood correctly). Only the Wholly Other can deliver us. Unfortunately, the elder Madame Bovary saw this Other in living vicariously through her son; but that ended in constant failure on his part and endless frustration on hers. Ironically, Heloise finds this other in a sublimated version of herself. She constantly frets about her money, her social status, her husband’s activities, and especially her house, to the point that it kills her. And finally Emma. Her hope is the most grandiose of all – pure experience, unabashed sensuousness. She is every one of us who finds it so natural to fulfill our own pleasures, and to find this fulfillment as our telos. But her hope is shamefully immanent. Unlike the God of freedom we find in the Christian faith, He who leaves transcendence and becomes immanent for our salvation, Emma’s hope is in immanence itself; and ends in a most disparaging fashion for her: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward” (Ecclesiastes 9:5).

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

"O meu Deus é o Deus de Sócrates, de Franklin, de Voltaire e de Béranger! Eu sou pela 'profissão de fé do vigário saboiano' e pelos princípios imortais de 1789! Por isso não admito um Deus que passeie no seu jardim de bengala na mão, aloje os amigos no ventre das baleias, morra soltando um grito e ressucite ao fim de três dias: coisas absurdas por si mesmas e completamente opostas, além disso, a todas as leis da física; o que nos demonstra, de resto, que os padres tem sempre permanecido numa ignorância torpe, na qual se esforçam por mergulhar as populações" (1).

(1) FLAUBERT, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Tradução por Araújo Nabuco. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1970. P. 63.

Between the novel The Heroine and my interest in 19th Century literature, Madame Bovary seemed an excellent book to bite into. In The Heroine there is a brief stop by Emma Bovary and that really spurred me to pick up Flaubert's novel. Madame Bovary is moving, brilliant, and I could not put it down. The story represents the darker side of female struggle in the period and calls into question the stifling atmosphere that women lived/live in. What happens to an ambitious women when her ambitions are limited by her husband's? Granted, as I read it I also realized that the novel could easily be read as a condemnation of the novel and its influence on women. However, Flaubert discusses the darker aspects of this life and the novel concludes with a painfully graphic description of Emma's suicide.

There are unmistakable similarities between Madame Bovary and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and I spent a lot of time post-reading wondering how respected both Flaubert and Tolstoy are for slaughtering their female leads. Please do not get me wrong, these are both novels I adore and I cannot wait to read more by Flaubert. However, Austen so often seems written off as romantic pink puffs of fancy (though certainly not by her fans). Even today a supervisor, with an English degree, described Jane Austen as "Snow White" for adults. I never fully realized how such different impressions are developed based on a happy or sad ending. Would Austen be accused of "chick lit" if she had killed off the middle Miss Dashwood or had Jane Bennett kill herself?

Despite this, Madame Bovary has nestled its way into my ever expanding list of favorite novels of all time. The story is beautiful and sincere, and Flaubert does not shy away from dealing with the more serious issues of the period. We watch Emma marry without giving much thought to her future life, and when she quickly becomes bored with it she becomes ill. The quick fix to her unhappiness and boredom is found through affairs, but the mad and passionate love that is produced is no solution. Even when in a love affair, Emma does not seem happy. As with Anna Karenina, Emma's happiness seems to fluctuate based on the men in her life.

Tied in with this overarching idea, we also see Emma utilizing consumerist greed to replace more tangible happiness and growth in her life. Emma quickly accumulates a great deal of debt and her suicide is intimately attached not only to her own self-destructive behavior but to the lust yet another man has for her.

Due eventi del Digifestival (sul sito trovate il programma della manifestazione) da segnalare, fra i tanti, accadono oggi. Il primo, alle 11 e 30 nella sala del Minor Consiglio, è il video Rebus per Ada, "scheggia cinematografica" del progetto Ada, cronaca familiare, ispirato all'omonimo romanzo di Vladimir Nabokov: "è un gioco di enigmi in forma di ossessivo sogno attraverso il romanzo stesso. L'immagine del sogno, del resto, è proprio fatta di pieni e vuoti, come un enigma, un rebus." Scrive Stefano Bartezzaghi, tra gli autori del testo:

Ho sempre pensato che Ada fosse la protagonista di un rebus. Una di quelle figure che nei giornali degli enigmisti sono impegnate in attività normali e assurde, reali e oniriche: esce da una vasca, prega, ama, osa, teme, sta china, ride, ara, sempre sormontata da lettere alfabetiche o altri simboli. L'abilità di Ada in giochi "doppi" come lo Scrabble, gli anagrammi, i linguaggi criptici, l'allusione è - nel romanzo di Nabokov - una sorta di rispecchiamento tra l'evidenza di un personaggio narrativo (tutto quello che è, è detto) e il suo indicibile segreto (quel che ne è detto proietta l'ombra di quel che non se ne sa). Autrice e solutrice di enigmi, protagonista di enigmi, Ada diventa così una musa per l'enigma, una figura tutelare che sorveglia il punto di passaggio fra luce e ombra (in italiano luce, ombra è l'anagramma di calembour).

