WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.180 Welcome back to The Deep Dive. Today we are plunging 00:00:03.180 --> 00:00:06.080 into a life that was, well, really just defined 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:09.660 by paradox, by frustration, and by an obsessive 00:00:09.660 --> 00:00:12.380 commitment to craft that, and this isn't an overstatement, 00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:15.660 fundamentally changed how stories are told. It 00:00:15.660 --> 00:00:17.980 really did. Our subject is Gustave Flaubert, 00:00:18.140 --> 00:00:20.620 the French novelist, and his work habits were 00:00:20.620 --> 00:00:22.920 so punishing, his commitment to objective truth 00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:26.769 so absolute, it, uh... It arguably changed the 00:00:26.769 --> 00:00:28.850 very definition of modern prose. He's always 00:00:28.850 --> 00:00:31.289 labeled the master of literary realism, but the 00:00:31.289 --> 00:00:33.270 sources you've provided paint a much more complex 00:00:33.270 --> 00:00:36.429 picture. Exactly. He was an artist who was, at 00:00:36.429 --> 00:00:39.350 his core, steeped in romantic passion. But he 00:00:39.350 --> 00:00:41.210 spent his entire professional life trying to 00:00:41.210 --> 00:00:44.070 suppress it. to replace that passion with an 00:00:44.070 --> 00:00:46.490 almost scientific precision. And the materials 00:00:46.490 --> 00:00:48.549 we're working with, the biographies, the articles, 00:00:48.689 --> 00:00:51.049 his own letters, they show this man who was equal 00:00:51.049 --> 00:00:53.789 parts intense artist, tormented recluse, and 00:00:53.789 --> 00:00:56.490 maybe most surprisingly, a really unsparing and 00:00:56.490 --> 00:00:59.229 scandalous traveler. That's right. So our mission 00:00:59.229 --> 00:01:01.909 for this deep dive is to try and synthesize these 00:01:01.909 --> 00:01:04.569 contradictions. We need to look at his personal 00:01:04.569 --> 00:01:08.200 battles, his... painful pursuit of aesthetic 00:01:08.200 --> 00:01:11.540 perfection and his monumental influence on literature. 00:01:11.859 --> 00:01:14.459 And that influence is often indeniable, which 00:01:14.459 --> 00:01:16.500 is the key thing to understand about him. Also. 00:01:16.719 --> 00:01:18.799 Well, Flaubert is the writer that other serious 00:01:18.799 --> 00:01:21.980 writers read and reread to learn how to structure 00:01:21.980 --> 00:01:25.239 a sentence, how to observe a scene, and crucially, 00:01:25.609 --> 00:01:27.769 How to just disappear from their own text. Right. 00:01:27.870 --> 00:01:30.290 So by the end of this, you, the listener, should 00:01:30.290 --> 00:01:32.390 understand why he earned that pretty sobering 00:01:32.390 --> 00:01:35.609 nickname, the martyr of style. Yes. And you'll 00:01:35.609 --> 00:01:37.689 see how his methods, I mean, we're talking weeks 00:01:37.689 --> 00:01:40.450 of struggle just to polish a single page, shape 00:01:40.450 --> 00:01:42.989 the way that you, as a modern reader, expect 00:01:42.989 --> 00:01:45.689 and demand prose to function today. Okay, let's 00:01:45.689 --> 00:01:47.569 unpack that right away because that's a huge 00:01:47.569 --> 00:01:50.370 claim. What's the fundamental idea we need to 00:01:50.370 --> 00:01:52.510 get our heads around with Flaubert? The core 00:01:52.510 --> 00:01:55.500 thesis, and you see this in theorists. like Cornelie 00:01:55.500 --> 00:01:58.480 Kavas, is that Flaubert elevated realism not 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:00.560 just by describing things, but by striving for 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:02.780 formal perfection in the language itself. So 00:02:02.780 --> 00:02:04.819 it's not just what he's saying, but how he's 00:02:04.819 --> 00:02:07.840 saying it. Precisely. This relentless formal 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:11.159 pursuit of linguistic purity. It resulted in 00:02:11.159 --> 00:02:13.680 this presentation of reality that tends toward 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:17.139 absolute neutrality. He made style, you know, 00:02:17.139 --> 00:02:19.659 the way the sentence was built, its rhythm, the 00:02:19.659 --> 00:02:22.930 choice of vocabulary. He made that into an objective 00:02:22.930 --> 00:02:26.330 method for presenting reality. So style wasn't 00:02:26.330 --> 