Among his papers was found the plan of one of these stories, which would have been entitled: A Night with Don Juan. This plan, indicated by short phrases, often by single words alone, reveals better than any dissertation his manner of conceiving and preparing his work. From this point of view it is interesting. Here it is:
A NIGHT WITH DON JUAN.
I.
“Make him without accomplishments, of a single trait.
“Begin with tumult of action, — tableau of two cavaliers arriving upon horses out of breath. Glimpse of the landscape, but not too marked, only as seen through the trees, — let the horses graze in the brushwood, — they become entangled in the lines, etc. — In the midst of the dialogue, from time to time, break in with little details of action.
“Don Juan unbuttons and throws down his sword which comes out of the scabbard a little upon the turf. — He comes to kill the brother of Donna Elvira. — He has fled. — The conversation begins in sharp, brusque speeches.
“Landscape. — The convent behind them. — They are seated on a grassplot, on a declivity under some orange trees. — Circle of woods about them. — Slightly rising land before them. — Horizon of mountains, bare at the summit. — Setting sun.
“Don Juan is weary and betakes himself to Le porello. — But is it my fault, the life you lead and make me lead? Ah, well, the life that I lead — is that my fault also? What! It is not your fault. — Leporello believed him, for he had often seen in him the good intention of leading a more regular life, — yes, and the chance of making it otherwise. Examples. — Leporello mentions the examples: desire that he has for knowing all the women he sees, universal jealousy of the human race. — You would wish all to belong to you. — You would seek occasions. — Yes, a disquiet urges me. I should wish . . . aspiration. . . . — Less than ever he knows what he would wish, what he wishes. — Leporello for a long time has comprehended little that his master said. — Don Juan wishes to be pure, to be a virgin youth. — He has never been so because he is so bold, impudent and positive. — He has often wished for the emotions of innocence. — In all and above all, it is the woman he seeks. — But why do you leave them? — Ah! why? — Don Juan says it is from weariness of a woman possessed. — Annoyance which takes his eye, temptation to strike those who weep. — How you repel them, the poor little hinds! How you forget! — Don Juan astonishes himself even in forgetting and sounds this idea, finding it a sad thing. — I have found some tokens of love, but know not whence they have come to me. — You complain of life, master; it is unjust. — Leporello wickedly enjoys the idea of goodness in Don Juan. — The young people look at him, Leporello, with envy, thinking that he participates somewhat in the poesy of his master.
“Reverie of Don Juan on the idea submitted to him by Leporello, that he may have a son somewhere. . . .
“And I have seen you in having seen your ancestors. — Desire that Don Juan has to define in his thoughts the countenances now nearly effaced. — What would he not give to have once more a clear idea of these images!
“It is not all the change itself. It is that you change often for the worse. — Love of plain women. Have you not been mad during the past year over that old Neapolitan marchioness?
“Don Juan relates how he lost his virginity (an old duenna, in a shadow, in a castle). — But you did not know then that this was only a desire; poor man (Seized him in her arms), and what it is born of? — Excitation of physical desire — Corruption. — Abyss which separates subject and object, and the appetite of the one for entering the other. — This is what I am always in quest of. — Silence.
“There was in my father’s garden the figure of a woman which had been on the prow of a ship. — Desire showed in it. — He clambers up one day and takes hold of her breasts. — Dead spiders in the wood. — First sentiment of woman, a feeling of peril. — And I have always found the heart of wood. And especially so when they are at play! I see you are happy. Atonement for joy (calm before, calm after), this has alway given me the suspicion that there was something concealed. — But no. — Impossibility of a perfect communion, however adherent the kiss may be. — Something constrains and in itself makes a wall. Silence of the pupils of the eye while they devour themselves, The look goes for more than words. From there comes the desire, for a most intimate attachment, always being renewed and deceived. (Note it from different standpoints):
Jealousy in desire: to know, to have.
Jealousy in possession: to look at in sleep, to understand at heart
Jealousy in remembrance: to see again and remember well.
“It is always the same thing, said Leporello. — Ah, no! it is never the same thing! So many women, so many desires, and the different joys and bitternesses.
“Let the vulgarism of Leporello bring out the superiority of Don Juan and place it objectively in showing the difference, especially that the difference is only in intensity I “Desire of other men. Willing to be all that the women expect. — How does it affect me? What is this great number of mistresses compared to the rest? How many there are who do not know me and to whom I have never been anything!
“Two kinds of love. That which attracts to itself, which imbibes, where individualism and the senses predominate (not all of the voluptuous kind, however). To this belongs jealousy. The second is the love which draws you outside of itself. It is larger, more rending, more sweet. It has some magnetic influence where the other has recurring sharpnesses. Don Juan has proved the two, sometimes in the case of the same woman. There are some women who bring the first, there are others who provoke the second, some both at the same time. This also depends upon the moment, chance and the disposition.
“Don Juan is weary and finishes with a feeling that his head would split, as one does when he has thought too long, without a solution. — They hear the bell toll for the dead. And this is one for whom all is done! What is it for?
“They raise their heads.
II.