L'operazione è firmata Fanny & Alexander, una "bottega d'arte" fondata a Ravenna nel 1992 da Luigi de Angelis e Chiara Lagani che ha prodotto una cinquantina di eventi, tra spettacoli teatrali e produzioni video e cinematografiche, installazioni, azioni performative, mostre fotografiche, convegni e seminari di studi, festival e rassegne.

Il secondo, alle ore 18 nel salone del Maggior Consiglio, ci permette di ritrovare un Bob Wilson d'epoca (è il regista, tra le altre cose, di Einstein on the Beach, musiche di Philip Glass) nell'interpretazione di Hamlet, a Monologue, "trasfigurato" in video.

Robert Wilson nel 1995 firma Hamlet a monologue, la sua personale rilettura del classico di Shakespeare; con Wilson stesso unico protagonista in scena, lo spettacolo ha un successo straordinario. La tournée internazionale dura cinque anni e tocca i maggiori teatri del mondo. Il forte impegno fisico richiesto dalla pièce e i molti impegni come regista costringono Wilson ad abbandonare questo spettacolo, considerato come uno dei capisaldi della sua poetica teatrale.
A sette anni dalla sua ultima rappresentazione, un minuzioso lavoro di editing ad opera di V-Factory, la sezione di arte digitale di Change Performing Arts, a partire da alcune registrazioni in alta definizione effettuate a Tokyo e Varsavia, ha portato alla realizzazione di un video che permette oggi di vedere uno spettacolo che non potrà mai più rivivere su un palcoscenico, perché legato intimamente alla interpretazione dell’autore/attore, ormai anche fisicamente distante da quella stagione creativa.

E questa sera sarà proprio l'autore/attore a illustrare il progetto e il processo creativo alla base dello spettacolo, così come della sua nuova vita digitale. Una sperimentazione ancora in corso, quella dell'artista, e in molte forme, come quelle dei video-ritratti ad alta definizione che dal 2004 Wilson realizza per Voom HD Networks come, ad esempio, quello dedicato a Brad Pitt già visibile in rete (a bassa definizione, ovviamente). Chi volesse invece vedere uno spettacolo di Robert Wilson sul palco, al Teatro degli Arcimboldi di Milano dall'11 al 16 dicembre c'è The Temptation of Saint Anthony, scritto con Bernice Johnson Reagon. Nato a partire dalla figura di Sant'Antonio del testo di Gustave Flaubert (la cui "prima stesura è del 1848/49, scritta dopo aver visto a Genova il ritratto di Sant’Antonio di Bruegel", spiega il sito degli Arcimboldi, all'epoca conservato in un palazzo di via Balbi), vede una partitura che va dagli spirituals, blues, shout, gospel, inni, jazz e doo wop fino all’hip hop e al rock.

Palazzo Ducale, conferenza/lettura di Bob Wilson

Last.fm is a great place to discover new music and even to make contact with artists. Marco Mahler contacted me via my group New Weird America to alert me to the release of his excellent self released debut album entitled Design in Quick Rotation.

My review of this can be found at Whisperin & Hollerin’.

Marco currently lives in Portland, Oregon although it was in the contrasting locations of the Appalachian foothills and Brooklyn that this record was conceived, a fact which explains how it the music seems to explore both the old and the new aspects of the folk tradition.

Marco Mahler’s music has a depth and intimacy that draws you into his world and I wanted to find out more about how this sound came about. Via e-mail I put a few questions to him :

On your website, you talk about a contrast of location between Appalachia and Brooklyn - how do you think the album would have sounded if you had made it in just one of these two places?

In the Appalachian mountains: less vibrant. In Brooklyn: less relaxing.