00:02:28.310 just decoration for him. It wasn't flair. It 00:02:28.310 --> 00:02:31.250 was the very mechanism of truth. Yes. If the 00:02:31.250 --> 00:02:33.490 language was perfect, the truth would simply 00:02:33.490 --> 00:02:36.689 emerge, unadulterated by the author's ego or 00:02:36.689 --> 00:02:39.289 sentimentality. He saw language as a scientific 00:02:39.289 --> 00:02:41.469 instrument. A perfectly calibrated scientific 00:02:41.469 --> 00:02:43.870 instrument. He didn't invent realism, not by 00:02:43.870 --> 00:02:46.150 a long shot, but you could say he professionalized 00:02:46.150 --> 00:02:48.909 it. He turned it into this rigorous, almost scientific 00:02:48.909 --> 00:02:51.330 endeavor. And we're going to trace this incredible 00:02:51.330 --> 00:02:53.610 struggle, this sort of war against the self through 00:02:53.610 --> 00:02:55.490 his key works. We'll be looking at Madame Bovary, 00:02:55.590 --> 00:02:58.090 of course. Of course. And his massive, cynical 00:02:58.090 --> 00:03:00.740 project, Sentimental Education. And crucially, 00:03:00.819 --> 00:03:03.659 his voluminous correspondence, his letters, which 00:03:03.659 --> 00:03:06.300 give us this direct, unfiltered access to his 00:03:06.300 --> 00:03:09.120 incredibly conflicted, often tormented mind. 00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:11.240 That's where you really see the struggle behind 00:03:11.240 --> 00:03:13.400 the perfection. Okay, let's start with part one. 00:03:14.030 --> 00:03:16.310 the contradictory life of Gustave Flaubert, we 00:03:16.310 --> 00:03:18.590 need to build that foundation. He was born in 00:03:18.590 --> 00:03:22.370 1821 in Rouen, Upper Normandy, and his upbringing 00:03:22.370 --> 00:03:26.110 was comfortable, but also very grounded in a 00:03:26.110 --> 00:03:29.530 kind of empirical reality. It was. It was stable 00:03:29.530 --> 00:03:32.090 and very professional. He was the second son 00:03:32.090 --> 00:03:35.030 of Achille Cleophas Flaubert, who held an extremely 00:03:35.030 --> 00:03:37.849 important position. He was the director and senior 00:03:37.849 --> 00:03:40.449 surgeon of Rouen's main hospital. And you have 00:03:40.449 --> 00:03:42.830 to think about what that environment would have 00:03:42.830 --> 00:03:45.729 been like. Oh, absolutely. It's a world of dissection, 00:03:45.810 --> 00:03:48.710 of clinical observation, of this cold, unblinking 00:03:48.710 --> 00:03:51.430 assessment of the human body and all its pathologies. 00:03:51.610 --> 00:03:54.009 That early connection to the medical and scientific 00:03:54.009 --> 00:03:57.530 world, it subtly but profoundly influenced his 00:03:57.530 --> 00:04:00.009 later, almost surgical desire for precision in 00:04:00.009 --> 00:04:02.270 his writing. So he was kind of destined for a 00:04:02.270 --> 00:04:04.509 clinical viewpoint, but he just applied it to 00:04:04.509 --> 00:04:06.770 psychology instead of anatomy. That's a perfect 00:04:06.770 --> 00:04:09.110 way to put it. But despite that scientific backdrop, 00:04:09.449 --> 00:04:11.569 he was drawn to the imagination almost immediately. 00:04:12.189 --> 00:04:15.030 He was a literary prodigy, in a way. The sources 00:04:15.030 --> 00:04:17.709 say he began writing remarkably early, maybe 00:04:17.709 --> 00:04:20.230 as young as eight years old. He got his formal 00:04:20.230 --> 00:04:22.889 education at the Lycée Pierre Cornet in Rouen, 00:04:22.990 --> 00:04:26.329 and then in 1840, he was set up for the next 00:04:26.329 --> 00:04:29.410 logical step. The law. The law. Which he hated. 00:04:29.470 --> 00:04:31.410 This seems like such a common detour for these 00:04:31.410 --> 00:04:34.129 young artistic souls in the 19th century. It 00:04:34.129 --> 00:04:36.209 was the path of professional expectation. He 00:04:36.209 --> 00:04:38.709 went to Paris to study, but the sources are all 00:04:38.709 --> 00:04:41.079 very clear. This was not his calling. He was 00:04:41.079 --> 00:04:43.699 an indifferent student at best. And he found 00:04:43.699 --> 00:04:46.579 Paris itself, the intellectual and social hub 00:04:46.579 --> 00:04:50.079 of all of France, to be distasteful, chaotic. 00:04:50.379 --> 00:04:53.600 Why? What was it about Paris? He saw its superficiality, 00:04:53.639 --> 00:04:55.939 its easy pleasures and constant distractions. 