“Don Juan scales the wall and sees Anna Maria asleep. — Tableau. — Long contemplation, — desire, — remembrance. — She awakes. At first, some words cut short, as if following her thought. She has no fear of him (the least clash possible without their being able to distinguish the fantastic from the real).
“It is long that I have awaited you. You did not come. — Relate her illness and death. — As the dialogue proceeds, she awakes more and more. — Sweat upon her head-bands; raises herself slowly, slowly, at first on her elbows, then sits. — Great astonished eyes. Return to the exact. How?
“Then it is you whose steps I was listening for in the wood. — Stifling heat of the nights. — The promenade in the cloister, shade of the columns, which did not move as the trees had. I plunged my hands into the fountain. — Symbolic comparison of the changed stag. — A summer afternoon.
“They prohibit our telling our thoughts — à propos of the crucifix which stands over Anna Maria’s bed, the Christ who watches over our dreams. — The crucifix is alway immovable while the heart of the young girl is agitated and often grieved.
“This crucifix is a comfort to Anna Maria, but it does not respond to her in her love. — Oh! I have prayed to Him so often! Why will He not, why has He not listened to me? Aspirations of the flesh and love that is true (perfecting the mystic love), in parallel with the shameless aspirations of Don Juan who has had, in his other loves, especially in moments of lassitude, some mystic needs. (Indicate this, as to Don Juan, in his conversation with Leporello.)
“Movement of Anna Maria encircling Don Juan with her arms. — The flesh of the fore-arm borne upon the arteries and the wrists at the end of the stiff hands, too small to reach to him; a lock of Don Juan’s hair catches in a button of her chemise, as he lowers his head towards her.
“The night becomes animated, — a few shepherds are heard upon the mountains. There also they speak of love. — It is love which occupies them. — You do not know the simple joy. — The day dawns.
“Aspirations of Anna Mari
a’s life at harvest times. Sunday afternoons the feast days of the church. — The overseers torment her. — I loved the confessional much. She approached it with a sentiment of voluptuous fear, because her heart was open. — Mystery, shade. — But she had no sins to tell, although she could have wished she had. There are, they say, some women of the ardent life, — happy.
“One day she swooned all alone in the church, where she went to place some flowers (the organist was playing all alone), while contemplating a large window penejrated by the sunlight.
“Frequent desires which she has at communion. To have Jesus in the body. God in self! — At each new sacrament it seems to her that the thirst may be appeased. — She multiplies her works, fasts, prayers, etc. — Sensuality of the young. — Feels the stomach pulling, weakness of the head. — She is afraid, and studies how to overcome these fears, etc. — Mortifications. — Is fond of pleasant odours. She smells some disgusting things. — Voluptuousness of bad odours. — She is ashamed before Don Juan, because of her enthusiasm. — Anna Maria is astonished at his desire. — What is it? How is it that I desire and she desires that which she does not know? Voluptuousness creeps into her, as disgust into Don Juan. I heard you speaking of the world. Speak to me! Speak to me!
“The lamp goes out for want of oil. — The stars shine into the room (not the moon). Then the day dawns. — Anna Maria falls dead.
“The horses are heard browsing and shaking the saddles on their backs. Don Juan escapes.
“Tone of character of Anna Maria: sweet.
“Never lose sight of Don Juan! The principal object (at least of the second part) is the union, the equality, the duality, each of which terms has been incomplete up to the present time, melting them together, and each showing gradually that it is coming to complete itself by uniting with the neighboring term.”
Gustave Flaubert did not write Bouvard and Pécuchet at a single stroke. It might be said that half of his life was passed in meditation upon this book, and that he consecrated his last six years to the execution of this tour de force. An insatiable reader, indefatigable in research, he heaped up documents without ceasing. Finally, one day, he put himself to work, somewhat terrified before the enormity of the task. “One must be mad,” he often said, “to undertake a work like that.” And it was indeed necessary to have superhuman patience and an ineradicable will.
Down there at Croisset, in his great study with five windows, he moaned day and night over his work. Without relaxation, without recreation, pleasures or distractions, with mind fearfully intent, he advanced with a desperate slowness, discovering each day some new study to be made, some new research to undertake. And his phrases also tormented him, his phrase, so concise, so precise, so coloured as to enclose in two lines a whole volume, and in a paragraph all the thoughts of a savant. He would take a number of ideas of the same nature, and, as a chemist prepares an elixir, dissolve them and mix them, rejecting the accessories and simplifying the principles, until out of his crucible would come absolute formulas containing in fifty words an entire system of philosophy.
Once it became necessary for him to stop, exhausted and almost discouraged; then, as a recreation, he wrote his delicious volume entitled: Three Stories.
It might be said here that he wished to make this a complete and perfect résumé of his work. The three novels: A Simple Soul, The Legend of Saint Julien the Hospitaller and Herodias, show in a short and admirable fashion the three aspects of his talent.
If it were necessary to class these three jewels, perhaps we should put Saint Julien the Hospitaller in the, first rank. It is an absolute masterpiece in colour and style, a masterpiece in art.
A Simple Soul relates the story of a poor country servant, honest and shallow, whose life goes on until death without a glimmer of true happiness ever shining upon it.
