Professor David Peimer
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert’s Masterpiece: More than a Novel About the Eternal Love Triangle?

Professor David Peimer - Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert’s Masterpiece: More Than a Novel About the Eternal Love Triangle?

- Okay, so we’re going to dive in today into looking at Flaubert, and in particular, obviously, his great masterpiece, “Madame Bovary.” And excuse of some of my pronunciations of French names and towns. But I want you to devote one session a little bit to Flaubert, but in particular to the novel because it is regarded as such a watershed and a masterpiece, not only of French literature, but of global literature, and the influence, huge, and what he achieved, and I think what the novel has achieved, probably way beyond Flaubert’s expectations himself. And how it links in with some of what I know Trudy and William and others have been doing on the trajectory of French history. And we’ve already looked at French Revolution and how it was portrayed in theatre in Peter Weiss, and Buchner, and others. So moving on in terms of French history, this is Flaubert, and in a sense, a remarkable time of outpouring of French novelists, French writers seen as an almost golden age as it was in more or less middle of the 19th century of Russia and other countries that we’ve been looking at. And I think reasons, obviously, post-French Revolution, 1789, post the Napoleonic era. And in particular, this is the time of the monarchy of Louis Philippe, and… But it’s all changed, obviously, post-French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. So these are Flaubert’s dates. And that’s an image of him.

And a lot of images, but I wanted to choose this because I think it gives, we start to get a sense of the contemporary writer, start to get a sense of the contemporary artist by looking at these middle and late 19th century figures. This is from one of the movies that was made. I mean, the novel was published 1856, 1857. And this is from one of the numerous movies. I’ve chosen not to show clips from the films of “Madame Bovary” because, to be really honest, I think it’s more enriching to focus on the novel itself ‘cause there are extraordinary things that this guy is doing in the writing and the sheer art and craft of making words on a page and how they come alive in such a visceral, such an emotive way. And what he’s contributing to, as Beckett called him, one of the great innovators of world literature, what he’s innovating in terms of writing novels and literature, which has taken up, at least the influence is taken up by many novelists and writers afterwards. So there’s just an image to give us, because I like the image because I think it captures something of the period, the mid to 19th century that he’s writing and also that look in the actress’s eye. There’s so much hidden behind, and the way she’s dressing, her aspiration, what’s going on inside. So I want to focus here on a couple of things in looking at “Madame Bovary,” which is the obvious eternal love triangle, which we all know only too well. I’m sure some of us have experienced or not. But the love triangle, which is an absolute classic archetype of all literature.

And then for me, something which is really profound, which goes deeper than the love triangle is the question I think Flaubert poses is, how does desire play itself out? How do we really, in a more contemporary way, play out desire in the ways we live, in marriages, in marriages going up and down, at the end of marriages, relationships of any kind? What is this word, desire, and how does it really play out? And then I want to look a little bit at the times that he’s living, this era of the mid-19th century, the era of Louis Philippe, the king. But it’s all changed because you have the rise of the middle class, of the mercantile business and professional lawyers, doctors, and others, middle class rising fast in France at the time. And of course, other countries in Europe, also. But it’s very important because the French Revolution has ended feudalism completely in Napoleonic era, obviously. And it’s a mercantile class. And Louis Philippe and the whole culture of France has to take that into account. And this is what Flaubert is writing about. He’s writing about this emerging, developing middle class of professionals, lawyers, doctors, and so on, and the mercantile, or merchant, or business class, really. And not only the power, but the aspiration and how they fit in the scheme of things in France. And then the last point I want to focus on is this idea of the realism 'cause he really perfected in a way. And I use that word thoughtfully. He perfected, what do we mean when we say a person is a realist writer?

And he wrote a lot about it. He spoke quite a bit about it, what he was really aiming at with his realism. And I’m going to talk about a couple of different kinds of realism. And he, in a way, embodies the Mount Everest of it and why. It’s not realism just in imitating real life, but what he’s doing with language and the poetics of language inside this, I think, is quite remarkable. I remember the first time I ever read this novel. And what stunned me the most, obviously, the story, desire, the love triangles, and so on, but what stunned me was how he’d obviously sweated blood and tears and joys to get these words exactly as he wanted. And he wrote a lot in his letters about the importance of putting the words together exactly as he intended. Hemingway’s great definition of writing for Hemingway was you write the dramatic sequence of events which produce the emotional effect on the reader or the audience. And I think that Flaubert almost perfected the not only dramatic sequence of events in the story, but a way of writing with words that created an almost poetic feeling, but it’s a novel. It’s a narrative. It’s not poetry. But he brought poetry into the novel and he’s the first to do it. And that creates even more profound emotional effect on the reader. And I remember being struck, with really good translations, just how extraordinary he achieved this. And then discovering that he spent over five years writing this novel in order to achieve exactly what we’re talking about. And he was completely aware. He said, “I want to bring the aesthetics of poetry into the novel so that the art of the novel equals the art of the poetry.”

Because at the time, of course, poetry, classical music, were sort of at the top of the artistic tree, and everything else sort of below, and theatre, my love, and other things below. And he wanted to make a conscious… He made a conscious decision to really raise, if you like, the sheer artist artistry of putting poetry into writing ordinary sentences in a novel. And the challenge and what he set for writers afterwards, huge. And the people that were influenced and have written about Flaubert, specifically, his influence, include Nabokov and Kafka. Kundera has a fantastic set of essays on the influence of Flaubert. Proust spoke about him. Jean Amery, a remarkable Jewish guy who survived Auschwitz, Belsen, Buchenwald, who was one of the main leaders of the French resistance and one of terrible torture by the Gestapo, but wrote this amazing book about, sort of literary critic’s book about “Madame Bovary” and Flaubert. I’m going to look at Amery’s contribution as well. And then people like D.H. Lawrence, Beckett. Such a range and there’s many more. But this is just to give you a taste of a range of remarkable writers and all speaking so highly of the influence of Flaubert on their work. So for him, it not only positions him top of the tree, but we want to know, what is it in realism, what is it that he’s doing in a fairly simple story of the love triangle? So it’s a realism he brings almost to a form of perfection. And we also need to remember that his debut novel was “Madame Bovary.”