00:04:56.240 --> 00:04:58.240 And for him, that was completely antithetical 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:01.240 to the serious pursuit of art. That early distaste 00:05:01.240 --> 00:05:04.860 for urban chaos, it really foreshadows his later 00:05:04.860 --> 00:05:07.360 artistic rejection of cliche and easy sentiment, 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:09.899 doesn't it? It's a direct line. But he got a 00:05:09.899 --> 00:05:11.980 break from the law in 1840 with some travel. 00:05:12.079 --> 00:05:14.560 But the real life -altering shift happened a 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:16.939 few years later. Right. He traveled in the Pyrenees 00:05:16.939 --> 00:05:20.100 and Corsica. But the permanent retreat, the thing 00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:21.860 that really defined his entire career, that came 00:05:21.860 --> 00:05:25.300 in 1846. That's the moment. He suffered an attack 00:05:25.300 --> 00:05:28.240 of what we now believe was epilepsy, a truly 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:30.959 debilitating condition back then. And following 00:05:30.959 --> 00:05:34.199 that, he abandoned his law studies entirely and 00:05:34.199 --> 00:05:36.930 left Paris for good. This is such a pivotal moment. 00:05:37.009 --> 00:05:38.970 It's not just a career change. This is the moment 00:05:38.970 --> 00:05:42.790 he establishes the Crescent Hermitage. Yes, Crescent. 00:05:42.790 --> 00:05:44.790 It's near Rouen, right on the banks of the Seine, 00:05:44.810 --> 00:05:47.670 and it became his fortress. You return there 00:05:47.670 --> 00:05:49.569 and live for the rest of his life, only making 00:05:49.569 --> 00:05:51.910 these occasional necessary visits to Paris or 00:05:51.910 --> 00:05:54.920 England. So this seclusion was absolutely necessary 00:05:54.920 --> 00:05:58.060 for his intense multi -year writing process. 00:05:58.420 --> 00:06:00.680 It was. It contributed heavily to this image 00:06:00.680 --> 00:06:03.379 of the solitary genius struggling against the 00:06:03.379 --> 00:06:05.759 current of easy writing. He essentially walled 00:06:05.759 --> 00:06:07.920 himself off from the very society he spent his 00:06:07.920 --> 00:06:11.120 entire career so ruthlessly documenting. Now, 00:06:11.139 --> 00:06:13.420 despite this physical seclusion, he wasn't completely 00:06:13.420 --> 00:06:16.180 immune to human connection. which brings us to 00:06:16.180 --> 00:06:18.620 his private life and relationships. The most 00:06:18.620 --> 00:06:21.180 significant one was with the poet Louise Collet. 00:06:21.339 --> 00:06:23.740 The relationship with Louise Collet, which lasted 00:06:23.740 --> 00:06:28.459 from 1846 to 1854, is absolutely vital for understanding 00:06:28.459 --> 00:06:31.560 Flaubert the man. His letters to her, the famous 00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:33.980 correspondence, are not just love letters. No, 00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:36.300 there's so much more. They're a key source of 00:06:36.300 --> 00:06:38.939 insight into his thoughts on writing, the philosophy 00:06:38.939 --> 00:06:41.480 of art, the burden of existence, his whole process. 00:06:42.649 --> 00:06:45.750 Biographer Emil Fagey called it his only serious 00:06:45.750 --> 00:06:48.110 romantic relationship. Even though he had a mistress 00:06:48.110 --> 00:06:51.110 in England. Right. But that distinction, a serious 00:06:51.110 --> 00:06:54.069 intellectual epistolary connection versus a more 00:06:54.069 --> 00:06:57.430 physical relationship, is fascinating. It suggests 00:06:57.430 --> 00:06:59.629 that for Flaubert, intellectual and artistic 00:06:59.629 --> 00:07:02.569 communion was the highest form of romantic seriousness. 00:07:03.009 --> 00:07:05.290 For a man obsessed with the perfect word, it 00:07:05.290 --> 00:07:07.389 makes sense that the written communication would 00:07:07.389 --> 00:07:09.569 be the most profound relationship. Absolutely. 00:07:10.079 --> 00:07:12.240 His letters to Collet give us the clearest, least 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:14.519 polished view of his mind. It's interesting, 00:07:14.579 --> 00:07:16.680 though, how he maintained these connections while 00:07:16.680 --> 00:07:19.019 at the same time completely rejecting the foundational 00:07:19.019 --> 00:07:21.920 unit of society, the family. He never married, 00:07:22.019 --> 00:07:24.800 never had children. He was definitively, almost 00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:27.180 brutally, opposed to marriage and procreation. 