Permit me to make a résumé of all this. I am defending a man who, if he had met a literary criticism upon the form of his book, or upon certain expressions, or on too much detail, upon one point or another, would have accepted that literary criticism with the best heart in the world. But to find himself accused of an outrage against morals and religion! M. Flaubert has not recovered from it; and he protests here before you with all the astonishment and all the energy of which he is capable against such an accusation.
You are not of the sort to condemn books upon certain lines, you are of the sort to judge after reflection, to judge of the way of putting a work, and you will put this question with which I began my plea and with which I shall end it: Does the reading of such a book give a love of vice, or inspire a horror of it? Does not a punishment so terrible drive one to virtue and encourage it? The reading of this book cannot produce upon you an impression other than it has produced upon us, namely: that the work is excellent as a whole, and that the details in it are irreproachable. All classic literature authorizes the painting of scenes like these we are passing upon.
With this understanding, we might have taken one for a model, which we have not done; we have imposed upon ourselves a sobriety which we ask you to take into account. If, as is possible, M. Flaubert has overstepped the bound he placed for himself, in one word or another, I have only to remind you that this is a first work, but I should then have to tell you that his error was simply one of self-deception, and was without damage to public morals. And in making him come into Court — him, whom you know a little now by his book, him whom you already love a little and will love more, I am sure, when you know him better — is enough of a punishment, a punishment already too cruel. And now it is for you to decide. You have already judged the book as a whole and in its details; it is not possible for you to hesitate!
THE DECISION
The Court has given audience for a part of the last week to the debate of the suit brought against MM. Léon Laurent-Pichat and Auguste-Alexis Pillet, the first the director, the second the printer of a periodical publication called the Revue de Paris, and M. Gustave Flaubert, a man of letters, all three implicated: 1st, Laurent-Pichat, for having, in 1856, published in the numbers of the 1st and the 15th of December of the Revue de Paris, some fragments of a romance entitled, Madame Bovary and, notably, divers fragments contained in pages 73, 77, 78, 272, 273, has committed the misdemeanor of outraging public and religious morals and established customs; 2nd, Pillet and Flaubert are similarly guilty; Pillet in printing them, for they were published, and Flaubert for writing and sending to Laurent-Pichat for publication, the fragments of the romance entitled, Madame Bovary as above designated, for aiding and abetting, with knowledge, Laurent-Pichat in the facts which have been prepared, in facilitating and consummating the above-mentioned misdemeanor, and of thus rendering themselves accomplices in the misdeameanor provided for by articles 1 and 8 of the law of May 17, 1819, and 59 and 60 of the Penal Code.
M. PINARD, substitute, has sustained the prosecution.
The COURT, after hearing the defense, presented by M. SENARD for M. FLAUBERT, M. DEMAREST for PICHAT, and M. FAVÉRIE for the PRINTER, has set for audience this day (Feb. 7) for pronouncing judgment, which is rendered in the following terms:
“Be it known, that Laurent-Pichat, Gustave Flaubert and Pillet are charged with having committed the misdemeanor of an outrage against public and religious morals and established customs; the first as author, in publishing in the periodical publication entitled the Revue de Paris of which he is the manager-proprietor, and in the numbers of the 1st and 15th of October, the 1st and 15th of November and the 1st and 15th of December, 1856, a romance entitled Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert and Pillet as accomplices, the one for furnishing the manuscript, and the other for printing the said romance;
“Be it known, that the particularly marked passages of the romance with which we have to do, which include nearly 300 pages, are contained, according to the terms of the ordinance of dismissal before the Court of Correction, in pages 73, 77 and 78 (of the number of the 1st of December), and 271, 272, 273 (of the 15th of December number, 1856);
“Be it known, that the incriminated passages, viewed abstractively and isolatedly, present effectively either expressions, or images, or pictures which good taste reproves and which are of a nature to make an attack upon legitimate and honorable susceptibilities;
“Be it known, that the same observations can justly be applied to other passages not defined by the ordinance of dismissal, and which, in the first place seem to present an exposition of theories which would at least be contrary to the good customs and institutions which are the basis of our society, as well as to a respect for the most august ceremonies of divine worship;
“Be it known, that, from these diverse titles, the work brought before the Court merits severe blame, since the mission of literature should be to ornament and recreate the mind by raising the intelligence and purifying manners, rather than by showing the disgust of vice in offering a picture of disorder which may exist in our society;
“Be it known, that the defendants, and particularly Gustave Flaubert, energetically denied the charge brought against them, setting forth that the romance submitted to the judgment of the Court had an eminently moral aim; that the author had principally in view the exposing of dangers which result from an education not appropriate to the sphere in which one lives, and that, pursuant to this idea, he has shown the woman, the principal personage in the romance, aspiring towards the world and a society for which she was not made, unhappy in her modest condition where she was placed by fate, forgetting first her duties as a mother, afterward lacking in her duties as a wife, introducing successively into her house adultery and ruin, and ending miserably by suicide, after passing through all degrees of the most complete degradation, having even descended to theft;
