Tea at Trianon: "To Make Bears Dance"

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 27, 2009

"To Make Bears Dance"

The art of Flaubert in Madame Bovary.

Sometimes we find a novel that uses images in a brilliant and beautiful way, but the poetry of these images almost runs like a counter plot to the book--that is, they run parallel with the story but are not part of it. In Madame Bovary, it is the images that raise the pathetic story of Madame Bovary to the level of art that is concerned with profound matters. His precise and poetic use of language serves to bring out the truth of the psychological moment, to say that which is so difficult "to put into words."

Pentimento said...: Thank you for this post. I remember when I first read Madame Bovary; it changed my whole world. I read it several more times in English and once in French. Flaubert in a sense creates two plots: the sad - yes, pathetic is the word - story of Emma Bovary, and then the parallel narrative of the *language* with which he tells it. In some ways, the book is about language itself. The wonderful and heartrending image of how we would make music to melt the stars but instead are beating on cracked drums for bears to dance to, yes -- and there's also an unforgettable moment near the beginning when Charles first sees Emma (her parasol is open and gobs of melting snow are dropping on it). I hope you write more about it.; March 27, 2009 at 11:18:00 AM EDT