So it’s an amazing achievement for the first time of a novel, but he spent over 5 ½ years writing it. Okay, Flaubert’s father was a very senior and very well-known surgeon at one of the main hospitals in Rouen. Forgive my pronunciation again. And is a very well-known family, very upper class, very connected family that he comes from. So he has access to really good education at the time. He goes to Paris to study law. He hates it. He has an attack of epilepsy, which lasted for many, most of his life, obviously, and abandoned his studies. He then went on a major trip. He went around the Middle East, very interestingly, all over to Greece, to Egypt, to Beirut, to Jerusalem, travelled all over. His writings about it are not so interesting. What’s more interesting is that he made the effort to go out and see something of the world, which, of course, was being colonised, the French, the British, many, many others, But to go and try and discover what’s going on. And he had a fascination with Middle Eastern religions, plural, and philosophies, and some Indian as well. In the Middle East, unfortunately, he contracted syphilis in Beirut, as far as we know, and suffered from venereal diseases, syphilis and others, the rest of his life. And then he died in 1880, obviously from complications of VD. What happened then with “Madame Bovary,” the novel, is it gets published, and immediately, the French Parliament vote and the public prosecutor in France, this is the mid-19th century in the great liberal democracy or the liberal times of France, they take Flaubert and the novel to court.

They want it banned at minimum. Charges of immorality. Why? Because it’s about adultery. So this is in the great liberal times, the times of the Enlightenment, of rational progression of human history, the rational advancement of society, of individuals. They want it banned because it’s about adultery? I mean, one of the most ancient themes of humanity. Ban it? And immorality and obscenity were the charges. But what was also interesting in one of the charges in the court against Flaubert himself and the novel was that it was too realistic in style. That’s quote from the trial, “too realistic in style.” So in other words, he was writing about provincial life in France and about marriage and people’s lives but in too realistic a way? I found that extraordinary as a charge in a trial in so-called Enlightenment periods in France and elsewhere in Europe that they attack the aesthetics, not only the content for obscenity and all that. Anyways, he’s acquitted of charges. The novel is acquitted and is allowed. And of course, all publicity is good publicity in the end, and the novel becomes a smash hit. Basically, it’s seen as a potboiler, smash hit, sells a lot, and his name and the novel quickly go to the top of the bestseller lists of the times. And of course, many, many more people can read and write, given much more access to education, post-Napoleonic era, and many other things. So it’s an entirely different meaning when we say so many people are reading it. And of course, middle classes.

Flaubert wrote in novels, in letters, quite a bit about wanting to find the right word in the phrase, in the sentence, you know. And he would spend three, four days on a couple of sentences, on a paragraph, come back to it, rewrite it, rework it. It was all before laptops. So everything is done by quill and paper and so on. But going again and again and really working hard, 10, 12 hours a day, 10, 11 hours a day pushing, pushing to get this done. So we cannot underestimate the sheer amount of time he devotes to it. He said he “wanted a style,” and I’m quoting him here from a letter, “that would as rhythmic as poetry, as precise as the language of sciences, undulant, deep-voiced as a cello, tipped with flame, as a cello, tipped with flame, a style that would pierce your idea like a silver dagger.” He’s trying, even in his letters, the way of putting together words, adjectives, adverbs, the noun, everything, in extraordinary attempt to reach a kind of almost Shakespearean, but a perfection of language, a love, affection, for language. Walter Pater, one of the fascinating English critics, literary critics, called Flaubert “a martyr to style and aesthetics.” He martyred his time, his life, to perfecting the words. And this influenced many of the other writers I mentioned as well. In a way, and this is going, looking at what many others, Kafka and many others, wrote, Nabokov, many others about him, J.M. Coetzee as well, that he, in a way, began the modern realist narrative in novels, originates.

We see the influence in Kafka, Coetzee. And Nabokov wrote in one of his wonderful essays, “With Flaubert, the greatest literary influence was on Franz Kafka. Kafka liked to draw his terms from the language of law, from science, from the office, from business, and give them a very ironic and witty precision.” So this is Nabokov writing about Flaubert’s influence on Kafka. Fascinating. So these guys are obsessed with each other, obsessed with who’s influencing who and where, and trying to position this guy as having such an influence on the Modernist era of writing. And I think that the other thing that’s important is that the novel was serialised in one of the Parisian reviews. So every week, as was very popular, of course, with many of the other writers in England, Germany, France, Italy, everywhere. So of course, you had to keep up with the story and keep your readers excited and interested, a bit like the TV soap or Netflix today, whatever. Keep them on the edge of their seats. And I think that makes a huge difference to the writing for Flaubert and many others. Keep going with the story. So one of the great things about “Madame Bovary” is that he doesn’t take on French society, which a lot of the other writers wanted to do. He takes on provincial life in France. He takes on a middle-class provincial family a la the new influence of the mercantile, the business class, et cetera, and trying to understand it. And with Madame Bovary herself, it’s about a character who lives beyond her means and do anything to escape the banality or the emptiness of provincial life.

And I think this is such a contemporary theme. I’m reminded of the Sam Mendes movies we all know, “American Beauty,” “Revolutionary Road,” and so many other movies and plays and books we know about the, if you like, the vacuum, almost emptiness of contemporary life and how marriages can go wrong, relationships can go wrong, and how life can become empty quite quickly. So I think all of this is so powerful in the novel. Let’s just remind ourselves of the plot very quickly. “Madame Bovary,” it takes place in provincial town. Charles Bovary is an average man. He struggles to become a what’s called a second-rate medic at the time. He gets the second-rate medical degree, which is not great for the time. And he doesn’t actually qualify as a full doctor because his qualification is very average. So he becomes an officer in the public health, public health service. And that’s very different. It’s a big step down from being a normal doctor. He marries the woman that his mother has chosen for him. So he’s under the influence of the family, the mother, and others. And all these things are very important because it shows there’s kind of what Flaubert and others call the averageness of Emma Bovary’s husband, if you like. And he’s fine in himself, but it’s not in accordance with her dreams and her desires. So one day, he visits a local farm to set the owner’s broken leg and fix it, and he meets the patient’s daughter, who’s Emma Bovary.