The Legend of Saint Julien the Hospitaller shows us the miraculous adventures of a saint as made by an old, stained-glass church window, with a wise and highly-coloured simplicity.
Herodias tells us of the tragedy of the decapitation of Saint John the Baptist.
Gustave Flaubert still had many subjects for novels and romances. He counted on writing, from the first, the Battle of Thermopylae, and for this purpose made a voyage to Greece in the beginning of the year 1872 to see the actual country of this superhuman struggle. He wished to make of it a kind of patriotic recitation, simple and terrible, which might be read to the children of the people, to teach them to make them love their country.
He wished to show the valiant souls, the magnanimous hearts and the vigorous bodies of these symbolic heroes and, without employing a technical word, or an ancient term, to tell the story of this immortal battle, which belonged not to the history of a single nation but of the world. He rejoiced at the idea of writing the adieux of these warriors to their wives in sonorous terms, where they recommend them, in case they fall in the encounter, to marry again some robust men soon, in order to give new sons to their country. The very thought of this heroic story gave Flaubert a powerful enthusiasm.
He had planned, too, a kind of modern Matron of Ephesus, having been carried away by a subject which Turgenief related to him.
Finally, he meditated a great romance upon the second Empire, where could be seen the mixture and contact of Oriental and Occidental civilisations, — the amalgamation of the Greeks from Constantinople, so many of whom came to Paris during Napoleon’s reign, playing an important rôle in Parisian society and the factitious, refined world of Imperial France.
Two personages chiefly attracted him, a man and a woman, a Parisian household, showing craftiness with ingenuousness, ambition and corruption. The man, a superior officer, dreams of a great fortune which he is slowly amassing, and with a natural, egotistic profligacy he makes his wife, who is very pretty and full of intrigue, serve his projects.
In spite of all the efforts, of every nature, of his companion, his desires are not satisfied to his liking. Then, after long years of attempts, both realise the vanity of their hopes and finish their life as honest, deceived people, resigned and tranquil.
He saw still, in project, another great romance upon the administration, with this title: The Head of the Department, and he affirmed that no one has ever yet comprehended what a comic personage, and how important and useless, a Head of the Department is.
Gustave Flaubert was before all, and above all, an artist. The public to-day scarcely distinguishes the signification of this word as applied to a man of letters. The sense of art, that scent so delicate, so subtle, so difficult, so unseizable, so inexpressible, is essentially a gift of the aristocracy of intelligence; it can scarcely belong to the democracy.
Some very great writers have not been artists. The public and even the greater part of the critics make no difference between the one and the other.
In the last century, on the contrary, the public, adjudged difficult and refined, carried to an extreme this artistic sense which has now disappeared. It worked itself into a passion for a phrase, for a verse, for an ingenious or a bold epithet. Twenty lines, a page, a portrait, an episode, sufficed it for judging and classing an author. It sought the underneath, the inner meaning of the words, penetrated the secret reasoning of the author, read slowly without passing over anything, seeking, after digesting the phrase, to find out whether there still remained anything more to penetrate. And minds, slowly prepared for literary sensations, receive readily the secret influence of this mysterious power which puts some soul into a work.
When a man, however richly endowed he may be, concerns himself only with relating something, when he takes no account of the fact that veritable literary power is not in the anecdote but in the manner of preparing, presenting, and expressing it, he has no sense of art.
The profound and delicious joy which leaps to youk heart before certain pages, before certain phrases, comes only through those who have said them; they come from an accordance of expression and idea which is absolute, from a sensation of secret beauty a
nd harmony which escapes for the most part the observation of the multitude.
Musset, that great poet, was not an artist. The charming things he said, in an easy, seductive language, left quite indifferent those who are occupied in the pursuit, the research, and the emotions of a higher beauty, more unreachable, more intellectual.
The multitude, on the contrary, found in Musset satisfaction for all their poetic appetites, which are a little gross, and unable to comprehend the trembling, almost the ecstasy, which certain pieces of Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Leconte de Lisle can give. Those words have a soul. Most readers, and even writers, ask only a meaning. They find that this soul, which appears in contact with other words, which shines upon and illumines certain books with an unknown light, is very difficult to call forth.
There are, in the joining and combinations of the language written by certain men, the evocation of a whole poetic world, that the people of the mundane world know neither how to perceive nor to surmise. When one speaks to them of it, they are offended, begin to reason, argue, deny, and cry out that they wish you would show it to them. It would be useless to try. Feeling it not, they could never comprehend.
Some educated, intelligent men, writers even, are astonished when one speaks to them of this mystery of which they are ignorant; and they laugh and shrug their shoulders. What matters it? They do not know. As well talk music to a people who have no ear.
Ten words exchanged are sufficient for two minds endowed with this mysterious sense of art to comprehend each other’s meaning, as if they were speaking a language of which others were ignorant.
Flaubert was tortured all his life in the pursuit of this unseizable perfection. He had a conception of style which bestows upon him, in this one word, all the qualities of the thinker and the writer. So, when he declared: “There is nothing but style,” one must understand him to mean: There is nothing but sonorousness or harmony of words.
Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert Page 555