The city of Rouen with the two-hundred-year-old Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a famous French realist writer of the 19th century, especially for his novel Madame Bovary. 2021 marks the 200th anniversary of Flaubert's birth, and his hometown of Rouen has hosted a series of exhibitions and commemorations. At the beginning of August, I came from Paris to the city of Rouen on the lower Seine, and it was like stepping into the atmosphere of a Flaubert novel.

There is a quaint old house near the Rouen train station, in which the municipality replicates scenes from the novel Madame Bovary. On the first floor is Emma's wedding feast, a long table covered with white tablecloths with various wine glasses, cutlery and candles. The most appealing thing is the Emma wedding cake model. While letting everyone see, the tour guide reads aloud the passage in the work where the cake is written. On the second floor is Emma's daughter's room, with an exquisite wood-carved cradle and children's clothes. Emma's costume room hangs a strip of waist-cinched skirts that can rise and fall. On the screen on the wall were clips of Emma's participation in the ball. There are also study rooms, Emma and Leon's love nest, and finally blue pill bottles with arsenic. The order of the tour guide's explanations is exactly the same as the order of the development of the novel's story, which makes people feel that they have read this famous work again.

Oil painting based on Flaubert's novel Salampo Author/Courtesy

Albert Foley was a French sculptor, oil painter and illustrator of the late 19th century, and the Musée Rouen has a dedicated room dedicated to his 40 or so paintings of Madame Bovary. Except for one colored oil painting, the rest are sketches. The painting is entitled "The Death of Madame Bovary". On the right side of the picture, there is a gray-white drapery on the bed, and next to the bed is a large white candle, and the candlelight reflects the body of Emma lying on the bed. She was wearing a white puffy dress she wore on her wedding day, covered with a white wedding dress, and she hung her head and closed her eyes as if she were sleeping peacefully. Dr. Bovary stood bent at the foot of the bed, his head in his hands, presumably crying. On the left side of the picture sit two listless, sleepy men. From the costumes, it can be seen that one is the pharmacy owner Hao Mai, and the other wearing a small round hat is the priest. They were indifferent to Emma's death. The painting was exhibited at the 1883 Paris Pictorial Salon, acquired by the French government in 1890 and presented to the city of Rouen in 2007. Also on display are scenes of Emma dressing up, walking, undressing, riding a horse, and meeting her lover.

In 1857, Madame Bovary was denounced by the French authorities as "immoral and profane", and both the novel's author and the editor-in-chief of the Paris magazine, which published the novel at the time, were prosecuted. Flaubert's lawyers defended himself well, won the case, and the novel could be published and made a name for itself. Flaubert immediately threw himself into the creation of his long-simmering historical novel, Salambo. Sarangpo, the daughter of a Carthaginian consul in the 3rd century BC, was a priestess accompanied by a giant python. The holy relics of Carthage legend are a garment of god that can bring both victory and death. Sarangpo had always wanted to see the garment, but the high priest disagreed, when the barbarian mercenaries revolted because they had not received their salaries, and the leader Mato fell in love with Sarambo, who stole the garment and won the victory. Sarangpo is asked by his superiors to go to Mato's tent to seduce him and steal the treasure. Sarangpo, who had been given the Cloak of God, fell in love with Mato. But her father, for reasons of military alliance, betrothed his daughter to Havas, the numidian mercenary leader. In the end, Mato was defeated and sentenced to capital punishment at the wedding of Sarampo and Havas, who died suddenly after witnessing his tragic death.

Flaubert not only searched for documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, but also personally went to Tunisia on a field trip. His notes are said to have even become reference materials for archaeologists. Flaubert completed the work in five years. In 1962, the publication of Sarangpo made the 41-year-old writer once again world-famous. It is said that on the day "Sarangpo" was released, the conversation on the streets of France was like this: "Where are you going?" "I went home and read Sarangpo, what about you?" "I'll buy it now and go home and read it."

The exhibition of "Sarangpo" is very rich, not only oil paintings, sculptures, illustrations, but also photography, film, opera costumes and sets. The most common is the image that shows the beauty of the female body of Sarangpo, or the naked moon dancing with the snake, or the veil leaning against the beauty bed, from head to toe are national style ornaments, running through the "Orientalist" atmosphere of the European art field from the 18th century. The war scene in the exhibition is not a horseback battle, but a majestic elephant battle. The cloak of the gods was also embodied, shaped like a cloak of dragging ground, embroidered with gold and silver thread, and embellished with precious stones, bird feathers, and pearls. Flaubert's travel notes on carthage are more than 100, which are densely packed with small characters and sketches of cultural relics, which are extremely impressive.

Croisé is a small town located next to Rouen, where Flaubert lived for 35 years, creating most of his works. The original buildings were destroyed, and only a pavilion in the corner of the garden has been preserved. The exhibition was reopened after renovation. Next to it is the lower reaches of the Seine River, which is wide, fast-flowing, and overgrown with weeds on its banks.

Flaubert's tomb is located on a hill northeast of the city of Rouen. On his family cemetery stand four tombstones, two large in the middle of which are the tombs of his ancestors. Two smaller ones next to it, the tomb on the left reads: Here is the body of Gustav Flaubert. Born in Rouen on 12 December 1821, died 8 May 1880 in Croisé.

Flaubert hated the illustrations of his works the most during his lifetime, so both Madame Bovary and Sarampo began to appear after the author's death in 1880. Literature is the art of imagining through the medium of words. A thousand readers would have a thousand Madame Bovary, so Flaubert did not want one portrait of Madame Bovary to bury the imagination of all readers. Today Flaubert's works not only have various versions of illustrations, but also films and plays of various periods and languages, and even comics and games. Should Flaubert be happy or sad in the spirit of heaven?

(The author is an associate professor at the School of Chinese Language and Culture, Beijing Language and Culture University)

Source: China Social Science Network China Social Science Daily