She’s beautiful. She’s young. She’s had a good education in a convent. And in being in the convent, main literature has been romantic novels, popular novels, the Mills & Boons of the times that she’s been reading about luxury, and romance. and dashing men and characters and all the rest, a romance inspired by reading popular novels. So Charles is, of course, attracted to her, visits her. His own wife, conveniently, Flaubert makes her die and he can marry Emma. They get married and set up house together. Emma, from being enchanted, 'cause he’s a doctor, et cetera, starts to discover how dull the married life is, how conventional, how dull. And it doesn’t meet anything near her romantic aspirations, the desire that she wants for life. What does she want to achieve? How far does she want to go? And the difference between I want and I’ll settle for starts to really haunt her profoundly. Charles tries to help, and he says, “Okay, you need a change,” and he moves his practise to a much larger market town. Doesn’t help. One day, she meets a rich landowner, Rudolphe, and he knows he can fairly easily seduce her. He’s an aristocrat. He’s got wealth. He’s got fame. He’s well-traveled. He presents this image of this sort of world-wise aristocratic guy. And they begin an affair.

They go riding, begin an affair, et cetera. And she is enamoured with the romantic fantasy that he offers her and the real fantasy that he offers. And she starts to take risks, writing letters and not being so discreet, goes to visit him and other things. They have an affair for four years. And then she insists they run away together. Rudolphe says, “No way.” He’s an aristocrat. He’s not seriously going to marry her. He’s going to seriously look for another aristocrat or somebody of his milieu or at least his class or similar. So he ends it. And how does Flaubert describe the ending? He puts a letter, he ends the relationship, he puts a letter at the bottom of a basket of apricots and has it delivered to Emma. So that attention to extraordinary writer’s detail. It’s not just given to her as a letter, or somebody, a messenger, arrives. It’s at the bottom of a basket of apricots. One cannot forget that image after it’s written. Anyway, Emma then meets up with a guy that she used to have an affair with, a guy called Leon, who was a student, a law student, but he was young and a student, et cetera. That ended. He went off to Paris, became educated, became a hotshot lawyer, and he comes back. They begin this hot, passionate, romantic affair. Charles believes, her husband believes that she’s taking piano lessons. And Emma goes every week to the city to meet Leon. And they go to the same room, the same hotel week after week. And the affair gets hotter and hotter. The love affair is ecstatic at first, of course, and full of the glories of the early roses of romance.

But Leon starts to get bored with what he calls Emma’s “emotional excesses,” in his word. Emma also starts spending money, buying luxury goods, clothes on credit, other things, and starts to live way beyond her means, and her debt mounts. Let’s not forget, her husband is a country doctor, country public health official, really, not a doctor even. She pleads for money from Leon and Rudolphe, the aristocrat. They both say, “Forget it, no way.” In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies a pretty agonising death. Charles is heartbroken, the husband. The two lovers are not. And in brief, he decides to preserve her room in their home as a shrine. He stops working. He sells his possessions. And then one day, he discovers all the letters that, all the letters that she wrote to Leon and Rudolphe. And with holding those letters and reading them, he breaks down, and shortly afterwards, he dies. So bit of a melodramatic ending or a bit of a dramatic, whichever way we choose, but this is the love triangle, isn’t it? It’s absolutely classic where the one party, in this case, it’s Emma, is so frustrated, is bored, it’s dull. It’s not her dream. It’s not her ambition. It has nothing to do with romance for her. And perhaps most importantly, the passion of love, and the passion of being together, and the passion of the connection, and everything she’s dreamed of while in the convent and reading the romantic novels. So how does desire play out? Desire is aching to play out as romance in her.

But Charles is a good guy. There’s nothing wrong. He’s a very nice guy. But he’s limited in today’s jargon. He’s average. He’s limited in imagination. He’s limited in passion. He’s limited with romantic joie de vivre. He’s limited with the imagination of how to live, how to enchant, seduce, have fun with her, have pleasure. And it’s not because they’re in poverty at all. They have enough money. It’s okay. But the two are so different. But also, given the times, it’s obviously very hard for her as a woman to divorce and to leave, et cetera. So Emma has a romanticised view of the world. She craves probably the most important of what I think in the novel is passion and romance. And not only romance to ride horses together, but a romantic, but in a sense of life as a romantic adventure. So there’s a romantic sense of life, in a way, that life can be an adventure and can be so much more than what one is meant to believe or what she’s brought up to be anyway. So I think it’s this distinction between the romantic aspiration and dream and the reality of her life. And what does one choose in the end between the two? And I think this is also what makes it so contemporary because this is an emerging middle class. We have the money and the time to be able to do this, to aspire to something greater. It’s like Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” Chekhov, “The Cherry Orchard,” his great plays. It’s so similar, this yearning for romance, for passion for life, something beyond just surviving. Separating it from the novels written in the feudal times, pre-French Revolution is where, it’s the classic “Les Miserables” where we looked at it. It’s classic.

It’s the peasant, and the convicts, and the aristocratic class, and the class of the legal enforcer, the officer and the police. But here, we have the emerging middle class who now have the time, money, to dream for something more in their lives, their inner life. And that’s where I think it’s very linked to the earlyish but middle 19th century in France and elsewhere. And it feeds so strongly, I think, into our times as well. Absolutely. So with Charles, it’s, he’s her husband, he’s what’s regarded in Flaubert’s, in the novel, as “simple and an ordinary man.” Those are the words that echoed in the novel, ordinariness. And he adores her. He even… He cannot even look at her faults in his mind. Even though there’s emerging evidence, the money, the debts, he doesn’t suspect affairs. He gives her control over his finances. And of course, that leads to his own ruin in the end, his devotion to her, and yet she despises because he, for her, is the epitome of the dull and common human. So what’s fascinating to me, and Kundera talks about this in writing about Flaubert, is that we can’t judge Emma. It’s too easy to come like a moralist preacher and judge. And this is one of the huge changes that Flaubert brings to the novel. The characters are not preordained symbols of good and bad, of right and wrong, of evil and goodness. They’re not preordained in a way of previous novels might’ve been, or the wronged person, or evil in any way. Notions of evil, not any religions, don’t come into this. It’s just who they are as people.