“Be it known, that this data, moral without doubt in principle, must be completed in its development by a certain severity of language and by a reserve directed especially towards that which touches the exposition of the pictures and situations which the author has employed in placing it before the eyes of the public;
“Be it known, that it is not allowed, under pretext of painting character or local colour, to reproduce the facts, words, and gestures of the digressions of the personages which a writer gives himself the mission to paint; that a like system, applied to works of the mind as well as to productions of the fine arts, would lead to a realism which would be the reverse of the beautiful and the good, and which, bringing forth works equally offensive to the eye and to the mind, would commit a continual outrage against public morals and good manners;
“Be it known, that there are limits which literature, even the lightest, should not pass, and of which Gustave Flaubert and the co-indicted have not taken sufficient account;
“Be it known, that the work of which Flaubert is the author, is a work which appears to be long and seriously elaborated, from a literary point of view and as a study of character; that the passages coming under the ordinance for dismissal, as reprehensible as they may be, are few in number as compared with the extent of the work; that these passages, either in the ideas they expose, or in the situations they represent, bring out as a whole the characters which the author wished to paint, although exaggerated and impregnated with a vulgar realism often shocking;
“Be it known, that Gustave Flaubert affirms his respect for good manners, and all that attaches itself to religious morals; that it does not appear that his book has been written like certain other books, with the sole aim of giving satisfaction to the sensual passions, to a spirit of license and debauch, or of ridiculing things which should be held in the respect of all;
“That he has done wrong only in losing sight of the rules which every writer who respects himself ought never to lose sight of, or forget: that literature, like art, in order to accomplish the good which it is expected to produce ought only to be chaste and pure in its form
and expression;
“In the circumstances, be it known, that it is not sufficiently proven that Pichat, Gustave Flaubert and Pillet are guilty of the misdemeanor with which they are charged;
“The Court acquits them of the indictment brought against them, and decrees a dismissal without costs.”
The Criticism
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT: A STUDY by Guy de Maupassant
Translated by M Walter Dinne
The great short story writer Guy de Maupassant (1850 – 1893) was a protégé of Flaubert, and Maupassant's stories contain an economy of style that are said to have been inspired by his mentor. Following Flaubert’s death, Maupassant wrote this critical analysis of his work, using notes and diary accounts.
Guy de Maupassant — Flaubert’s famous protégé
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT: A STUDY
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT was born in Rouen on the 12th of December, 1821. His mother was the daughter of a physician of Pont-l’Evéque, M. Fleuriot. She belonged to a Low-Normandy family, the Cambremers of Croix-Mare, and was allied to Thouret, of the Constituent Assembly.
Flaubert’s grandmother, Charlotte Cambremer, was, in childhood, a companion of Charlotte Corday. His father, born at Nogent on the Seine, was of a family originally from Champagne. He was a surgeon of great skill and renown, a director of the hospital at Rouen. A straightforward, simple, brusque man, he was astonished, though not indignant, at his son’s choice of a vocation. He considered the profession of writing an occupation of idleness and uselessness.
Gustave Flaubert was the opposite of a phenomenal child. He succeeded in learning to read only with extreme difficulty. It is doubtful whether he knew how when he entered the Lyceum, at nine years of age.
His great passion in childhood was to have stories told to him. He would listen motionless, fixing his great blue eyes upon the narrator. Then, he would remain quiet for some hours thinking, one finger in his mouth, entirely absorbed, as if asleep.
His mind was at work, however, for he composed dramatic pieces before he was able to write, which he acted all alone, representing the different personages, and improvising the long dialogues.
From his early infancy, the two distinctive traits of his nature were great ingenuousness and a dislike of physical action. All his life he remained ingenuous and sedentary. He could not see any one walking or moving about near him without becoming exasperated; and he would declare in his sharp voice, sonorous and always a little theatrical, that motion was not philosophical. “One can think and write only when seated,” he would say.
His ingenuousness continued until his last days. This observer, so penetrating and so subtle, seemed to see life clearly only from afar. When it touched him, when it was busy in his immediate neighborhood, one would have said that a veil covered his eyes. His extreme native frankness, his immovable honesty, the generosity of all his emotions, of all the impulses of his soul are indubitably the causes of this unchanging ingenuousness.
He lived beside the world, but not in it. Better placed for observation, he did not have the impression of downright contact.
To him especially could one apply what he wrote in his preface to the Last Songs, of his friend Louis Bouilhet:
“Finally, if the accidents of the world, when they are observed, appear to you transposed for the sake of an illusion in description, so that all things comprise a part of your existence, nor seem to have any other use; if you can be unmoved by any injury, ready for any sacrifice, breastplated against any trial, rush in and publish!”
As a young man, he was of surprising beauty. An old friend of the family, an illustrious physician, said to his mother: “Your son is the God of Love grown up.”
Disdaining women, he lived in the exaltation of the artist, in a kind of poetic ecstasy which he preserved by daily association with him who was his dearest friend, the brother heart which one never finds twice. This was Alfred Le Poittevin, who died young of a disease of the heart, brought on by overwork.
