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Flaubert's Saint Julien: The Sin of Existing
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
This streamlined tale, which Flaubert claims to have composed as a relaxing exercise, but which he himself termed “effervescent,” is in fact, in its very craftsmanlike perfection, one of his most turbulent texts. Cruelty, spirituality, pathology—the most disturbing aspects of his temperament as well as the most paradoxical interplay of themes make of this reworking of a minor saint's legend one of Flaubert's most “personal” works. No text of Flaubert's appears on the surface more impassive and more liberated from any element that is not under the strictest esthetic control. The aloofness of an almost inhuman hero, the historical and mythic distance, the utilization of an already existing legend, the display of quaint erudition—all suggest a totally impersonal relation between the author and his literary material.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966
References
1 “Quant au Cœur Simple, c'est aussi bonhomme que Saint Julien est effervescent …” (letter to Mme Commainville, 14 July 1876, Flaubert, Correspondance, 9 vols (Paris, 1926–33), vii, 320–321.
2 See Jean Giraud, “La Genèse d'un chef-d’œuvre—‘La Légende de Saint Julien L'Hospitalier’,” Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, 1919, xxvi, 87–93, and René Jasinski, “Sur le ‘Saint Julien L'Hospitalier’ de Flaubert,” Revue d'Histoire de la Philosophie, ii (15 April 1933), 156–172.
3 “Saint Julien L'Hospitalier” in Spicilège (Paris, 1920).
4 “ ‘Saint Julien L'Hospitalier’ et ‘Pécopin’,” Revue Biblio-Iconographique, 1905, pp. 1–7; 67–75. This view has of course been challenged. Benjamin F. Bart, for instance, believes that concern for symmetry and harmony of structure have led Flaubert to a “moral structure” as well (“The Moral of Flaubert's Saint-Julien,” Romanic Review, xxxviii, February 1947, 23–33). The equation of beauty and morality does not, however, satisfactorily account for any personal or intentional meanings.
5 See Marcel Schwob, “Saint Julien L'Hospitalier” in Spicilège.
6 Critique de la raison dialectique (Paris, 1960), pp. 46–48.
7 In understandable reaction to Sartre's excessive affirmations, Jean Bruneau maintains that Flaubert had a deep love for his father (Les Débuts littéraires de Gustave Flaubert, Paris, 1962, p. 88, n. 40). But Bruneau's assertion, in an otherwise solid and cautious study, is based on rather weak evidence: a youthful statement in Souvenirs, Notes et Pensées intimes (ibid, p. 279, n. 88) and the suggestion that Dr. Flaubert was not quite the philistine Maxime Du Camp made him out to be. The proof is thin. Bruneau, on the other hand, strangely neglects the implications of Saint Julien, which he considers, exceptionally, a work of “pure imagination” (p. 481). Moreover, there is very little in Flaubert's work that can possibly suggest love for his father. In L'Éducation sentimentale and in Un Cœur simple (the text richest in evocations of his own childhood) the father is totally absent.
8 See Jean Pommier, “Noms et prénoms dans Madame Bovary,” Mercure de France, June 1949, pp. 244–264. The treatise in question is Vincent Duval's “Traité pratique du pied-bot” (1839), which mentions a ten-year-old girl treated by Dr. Flaubert, and “enfermée dans des attelles de fer”—without any sign of improvement.
9 Corresp., viii, 209–210.
10 Corresp., iii, 398. Curiously, what follows is “Je suis un catholique, j'ai au cœur quelque chose du suintement vert des cathédrales normandes …”
11 Letter to Emmanuel Vasse, 5 April 1846.
12 Corresp., vii, 122.
13 Ibid., iv, 182.
14 Ibid., iv, 125.
15 Critique de la raison dialectique, p. 46.