As Kundera writes, “What Flaubert contributed was to make the novel about existence, not about other things in life.” It’s who we are as we exist, who we are, who we born as, or who our families are, whatever that determines us. And we can’t change it or control it. And it’s not good or bad. It’s not right or wrong. It’s just who we are. And if we use today’s language, I guess, some people a bit more limited in imagination, limited in romance, limited in passion. It’s just who they are. It’s not wrong or right or good or bad. It’s just who they are. If some people yearn for romantic adventure and passion in life and will seek it until the end of their days, it’s not good or bad or right or wrong. It’s just who they are. So we have to suspend moral judgement in the novel. And Kundera and Kafka and others allude to this when they talk about Flaubert. He doesn’t ever morally judge Emma or Charles, her husband, or any of them for that matter, nor the ones even having the affair. What he’s interested in is diving into the psychological inner life. And this is the huge advance that he brings to the novel. It’s not so much in his descriptions of provincial life in France. There’s some of that. But he’s much more interested before the word, psychology, really, on the inner life of the characters, their emotions, their feelings, their conflicts, their contradictions, their paradoxes. What are they like inside? It’s a huge advance in the novel. And it feeds, obviously, into James Joyce.

I mean, “Ulysses” is completely about inner life. It feeds into Virginia Woolf wrote about Flaubert’s influence. There’s so many more where the psychology and inner life take over and existence precedes realism. So we’re not trying to judge right or wrong, goody or baddies morally, and we can’t. We just have to say, this is who they exist as, this is who they are, instead of trying to change, instead of trying to say, this one’s a goodie, this one’s a baddie, wrong or right. It’s just who they are and what they aspire to in their lives. And it breaks such ground in novels for me. It’s pretty profound. So that’s a bit about Charles. I mentioned a bit about 1846, the reign of Louis Philippe I. And he’s very… He used to walk around, apparently, walk around Paris carrying an umbrella, almost trying to show that he’s somehow connected to the ascendant middle class of France. And Flaubert also shows these French people who are living in the rural areas, but not starving or very hungry peasants, or serfs, or beyond serf at this stage, but an aspirant, emerging, urban middle class, or at least a middle class. And we get some of the… And I think why Flaubert sets it in an ordinary country town is precisely to set the aspiration and romantic dreams of the middle class for something more in life, something more emotional, romantic, adventure in life, which is not just the humdrum of previous eras, but that’s set against the ordinariness of the small town country life in the same way as Chekhov does with… And Chekhov also talks about Flaubert. Chekhov does in “Three Sisters” and “Cherry Orchard.” So she’s the embodiment of the first great romantic hero in this context in a way. And the realities of the world cannot be lived.

There must be something, and I don’t want to draw a naive sense of romantic here, but something more in life for her. Life cannot just be what she’s living. Mario Vargas Llosa, the Great South American writer, has a beautiful phrase. So many writers talk about Flaubert and this novel. He writes, “Emma’s dream, Emma’s drama, is the gap between illusion and reality, the distance between desire and its fulfilment. It shows the first signs of alienation that a century later in our times will take hold of men and women in industrialised society, the distance between desire and its fulfilment, between what’s illusion and what’s real.” And not just as this kind of second-year university course on illusion and reality and novels. It’s real for the characters. She knows, Emma, the reality she’s meant to live and what her family expect her to live but the romantic dream and hope. And Vargas Llosa, for me, he captures it, the distance between desire and its fulfilment. Can she live the desire of her parents, which is to live this ordinary, safe, middle-class, little life with a country doctor? Or does she dream and desire something much more? Can it be lived? Or is it ultimately always incompatible or not? Proust praised the novel endlessly about the inner life, the inner feelings, the psychology of Flaubert’s writing. Nabokov was obsessed with how he brings poetry and prose together in a sheer putting together of words. Kundera, also.

Kundera writes, “With Flaubert, prose lost its inferior stigma that it would be inferior to poetry. Since 'Madame Bovary,’ the art of the novel is equal to the art of poetry.” So we have… And Virginia Woolf, right? I don’t want to go into all of them, but so many of them refer back to Flaubert. Couple of phrases that I want to share with you here. And I’ve mentioned some of these guys here. I’ll come on to D.H. Lawrence and some of the others. This is some of the phrases from the novel. Humans… Here. “Don’t you know there are some souls that are constantly tormented? They need dreams and action, the purest passions, the most frenzied pleasures, and it leads them to throw themselves into all sorts of fantasies and follies.” This is Flaubert, but putting it into Emma’s mind. “The universe, for him, did not extend beyond the silken round of her skirts.” This is Flaubert writing about Rudolphe, the aristocratic lover of Emma. One sentence, carefully, brilliantly constructed, just captures everything. He just wants to seem he’s having great sex and seducing her, that’s it. “Her will, like the veil strung to her bonnet, flutters in every breeze. Always there is the desire urging, always the convention restraining.” That sentence, if it took him four or five days to write that sentence, fantastic. Not an easy sentence. “Her will, like the veil strung to her bonnet.” God, it’s such a powerful image. “Flutters in every breeze.” That’s her will. “Always there is the desire urging,” this romantic desire and desire itself, but “always the convention restraining.” So this constant human tussle between convention, between so-called reality and romantic adventure and passion as the desire.

Not only… Obviously, Flaubert is totally aware that’s his theme, but it’s inside the words of the characters that he puts it so often. Other phrases. “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance on. But we long to make music that will melt the stars.” We long to make music that will melt the stars, but our speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms that bears will dance? It’s such a contrast of images, again, between desires and the conventional realities. Couple of other phrases. “This life of hers was as cold as an attic that looks north. And boredom, quiet as the spider, was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart.” I have to read it again. “This life of hers was as cold as an attic that looks north. Boredom, quiet as a spider,” fascinating image, “was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart.” So the spider is quiet, but it’s always there. It’s the archetype Jungian shadow. It’s haunting. It’s there. Keeping quiet, but it’s there, haunting the everyday conventional reality of her life. And then one of the great phrases of romantic and passionate love. “Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings, a hurricane of the skies, which revolutionises and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.” So even at the risk of the abyss, which he puts at the end of the sentence, to hell with it. Let’s go for it no matter what. So these are the tussles.