Could you describe the recording process for the album? One laptop, one interface, one condenser mic. I don’t give myself too many options. That way, instead of getting lostin them, I stay focused on the substance.I only use a few effects. One reverb, one equalizer, some distortion, a little compression sometimes.The album was mostly recorded at night in a log home in the Appalachian Mountains while doing carpentry and construction work throughout the day. With most of my songs I have a rough idea and then add and finish them while recording them. Many things are improvised, meaning I play a guitar line for the first time while recording it and I don’t go back to it. I very much like the energy that comes from improvisation. It’s fresh and honest. Most songs don’t take more than two hours to record.

I read that you used do busking in New York - How did you come to terms with the indifference of commuters?

By not paying attention and just doing my own thing as if I were by myself. I tried to figure out people’s reactions for a while but it was too complex.

I find the lyrics intriguing with the strange juxtapositions of words & images - How did this style come about - were these created randomly with a cut-up technique or are they more carefully crafted?

Some lyrics, like “Fields”, I wrote very quickly. Other ones, like “Design In Quick Rotation”, were more of a coming together of different images that have been floating around my head for a while, more like a visual world made of elements that keep rearranging and reappearing in different versions. I don’t think they’re randomly. Even though some of them don’t seem to have an obvious connections, my brain thinks of a certain image after a certain other image for some reason.

Which writers / artists have particularly inspired you?

Music: Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan, Pavement, Silver Jews, Q-Tip, OutkastWriters: Jack London, Gustave Flaubert, Max Frisch, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Berthold Brecht, Jack Kerouac, Alfred Andersch, Arthur I. Miller, Henri Poincar, Else Lasker-Schüler, Norman Mailer, Ulrich Plenzdorf, Friedrich Dürrenmatt

The songs feel warm and friendly - did you filter out any that have an angrier, sadder or more pessimistic tone?

Yes, I had a few pretty dark songs, depending on how you look at them. But I didn’t feel like putting them on the album. At the time, I just didn’t feel like that was something I wanted to give to people.

Have you ever written a protest song - if so, what was it about?

I used to write songs about social and political events and played them on Bob Fass’ “Radio Unnameable” and some other places. They weren’t really the traditional kinds of protest songs but more like musical newspaper articles made of abstract images. I thought that would be more interesting to listen to, more fun for me to perform, and maybe have stronger effects than just straight up protest songs.

I see that you now live in Portland, Oregon which I gather is another place with a buzzing musical atmosphere. Do you have much contact with other musicians there - do you feel part of any scene? (For instance, Yellow Swans are also based in Portland - theirs is obviously a radically different sound to yours but I wonder if your paths have crossed - do you like the kind of ‘ambient - noise’ they make?)

When I first moved to New York City I searched the whole town for a scene that I could identify with, from anti-folk to indie-rock to freestyle rap. But I didn’t feel like I really fit in anywhere, even though I really wanted to. I just moved to Portland, Oregon, and I’m just starting to get to know it. I find Yellow Swans strangely meditative and recreational and, no, I haven’t crossed paths with them, yet.

What do you think of ‘New Weird America’ as a musical label?

I think the Old Weird America split into two directions. One is symbolized by what Bob Dylan did. The other by what The Incredible String Band did. Usually the label “New Weird America” is used for people like Devendra Banhart, who I see more in line with The Incredible String Band. How about The Silver Jews being “New Weird America” in line with Dylan?

What do you say when people ask what type of music you make?

I’m not good at describing my own music, so usually I mix up some quotes from recent reviews, like “stark natured mellow indie-pop with a sturdyundertow that rescues the music from the negative space of haunting” that’s kind of a mouthful so sometimes I just say “indie-folk-pop”

Do you perform live a lot ?

I played a show in Olympia, WA, last week and I’ll probably start playing some shows here in Portland and nearby places, maybe make it down the West Coast and play in New York again sometime.

Are you planning any tours outside the USA?

No plans but if things go well and enough people pick up on the music to make a European tour pay for itself, then yes, I would.

Finally - can you put me out of my misery? The tune you play/hum on ‘Orange Chinese Car’ sounds very familiar but I just can’t place it. Is it a borrowed refrain - if so, from who/where?

I wouldn’t know. The closest I can think of is “It Kills” by Stephen Malkmus.

For more information about Marco Mahler go to his website.

MP3 links: Design In Quick Rotation

Orange Chinese Car

Last week in my public administration class, my teacher brought up this story from USA Today. It discusses how racial harassment suits in the workplace are on the rise, stemming from people using nooses to threaten and harass their coworkers on the basis of race. I was appalled by this story. Here's a conversation that ensued:

PA Professor: And in Jena, there were issues over nooses being hung in the "white tree." The Jena 6...

