Day 2: Gustave Flaubert
Here's my bed-time post from last night, as I was unable to get it down before I fell asleep...
We have a new portrait of the exemplary 19th century artist, the ultimate flaneur and quixotic genius, in Frederick Brown's recently published biography on Gustave Flaubert. It looks fabulous (certainly not "un livre sur rien”), and, given Flaubert's extensive travels through the Arab world, undoubtedly provides glimpses of our favorite region, glimpses at once illuminating as offensive, undoubtedly distorted through the ideological prism of a European dandy.
Flaubert was certainly one of the most interesting and bizarre artists of the 19th century, embodying the (pre) fin de siecle, and overwhelmingly Gallic, obsession with pathology, illness, and the artistic brilliance borne therefrom. A contemporary of Baudelaire (compare dates: Baudelaire 1821-1867, Flaubert 1821-1880) and a forerunner of Proust, whose works rival their's in originality and erotic brilliance.
Read:
"Brown is especially good at detailing the physical and moral portrait of the novelist: sense of the comic, his bluster and vituperations, his pet dislikes, his erotic fantasies, his loud laughter and stentorian voice, his fascination with imbecility, his jowls and increasingly drooping moustache, his scatological lexicon.Behind the vigorous façade there was, hidden from public view, a vulnerable being who sought refuge from every form of unwanted involvement (such as choosing a career) by welcoming the epilepsy that surfaced when he was in his twenty-third year. Above all, he needed friendship, and in that need he was well served."
We have a new portrait of the exemplary 19th century artist, the ultimate flaneur and quixotic genius, in Frederick Brown's recently published biography on Gustave Flaubert. It looks fabulous (certainly not "un livre sur rien”), and, given Flaubert's extensive travels through the Arab world, undoubtedly provides glimpses of our favorite region, glimpses at once illuminating as offensive, undoubtedly distorted through the ideological prism of a European dandy.
Flaubert was certainly one of the most interesting and bizarre artists of the 19th century, embodying the (pre) fin de siecle, and overwhelmingly Gallic, obsession with pathology, illness, and the artistic brilliance borne therefrom. A contemporary of Baudelaire (compare dates: Baudelaire 1821-1867, Flaubert 1821-1880) and a forerunner of Proust, whose works rival their's in originality and erotic brilliance.
Read:
"Brown is especially good at detailing the physical and moral portrait of the novelist: sense of the comic, his bluster and vituperations, his pet dislikes, his erotic fantasies, his loud laughter and stentorian voice, his fascination with imbecility, his jowls and increasingly drooping moustache, his scatological lexicon.Behind the vigorous façade there was, hidden from public view, a vulnerable being who sought refuge from every form of unwanted involvement (such as choosing a career) by welcoming the epilepsy that surfaced when he was in his twenty-third year. Above all, he needed friendship, and in that need he was well served."
posted by James at 11:59 AM
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