And all of us know this in life, between romantic, adventurous, passionate love and the conventional, steady, predictable but safe, secure, day-to-day love. A different kind of love, different kind of desires being played out here. To me, in these two sentences, which he probably spent a long time writing, we get the essence of what Flaubert’s trying to write about. And for me, these images just burn into the imagination as we read them. They don’t go. He writes, also, “At the bottom of her heart, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a shipwrecked sailor, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life.” Like a shipwrecked sailor. “She didn’t know what this would lead to, what wind would come, where, which shore it would drive her towards. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day. She listened to every sound, wondered that it did not come. Then at sunset, it still did not come. And she longed for the morrow. She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.” There’s an irony, there’s a wit, there’s a playfulness. Emma is so aware, through the narrator, of all of these internal conflicts and dilemmas. One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the convention of society.“

Emma. "Everything was now unbearable to her. She wished that taking wing, like a bird, she could fly somewhere far away and be young again.” “Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.” If he spent, again, four days writing that sentence, it’s a lot. I want to give us examples so we can taste what he’s doing with the language. Like Shakespeare, when we taste it, we get so inside how he achieves the poetic in the language of novels, and it takes us so much deeper into the emotion of the character, and therefore, into our own emotion. “Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.” What a line. “She loved the sea for its storms alone. She rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification. Her temperament was more sentimental than artistic. And what she was looking for was emotion, was passion, not scenery.” Emotional passion, not scenery. Kundera writes that “Flaubert wanted to create an imaginary world where we, the reader, suspend moral judgement of character. We don’t expect a moral code to be driving the character.” He writes about, “It’s such a huge leap in the writing of novels. It’s a move of enormous significance,” Kundera writes. “Only there could characters in novels develop individuals who are not mere examples of good and evil but are autonomous beings. The novelist is the explorer of existence, not the explorer of reality.”

And I think that’s one of the most fascinating phrases I’ve ever read, and Kundera’s writing about, and it’s about Flaubert and “Madame Bovary.” “The novelist is the explorer of existence, not the examiner of reality.” It’s a huge shift. So the novelist, it’s just looking at what is. What is existence? What is passion? What is infatuation? What is love, romance, adventure, compassion, fear, love, hate, desire, whatever? It exists. It is without the moral judgement put on. And this is what I think freaked out the public prosecutor, freaked out the Paris society legal circles at the time because he’s putting moral in the margin, and he’s saying, this is just how people are. This is just how we all are as human nature. And I think this is why they saw it as obscene, not just ‘cause it’s about an adulterous affair, et cetera, but it’s about people who have no choice. This is destiny. And the great ancient Greek playwright, Euripides, said, “We put on the harness of necessity.” We ride the horse of our own destiny. Do we have a choice? Euripides plays out destiny, fate, choice, et cetera. We put on the harness of necessity and ride the horse of who we are. And for Kundera, it’s about who we are in existence, not who we may try or change or morally become. And a huge difference in the novels. Cervantes, he’s writing obviously about adventure, and Dumas and others, adventure stories and how adventure takes over in the novels. Samuel Richardson. Kundera talks about the hidden life of feelings, the inner life of characters that are meaning. He talks about Balzac.

And Balzac explores characters who are rooted in history. Huge difference if we put them in history. “Les Miserables” tries to put them in history as well. Tolstoy, it’s about the irrationality in human behaviour. Proust, trying to capture lost times and regret through memory. So we have these different kinds of a novel beginning to emerge around the time of Flaubert, and people writing and discussing much more about the novel at this time, the adventure novels, the psychologically driven novel, the novel where we try and understand character through understanding history, where we try and understand character through the sheer irrational drive of passion and desire. Tolstoy, and others, and Dostoevsky. Where we try and understand through memory, et cetera, identity. So all of these things become part of the discourse of literature and novels around the time of Flaubert. And I think, in this way, he contributes a huge amount to the remarkable rich tradition of the novel going into our century. And of course, Emma’s ultimate tragedy is that desire mixed with illusion, with reality. And which will win? Will the desire win? Or whether it’s romantic, or for adventure, or for glory, or for fame, whatever the desire may be, will that win? Or will the cold, icy chill of reality win? That’s part of who we are as human beings, human nature and our conflicts, our dilemmas, et cetera. So it’s in the era of the mid-19th century. In the era of some of the greatness of the Enlightenment at its peak, what does a novelist choose to focus on?

The unconscious drives of desire, passion. Very different to the Enlightenment, almost a reaction to the rational progression, the rational sense of the progression of history and human nature that the Enlightenment aspired towards, perhaps idealistically. D.H. Lawrence, fascinatingly, he’s talked about… It is this range of writers is what really intrigues me that so many should choose to write much more about this novel than about many others. D.H. Lawrence writes about “Madame Bovary.” “The flaw in 'Madame Bovary’ is that individuals like Emma and Charles are way too insignificant to carry the full weight of Flaubert’s profound sense of tragedy.” Now, this is interesting to me because he’s saying that tragedy should be much greater characters, much greater passions in life. You can’t just have ordinary people who live in the country. So “Emma and Charles are ordinary people.” This is D.H. Lawrence. “Emma and Charles are ordinary people, but Flaubert is not an ordinary person. And yet, why does he insist on pouring his own deep and bitter tragic consciousness into the little skins of a country doctor and his dissatisfied wife? They are ordinary souls.” This is D.H. Lawrence. He has to say towards the end of his essay on Flaubert, D.H. Lawrence says, “But I must admit, Emma has the extraordinary energy of unsatisfied desire.” If anybody thinks somebody knows about writing about desire, it should be D.H. Lawrence, But the fact that he can only find them desire played out in passion in sort of great heroic characters.

When one reflects back on his books, “Women in Love” and all the others, “Lady Chatterley,” et cetera, we get a sense in his novels, I understand them better because they are almost great heroic characters, whether they succeed or tragically fail in whatever way. He’s trying to find the grandioseness of this. Flaubert is saying it doesn’t matter. It can be played out in ordinary country doctor and his wife in a small provincial town anywhere. The triangle, the passion is played out. And of course, James Joyce and with “Ulysses.” Samuel Beckett writes a whole thing about Flaubert as a great innovator. Together with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and many others, Beckett puts it together. And he talks about how “Flaubert had the courage to write about the unexpected, the unknowable, the unpredictable passions and drives of desire in life, which,” Beckett writes, “is at the heart of human experience.” And he writes about how “His form is the content. Content is form. His writing is not about something. It is that something in itself. We feel it in the veins of the words. We feel the passions that Flaubert wants us to feel.” And he links it to Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake,” et cetera. So these are some of the writers who I wanted to mention who I think fascinatingly all go back to locate Flaubert as essential and influential in their lives. We cannot judge it as a simple story about adultery or as a simple story about a love triangle. We have to see these quite questions of existence, destiny in who people are. So her romantic sense is also in contemporary language.