Ex-military Dude: *interrupts* Last time I checked, you could hang a white person with a noose. So I don't think it's a racist thing.

The Rest of the Class: *silence*

PA Professor: Well, I don't know about that... *tries to move conversation along*

Me: Excuse me. I'm sorry, but anyone with knowledge of the history of our nation would know that in the South, lynching was a form of vigilantism and racism toward blacks. They were hung for crimes they never got a trial for, or crimes they never even committed. Maybe even looking at a white person wrong. So, the noose being hung in a tree or shown at work or put around a black person's neck as the story mentions IS a hate crime and it IS racist.

Fellow classmate: Thank you.

PA Professor: I agree. *moves conversation along*

I can't for the life of me understand how someone could feel that nooses aren't powerful symbolism for racial hatred and threats to the welfare of the victims. At one of those businesses, a white person PLACED A NOOSE AROUND THE NECK OF A BLACK COWORKER. There were videos of the Ku Klux Klan shown in another of the incidents. What about that ISN'T racially motivated?

The sad fact is that these types of crimes will continue to be perpetuated as long as an attitude like Ex-military Dude's exists. I would think that a person who is getting a college education could at least understand the historical context of these incidents, even if he doesn't feel that the incidents are hate crimes. Completely ignoring our history means that we are condemned to repeat it. And that's not okay with me.

I am utterly immersed in this novella. For eight to ten hours a day I walk around in it and breathe the same air as its inhabitants. When I’m not working, I get the feeling that my characters remain in limbo, awaiting my return. There are divided loyalties, a sense of being stuck between two realities, the disorientation that results from that, confusion, my office door opening to a hallway I don’t recognize at first...

During these times, I have no interest in interacting with the outside world. I care little for consensual reality, ordinary rules and conventions; sometimes I go days without leaving the house. That is my entire universe and, believe me, it’s a whole lot bigger than it looks from the outside. My office is maybe 10 X 12 but its physical specifications are irrelevant. It is a cramped space capsule and time machine all rolled into one.

Viewed dispassionately, I lead a pretty dull and ritualized existence. I do nothing outside of reading and writing and hanging out with my family. I have no social life and a limited circle of friends and acquaintances, most of whom I’ve known for a long time. I challenge any future biographer to scrape up enough worthwhile material to fill a short article, let alone a fucking book. Good luck concocting something of interest with daybook entries like this:

Slept poorly (siege dreams again)

Into office immediately--Coffee

Work

Break for lunch

No decent mail

Good progress today

Boys home/ Sher home

Supper (shepherd’s pie)

Few more edits

Crash with book/ in bed 11:00 p.m.

And that goes on for pages and pages and pages…

That’s my life. And that’s why I need that ability to project myself into the worlds I fashion one word at a time. Because my daily routine is so unbelievably fucking tedious and boring, it would kill a sane man. Retreating into fantasy is coping behavior, plain and simple. If I didn’t have this crazy, vivid imagination of mine I would’ve gone off my nut ages ago. I’d have never made it out of childhood.

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” (Gustave Flaubert)

Thanks, G.F., and I appreciate that, but I also recall writers like Lawrence (T.E. and D.H.) and Isherwood and Graves and Grahame Greene and Anthony Burgess, world travelers and brilliant diarists, leading fascinating lives and growing vast reputations. Their long shadows still touch us today.

Is this it for me? Sitting in this room day after day, composing sentences, stringing them into stories or novels, producing vast reams of paperwork to little actual effect? A recent journal entry touches a sore point, my terror of being a man of no consequence. Making no mark, leaving nothing noteworthy or commendable behind me. As faceless and anonymous as a body tangled in a mass grave.

There’s a sense now that I’ve got to break out of this rut, seek new experiences, engage with the big, wide world and see what that inspires. Inevitably this brings up thoughts of travel. Are my fictional settings becoming too constricted and too familiar? Would some exotic backdrops lend a little something extra to my tales? Is this cloistered, claustrophobic existence I’m leading stunting my growth as an author and artist?

“The clouds change. The seasons pass over our woods and fields in their slow and regular procession, and time is gone before you are aware of it. In one sense, we are always traveling and traveling as if we did not know where we were going. In another sense, we have already arrived.” (Thomas Merton)

I need change. I crave it. A door opening. Opportunity knocking. A thrown bone. A crumb of praise. Signs of hope. A phone call out of the blue. Something completely unexpected and scary and exciting. To make my heart race. To break this terrible thrall…