Madame Bovary

[Mikkay]

"Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle,
on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance
when we long to move the stars."

Have any of you read a translation (or the original French) of Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert?

I really didn't think I'd like it, because the language in the translation I read is so flowery and dense and the plot seems overly simple, but it's really a beautiful novel. The main character is Emma Bovary, and she's detestable and wonderful all at once, and you like her and then hate her and all the imagery surrounding her is intense and passionate and wild and sensual and vastly unhappy, then the end is crazy, but in a good way.

And really, the language is flowery, but it's also incredible. I read Lydia Davis' "new translation" for a fiction writing class, and I was blown away by the level of detail and the complex simplicity of the phrasing. That's an oxymoron, but if you read it, you'll understand--every idea is simple, but it's got so many layers of meaning and interpretation that you're just blown away about every other page.

My favorite passage:

SPOILER: Click to show

"One day while tidying a drawer in anticipation of her departure, she pricked her fingers on something. It was a piece of wire in her wedding bouquet. The orange-blossom buds were yellow with dust, and the satin ribbons, with their silver piping, were fraying at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it lay like a red bush on the embers, slowly being consumed. She watched it burn. The little cardboard berries burst open, the binding wire twisted, the braid melted; and the shriveled paper petals, hovering along the fireback like black butterflies, at last flew away up the chimney."

And it's got what is rumored to be one of literature's greatest sex scenes--I swear, it's not what you think. Actually, you might read it and not even recognize it for what it is. That's good writing, in my opinion. :3

So, are there any other Madame Bovary fans? It's definitely not my usual read, but I loved it. Really, I did. It got boring in parts, but overall, I just admire Flaubert and Davis for their flawless work in character development and description.

[Brittany (gone-ish)]

I actually read Madame Bovary for fun when I was in high school and I loved it.

The translation I read was by Eleanor Marx Aveling also known as Karl Marx's daughter (author of The Communist Manifesto). She has done a lot of translations that I've read and I really never have a problem with her. The translation is still flowery and dense, but that has never really deterred me considering some of my favorite classics are Russian novels (the granddaddy's of dense literature right there).

I don't think a book ever left such an impression on me as Madame Bovary. Emma was this really complex character and I felt for her. I wouldn't call her your likable heroine because sometimes I wanted to smack sense into her, but that's what I enjoyed. She was far from perfect. She was human, very human.

It's years later and I still have a favorite passage:

SPOILER: Click to show

The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied vibrations. (157)

I could not get this novel out of my head after I finished. That to me is sign of an amazingly written piece of literature.