Some very contemporary writers talk about how, in her romantic desire, she wants something more of an intense experience of life. Not only of love, but something more intense, a heightened charge of intensity in life. Charles’s upbringing, the husband, has conditioned him to mediocrity. And I’m quoting here, “My mother’s words mark the boundaries of my world.” Charles says, “My mother’s words mark the boundaries of my world. ‘Nothing haughty, nothing lofty, nothing too much, nothing too little.’” In a couple of sentences, we get it, the character of Charles. And in a gesture of devotion, he even settles. He tries to pay for her debts by settling her breakfasts and the champagne with breakfast that Emma has with her lovers. Okay, there’s one fascinating lover who, sorry, a literary critic who I want to mention, Jean Amery. Now I’m sure many people know much more about him than I do, but an extraordinary character. And he wrote a book called “Charles Bovary.” This is after the war. “Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: Portrait of a Simple Man” by Jean Amery. And I’m sure, as many people know, he was one of the great resistance leaders. Born Hanns Chaim Mayer in Austria of a Jewish father and, sorry, of a Jewish father and of a Christian mother. He’s arrested. He’s tortured by the Gestapo viciously. And then he is sent to Auschwitz, then to Buchenwald and to Belsen. Survives. And afterwards, wrote this book, “Charles Bovary.”

Well, he became a literary critic after the war. “Country Doctor: Portrait of a Simple Man.” And he talks about how the book oscillates between this realism and this romanticism and how Emma’s dreams are delusional. And it’s interesting to me ‘cause, obviously, with his history and writing after the war, he is going against these other writers. Nothing romantic in it for him at all. It’s just pure delusion, basically, that she could have dreams of these adventures, romance, et cetera. Life ain’t that. Life is a whole different story of sheer tough-bloodedness. Given his own life experience, clear. So her yearnings, her idealism to escape the monotony of her life is delusional for him. And he argues that Flaubert sets it up to show us that it’s delusional as a kind of a warning almost. And what’s fascinating about Jean Amery given his history, and this is separate to talking about Flaubert, for me, he has one of the most poetic phrases I’ve read on anti-Zionism and antisemitism. “Anti-Zionism contains antisemitism like a cloud contains a storm.” It’s a stunning image. And he’s almost trying to echo Flaubert’s obsession with getting the words exactly right, the image, the words put together, and so on. And it says so much and one can read much more about his essays and what he wrote. But this, in a way, captures not only Flaubert’s influence with his sheer writing of poetry, in this case, a literary critic’s essay.

And he’s writing about Zionism, antisemitism, et cetera. I think just incredibly powerful. So coming back, finally, to Emma and to Emma Bovary, the desire, the dissatisfaction with it, the desire for romanticised love, her dissatisfaction with the desire for marriage, for parenthood, for motherhood, for everything. And she says herself, “Where did it come from, this feeling in me of deprivation, this instantaneous decay of the things in which I put my trust? This instantaneous decay of the things in which I put my trust. Where did it come from, this feeling of deprivation?” And Beckett and others write about, they’re not answerable. We can say, yes, she grew up in a convent, she was educated, she read romantic novels, the equivalent of Mills & Boon of our times, et cetera. But is that enough? Or is there something deeper, as Kundera would say, in the existence of this person, of this character? And one of the final phrases, which I want to go back to here at the end, “Don’t you know there are some clouds that are constantly, some souls that are constantly tormented? They need dreams and action, purest passions, the most frenzied pleasures, and it leads them to throw themselves into all sorts of fantasies and follies.” “There are some…” This is Flaubert understanding Emma. “There are some souls that are constantly torment…” They can’t help it. It’s who they are. And this is what I mean by contributing to the novel of literature. We can’t just simplistically judge them good or bad, right or wrong, without understanding what Kundera calls existence before realism.

This is who they exist as. They don’t have a choice. They are just constantly tormented. They have dreams, aspirations, romance, desires, whatever. So in playing out this whole question of desire for me, it’s rooted in the middle of the 19th century. It’s rooted in France, obviously, of the times. But it’s also rooted in the tradition of the novel and how Flaubert takes it so much further. And it’s also rooted in how desire plays, in so many ways, plays itself out. And for me, this is also so contemporary. We all know it only too well. And I think that’s why we can read it again and again. It echoes way beyond its own period. Resonates. Okay, I’ll hold it there, and thank you everybody, and can take the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Rita. Oh, okay, thank you. I could see. Okay, thank you.

Marion, “Perfect timing for a lecture 'cause football watches between the two games.” I know.

“Tonight at Jermyn Street in London, 'Madame Bovary.’ I’m going tonight,” Angela. Oh, fantastic. Oh, I’d love to hear how it goes. Hope you enjoy.

Betty, “I read ‘Madame Bovary’ in French. The language was amazing. Then I read in English, it was also fabulous. Born and raised in Quebec. We studied all the French authors.” Ah, fantastic. Another, yeah, yeah, that other book by Flaubert. Fantastic. Balzac.

Q: Betty, “Please recommend a good translation.”

A: Whew, good question, Betty. Let me think about it ‘cause there are a lot of them that are really good. I’ll think about it and get back to you perhaps if you email 'cause there are a lot now that are really excellent translations.

Rita, oh, okay, thank you. Oh, photos. Thank you.

Q: Stan, “Does creativity in the French language translate well into English?”

A: I think so. I think we are fortunate that there are so many translators from French and German, Italian, et cetera, into English. And I think there’s some excellent translations in English.

Q: Rachel, “Who’s the actress? And is the film on Netflix?”

A: I don’t think it’s on Netflix, but there are a lot of versions of the film that are, we can find them on YouTube or IMDB. There are lots of versions of the movie. It’s a question of going through and finding which one may like.

Marion. Great question, Marion. And I had initially go, I was initially going to include some clips from some of the films, but I couldn’t find one film which captured five or six really good clips, so to follow the story through. And I didn’t want to show like short scenes from a whole lot of films on the same topic. I think it’s maybe because the writing is so good, it’s quite hard to really capture this on film. So I thought I’d rather… Also, I just wanted to get into the language today rather than the visual of the film, which I know I’d normally do. So it’s a really good question here. I wanted to focus on the poetry of the language 'cause it was such an obsession for Flaubert and how it influenced so many of these writers I mentioned afterwards to come 'cause they then thought, well, they’ve got, at least they’ve got to try and get equal to Flaubert or get close. Rita.