Then Flaubert was struck with a terrible malady which his other friend, M. Maxime Ducamp, had the evil inspiration to reveal to the public, in trying to establish a relation between the artistic nature of Flaubert and epilepsy, explaining one by the other.
Assuredly, this frightful disease could not strike down the body without overshadowing the mind. But is that to be regretted? Are happy, strong and self-reliant people fitted, as it is generally understood, to penetrate and express our life, so tormented and so short? Are these exuberant persons made for discovering all the misery, all the suffering which surrounds us, to perceive that death strikes without ceasing, everywhere, each day, ferocious, blind, and fatal?
So it is possible, it is probable, that the first attack of epilepsy left an imprint of melancholy and of fear upon the ardent mind of this robust man. It is probable that, as a consequence of it, a sort of apprehension of life rested upon him, a little more sombre manner of looking at things, a suspicion before the event, a doubt before apparent happiness. But to those who knew that enthusiastic, vigorous man who was called Flaubert, to those who saw him live, laugh, rejoice, feel and vibrate each day, there is no doubt that the fear of a crisis, which disappeared in ripe age and re-appeared only in the last years, could not have modified, except in an imperceptible degree, his manner of being and feeling and the habits of his life.
After some literary essays which were not published, Gustave Flaubert made his début in 1857 by a masterpiece called Madame Bovary.
Everyone knows the history of this book, the lawsuit brought by the Public Attorney, the violent speech of M. Pinard, whose name will be remembered by this case, the eloquent defense of M. Senard, the difficult, haggling acquittal, the reproach of the President in severe words, and then, success, the avenger, resounding, immense!
But Madame Bovary has also a secret history which may be a lesson to beginners in this difficult trade of letters.
When Flaubert, after five years of wearisome labor, had finished this unusual work, he intrusted it to his friend M. Maxime Ducamp, who put it into the hands of M. Laurent Pichat, editor-proprietor of the Revue de Paris. Then it was that he found how difficult it is to make oneself understood at the first blow, how one is misunderstood by those in whom he has confidence, and by those who pass for the most intelligent. From this epoch dates that scorn which he had for men’s judgment, and his irony for absolute assertions or denials.
Some time after taking the manuscript of Madame Bovary to M. Laurent Pichat, M. Maxime Ducamp wrote the following singular letter to Gustave Flaubert, which may perhaps modify the opinion one has formed from the revelations of this writer of his friend, and in particular of Madame Bovary in his Literary Souvenirs:
JULY 14, 1856.
“DEAR OLD FRIEND: Laurent Pichat has read your romance and has sent me his approval of it, which I am to address to you. You will see on reading it how much I should share it, since it reproduces nearly all the observations that I made before your depa.ture. I sent your book to Laurent without doing more than to recommend it to him warmly; we had no understanding that we were to see you with the same eye. The counsel he gives you is good, and I would even say that it is the only counsel you can follow. Leave us masters of your romance that we may publish it in the Revue; we will make such cuttings as we judge indispensable; you can then publish it later in book form as you think best; that concerns you alone. My most friendly opinion is that, if you do not do this, you will compromise yourself absolutely and will make your appearance with a perplexing work whose style is not sufficient to give it interest. Be courageous, close your eyes during the operation and pride yourself, if not upon your talent, at least on the experience acquired in these things, and upon our affection for you. You have buried your romance under a heap of things, well done but useless; one cannot see it plainly enough; but try to uncover it and it is an easy task. We shall have this done under our eyes by an experienced and skilful person; we shall not add a word to your copy; we shall only prune it; this will cost you a h
undred francs, which will be reserved for you on your rights, and you will have published a thing truly good in the place of an incomplete work too much bolstered. You may curse me with all your might, but remember meanwhile, that in all this I have looked only to your interest.
Adieu, dear old chap; answer, and believe me Yours always, MAXIME DUCAMP.”
The mutilation of this typical and henceforth immortal book, performed by an “experienced and skilful person,” would have cost the author only one hundred francs! Truly, that is nothing!
Gustave Flaubert was stirred with a profound and natural emotion on reading this strange counsel. And he wrote in his boldest hand, upon the back of that carefully preserved letter, only this word: “Gigantic!”
The two collaborators, Messrs. Pichat and Maxime Ducamp, now put themselves to work to extricate their friend’s book from that heap of things “well done, but useless,” which damaged it; for one reads in a sample copy of the first edition of the book, preserved by the author, the following lines:
“This copy represents my manuscript as it comes from the hand of Sir Laurent Pichat, poet and editor-proprietor of the Revue de Paris.” GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.
20th April, 1857.
On opening the volume, one finds from page to page, lines, paragraphs, and entire scenes cut out. The greater part of the new or original things are cancelled with care.
And one reads further, on the last page, from the hand of Gustave Flaubert, this:
“It was necessary, according to Maxime Ducamp, to retrench all the nuptials, and, according to Pichat, to suppress, or at least abridge considerably, and to make over the meetings from one end to the other! According to the general opinion of the Revue, the clubfoot is considerably too long, ‘useless.’“
Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert Page 552