I studied Flaubert's work in graduate school and was always gripped and impressed by his portrayal of Emma Bovary. A couple of years ago I tried to re-read "Madame Bovary" and found myself put off by Flaubert's realistic but in some ways misogynist view of Emma. It's true that he famously said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!" so any negative portrayal of her was, in a sense, a purposeful revealing of his own weaknesses as well.
Nevertheless, reading the novel many years later, although I still understood her yearning for romance and for "something more," I found myself impatient with Emma and with the novel. Now there is a new translation into English, by the well-respected author of unusual, very short stories and a translator of Proust's "Swann's Way," Lydia Davis. Davis feels that earlier translations strayed too far from the original, and lost the sense of Flaubert's style. According to a very informative New York magazine article by Sam Anderson (10/11/10), Davis "spent more than two years trying to create the closest possible replica of 'Madame Bovary' that would still make sense to an English reader." Anderson adds that "Flaubert's novel demonstrates the kind of perfect control seen more often in poetry...craftmanship so advanced that the craftmanship disappears....Davis admits that this is the one aspect of Bovary that will never survive translation: an almost superhuman cohesion." I think I will look for this new translation.
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silly aside: you and I were rooming together when you were taking that class on Flaubert, and you mentioned it to my mother when we were having dinner with her. After a few minutes she started laughing and said that for some reason (although of course my mother knew of Flaubert) she heard it as "Flo Bear!" That cracked us all up--and even now, I fleetingly picture a cheerful cartoon character, the friendly Flo Bear, when I read the word Flaubert. (Just a brief steam of consciousness from the low brow gallery!)
ReplyDeleteMary, I had forgotten that story...a fun and funny memory!
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