Oh, thank you. Arlene, “Emma reminds me of Princess Diana.” Ah, I never thought of that. That’s a fascinating connection.

Q: Sandra, “How do we appreciate the precision of poetry when we read translation?”

A: I think because what I was talking about earlier that there are hell of a lot of really excellent translations.

Q: Lynn and Rodney, “Do you think he was prosecuted about the book because the person committing adultery was a woman? Would it have happened if Emma had been a man and a husband had committed adultery?”

A: The answer probably not. Probably not. Probably wouldn’t have been on trial and have tried to have the book banned. I doubt it. 'Cause all before, women had the vote, women had rights way before.

Q: Margaret, “Will now be discussing Emile Zola?”

A: I think Trudy and I had… Thanks for this, Margaret. Trudy and I had a conversation. I think because Zola is so linked to “J'Accuse…!” and the Dreyfus trial that I think Trudy, we discussed it, she will discuss Emile Zola more in connection with the Dreyfus trial, which is I think one of his great, one of the most remarkable, one of the most remarkable contributions by any writer at any time.

Rita, thank you. Or thanks for your kind comments.

Pamela, “Nothing put Emma in the story. Emma has a daughter.”

Yeah, Berthe. “She has no maternal love. Finds her annoying.” Exactly. “And Berthe’s left as an orphan at the end.” Exactly. And the question is, how much do we judge Flaubert? Do we feel that much for Berthe? The fact that her mother doesn’t really care and that she’s left as an orphan at the end? And is that a really good critique that Flaubert neglects getting the emotion of the reader for Emma’s daughter? Yes.

Q: Nona, “Do you see parallels to 'Anna Karenina’?”

A: Yes, absolutely. And similar, the triangle, et cetera, adultery, and so on. And similar thing of the psychologically driven, obsessive of desire in a way, definitely. I think, with “Anna Karenina,” that Tolstoy is even more obsessed with Russian history and with Russian history and the position of the aristocrats, the middle class, and the serfs. I think he’s even more, the excerpts, he’s even more obsessed with, he’s bringing history with the psychology to the novel.

Q: Romane, “Is it an irony that access to inner life coexists with the onset of industrialization?”

A: Great question. I think it actually begins at Shakespeare’s time. And I think Shakespeare is on the cusp. At the beginning of the 1600s, Shakespeare’s on the cusp of the end of feudalism and the beginning of individualist mercantile capitalism. And I think Shakespeare bridges that cusp. The sailors are going out to explore the world. They’re conquering. They’re colonising. They’re discovering worlds, cultures, peoples, cultures, languages, animals, all vegetations, potatoes, many, all new things. And I think it’s that end of feudalism in England, certainly, for Shakespeare, and the beginning of, as I say, individualist mercantile capitalism. Hence, Shakespeare put such an emphasis on soliloquies. So inner life comes through the soliloquies. I think that’s where it begins for me, and Shakespeare, and a couple of the other writers of his times, Ben Jonson and others. And then I think it’s taken much further later by novelists and poets and so on. But that’s, for me, the defining era of that big change. And hence, we begin the inner life of character, which doesn’t happen in previous plays and poems of literature.

Q: Paula, “Why couldn’t it be on 50 pages?”

A: Okay. Yeah, that can happen.

Q: “Were there any American authors who admitted?”

A: Great question. I’ll need to research that and get back to you.

Carol, “The spelling of Kundera.” He was the brilliant Czech writer who managed to escape when the Russian tanks went in in ‘68 and crashed the Prague Spring. And he escaped together with Milos Forman. They were all friends and connections at the same time. Milos Forman, Milan Kundera, and Vaclav Havel. And Kundera went on to become an novelist. And it’s K-U-N-D-E-R-A. Helen, “Interesting that a man in the mid-19th century could write so beautifully about the boredom and frustration of her existence.”

Yeah, “And her disappointment in love from a female perspective.” Absolutely. I think it’s because he understands from a female perspective and because he’s really obsessed with the whole notion of, what is desire? How does desire play out? As part of preparation, I was also listening to Bob Dylan’s album, “Desire,” and that image of him at the front, and trying to think of comparisons. But that’s for another whole time.

Okay, Sheri. “Comparison between Emma and Anna Karenina.” Like I say, I think Tolstoy brings more history into the psychological novel, if you like. And the history of what I mentioned about Russia feudalism, the class, the aristocrats, and so on. I think he’s aware of that. And he brings in the world of the military of Russia at the time. So there’s a historical canvas which is much bigger, huge, whereas Emma… And that’s what D.H. Lawrence accuses him of. D.H. Lawrence says, “But these are just ordinary people that live in a small country town. And they don’t have these grand emotions.” D.H. Lawrence wants an “Anna Karenina” with a historical panoramic back view. That, for me, would be a major comparison. Helen, thank you.

The Czech author, an amazing author. For me, he’s one of my favourites together with Vaclav Havel.

Q: James, “Is religion dead for the people in the novels except as a convention?”

A: Yes, and fascinatingly, I think it’s what Flaubert is saying is that religion doesn’t really come into it. He’s obsessed with desire, obsessed with how dream and aspiration and breaking convention because it’s the middle class who are not, who are trying to throw off the shackles by the Enlightenment of religious control, institutionalised religion as control. Fascinating question because the only thing he really brings in is that Emma studies at a convent, and that’s… But he doesn’t talk about her studying the Bible. He talks about her reading romantic novels and that creates her picture of love. So he’s flipping the convent and religion in a way.

Q: Janet, “What did Flaubert mean when he said, 'I am Madame Bovary.’”

A: There’s been huge debates and I don’t want to get into it now. That’s perhaps for another time. But big debates, whether he was being ironic, he was being witty or sarcastic, or whether he was being profound and serious. “I am Madame Bovary.” In other words, we are all Madame Bovary. We are all caught in the paradoxes and the contradictions that I’ve spoken about.

Q: Sandra and Steve, “Is Emma’s choice of arsenic consistent with the emotional and passionate nature?”

A: Given that it’s Flaubert, I would say, yes, absolutely. It’s not by chance that it’s arsenic. Great point.

Rita, “Kundera wrote about ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ which turned into film.”

• Brilliant film, brilliant book. And “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” brilliant book it is. Again, it’s about these are just who people are, and how much choice do they really have? Okay. Then is, yeah, Esther.

Q: “Isn’t the ending a form of judgement ?”

A: I think it is, but it’s part of, let’s remember, he’s writing for a serialised magazine every week, so it’s got to have a potboiler quality to it. You’ve got to build up to something, like Charles Dickens and many others also writing for serial magazines. So the ending is a form of judgement , but I think by then we’ve gone through so much of the emotional inner life of these characters. Charles’ also, not only Emma.

Q: Roberta, “Could you please repeat the quote?” “The novelist is the explorer of existence, not of reality.”

A: That’s Kundera, yeah. How we exist as we are with all these contradictions without the judging that reality brings in.

“It would be interesting to agree a definition of the meaning of ordinary people.” Yeah, great question. This is a fantastic question. “I’ve also known wealthy title aristocratic people at heart are very ordinary. Then others who lead a quiet life who are highly intellectual and far from ordinary.” Marcel, thank you. This is a fantastic quote. I agree entirely. So the whole question of what is ordinary, which would be a fascinating topic for another lecture, or looking at a couple of novels maybe, a couple of writers. What actually is ordinary and what isn’t?

Q: James, “Are there political passions where the fascists or communists are a version of religious passions of an earlier age?

A: Writers, like Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, speak of the demons, the devils.” Dostoevsky certainly is caught up very much with the Russian Orthodox Church. He’s profoundly locates himself in it. Dostoevsky is tormented, and also Solzhenitsyn. I think they’re tormented by it. They can’t avoid it. And also, for their readers, it’s probably a way for their readers to have a quick way in to a demonic quality, if you like, which is nonconventional in terms of institutionalised religion and the society. Okay. Avron, thank you.

Q: Judith, “Best translation?”

A: Let me check it, as I said before, and get back to you ‘cause there are quite a few that are really good.

Q: Michael, “What is lost?”

A: I don’t think that much because I really think, as I said, there’s so many fantastic French, English, German, Italian, the main languages, like Spanish, of the world. G. Budnik, okay.

Q: “Can you comment on the title, 'Madame Bovary’?

A: Yeah, great, "That it’s not ‘Emma.’” I think because it’s about her romantic dream to be a madame and not to be the wife of an average country-based public health official.

Susan, “Hi, how are you? Hope you’re well in New York City. Hope it’s going great.

Q: Do you think Tolstoy shows more moral judgement about Anna Karenina?”

A: Thank you. I will look at the email. Thank you. I think Tolstoy tends more towards the moral, certainly, than Dostoevsky or Flaubert. I think Tolstoy almost can’t help himself. There’s a moral quality and judgement , yup.

Farla, “Wonder what lesson we can learn.” Well, I just think a deeper understanding of how desire and passion really work, and desire, in so many ways, in life, whether for romantic adventure, whether for adventure itself, whether for ambition, for dream, dreams to be achieved, desire. In this case, of course, it’s specifically love and what the word means, love. Debbie, thank you.

Michael, “Sure if Flaubert influenced Zola.” Not specifically. I’ve read a bit in research, but one’s not sure how much is really meant. And it’s often quoted in it from a third or fourth person. So I’m hesitant.

Q: Roberta, “What do you think of D.H. Lawrence’s judgement ? ‘Passion is not the domain. Excuses remain of the great tragic character.’”

A: Absolutely. It’s fascinating to me because D.H. Lawrence’s own background. He’s a son of a miner. But for him, you can only have great tragic characters only. So I find it fascinating and I don’t agree with him. Of course, you can have these passions in anybody, I think, in our times. You can have this passion in anybody. Just being alive can push one towards passion, romance, whatever we want, anything.

Barbara, thank you. So current Emma.

Q: Susan, “If Emma lived in contemporary times, would she not have been freer to go off on her own?”

A: Yes.

Q: “And live the life she created?”

A: Yes, ‘cause she probably would have a career. She probably could obviously get a divorce, ditch him and move on, absolutely. So it’s absolutely tied up with the times. I mean, the mid-19th century France, which we all know only too well. Women, of course, don’t have anything like the opportunity that is struggled and fought for in the 20th century.

Diane, thank you. And Annette, thanks. Herbert, very kind. Yeah, Flaubert was absolutely this influential. And I was also surprised, as I started to read one, I thought so disparate from D.H. Lawrence to Kafka to Beckett to Nabokov. So many of them keep going back to this guy. Julian Barnes, whew, that’s a fascinating one. Jack, I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Q: Yeah. Bobby, “Could one suggest that the emergence of these intense passions is more likely to become a driving force during peaceful times? People have the luxury of introspection than times of sheer survival.”

A: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, if we’re living in times where, do we have electricity or not? Do we have access to food for our children or for day or night, or the light bulb, or the kettle? Of course, survival is going to take over. That’s why what’s clever about Flaubert, he understands this is the time of the emerging, ascendant, rising middle class. And that’s what he’s trying to focus on, this business, mercantile, and professional, lawyers, doctors, middle class. It’s purposely set in that class, which is a huge difference to novels before.

Q: Marion, “Did he have children?”

A: No, I don’t, no.

Okay, Kathy, “Adultery is a female crime. Theologically, men cannot be adulterous. Married woman having sex somebody else, not her husband.” Okay. I wouldn’t know about this theologically. I really wouldn’t. I would need somebody else who knows theologically about that. I’m not sure at all, Kathy, but very interesting.

Rita, ah, great. Gay, “Please send.” If you can email me or through the webinar or through Lauren or Judy, if you can email, and then I can email you back specifically. , “Influence of Flaubert’s life on his writing, his bio.” Okay.

Jerome, “The name of the Kundera book.” There are two brilliant books. The one is called “The Art of the Novel” by Kundera, and the other one is called “The Curtain,” but “The Art of the Novel.”

Q: Susan, “The Jean Amery quote of anti-Zionism pertinent today?”

A: Because I know this quote from before and because Jean Amery wrote this book about Charles Bovary, the ordinariness of the husband, but he takes it, and given his history, he has absolutely no interest in fantasy, no interest in fantasy, in dream, and all that. He’s like cold, this what is delusional and what isn’t? Amery understands it given his own personal history to describe that he’s got no time for sentimentality, what he would regard sentimentality either in love or in antisemitism, absolutely.

Okay, I think that’s it. So thank you very much, everybody. Hope you have a great rest of the weekend. And enjoy, if you’re watching, England versus France. Let’s see.