00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:30.680 There's a striking letter to Calais from 1852 00:07:30.680 --> 00:07:33.120 where he lays out this very clear, very extreme 00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:36.000 antinatalist viewpoint. He states that he did 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:39.300 not want to transmit to no one the aggravations 00:07:39.300 --> 00:07:42.000 and the disgrace of existence. Wow. The disgrace 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:45.720 of existence. That is a dark, almost nihilistic 00:07:45.720 --> 00:07:48.860 statement. How did that personal philosophy end 00:07:48.860 --> 00:07:51.850 up fueling his art? Well, it gave him the philosophical 00:07:51.850 --> 00:07:54.910 justification for his objective method. If existence 00:07:54.910 --> 00:07:57.730 itself is inherently a disgrace and an aggravation, 00:07:58.009 --> 00:08:00.889 then the artist's role isn't to console or to 00:08:00.889 --> 00:08:03.370 romanticize it. It's just to document the misery. 00:08:03.569 --> 00:08:06.250 With clinical accuracy. His refusal to participate 00:08:06.250 --> 00:08:08.750 in the aggravations of domestic life gave him 00:08:08.750 --> 00:08:11.189 the detachment he needed to be the ultimate realist 00:08:11.189 --> 00:08:13.709 observer of those lives. So if he was a recluse 00:08:13.709 --> 00:08:16.069 in his personal life, was he totally disengaged 00:08:16.069 --> 00:08:18.790 politically? Did he bring that same cynical detachment 00:08:18.790 --> 00:08:21.350 to the political landscape? He was highly political 00:08:21.350 --> 00:08:23.970 and highly critical, especially of the repeated 00:08:23.970 --> 00:08:26.170 failures and compromises of the French political 00:08:26.170 --> 00:08:29.569 system in the mid -19th century. He described 00:08:29.569 --> 00:08:33.669 himself humorously as a romantic and liberal 00:08:33.669 --> 00:08:37.669 old dunce. Fier ganache romantique et libérale. 00:08:37.850 --> 00:08:41.370 Exactly, emphasizing his outdated idealism. But 00:08:41.370 --> 00:08:44.409 more seriously, he identified as an enraged liberal, 00:08:44.590 --> 00:08:48.450 a liberal enrage. The sources are clear. He hated 00:08:48.450 --> 00:08:51.679 all forms of despotism. He celebrated any protest 00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:54.360 of the individual against power and monopolies. 00:08:54.440 --> 00:08:57.220 That individualistic, anti -authoritarian streak 00:08:57.220 --> 00:08:59.480 makes perfect sense for the author who championed 00:08:59.480 --> 00:09:01.620 Madame Bovary, a character who is, you know, 00:09:01.639 --> 00:09:03.700 an individual tragically crushed by the banality 00:09:03.700 --> 00:09:05.840 of bourgeois convention. It absolutely does. 00:09:05.960 --> 00:09:08.580 His disgust with political mediocrity, with the 00:09:08.580 --> 00:09:11.419 cliché of public life, it mirrored his disgust 00:09:11.419 --> 00:09:13.840 with cliché in literature. For Flaubert, the 00:09:13.840 --> 00:09:15.940 two were completely interconnected. Let's move 00:09:15.940 --> 00:09:17.659 on to his health and his travels in the Middle 00:09:17.659 --> 00:09:19.779 East, because this is where Flaubert's romantic 00:09:19.779 --> 00:09:22.899 desire for exotic experience just collides violently 00:09:22.899 --> 00:09:25.720 with the raw biological reality that forms the 00:09:25.720 --> 00:09:28.259 foundation of his realism. He definitely embraced 00:09:28.259 --> 00:09:30.840 the grand romantic tradition of travel before 00:09:30.840 --> 00:09:33.879 settling into his routine at Crescent. He went 00:09:33.879 --> 00:09:36.100 to Brittany with his friend Maxime Ducamp in 00:09:36.100 --> 00:09:39.700 1846. But the crucial journey was the long one 00:09:39.700 --> 00:09:43.220 to Greece and Egypt in 1849 -50. He also spent 00:09:43.220 --> 00:09:46.559 time in Istanbul. and then later he went to Carthage 00:09:46.559 --> 00:09:49.120 specifically for research. Just Lombo, yes. But 00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:51.299 his travel writings, which we have from his letters, 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:54.340 are shockingly explicit, especially when you 00:09:54.340 --> 00:09:57.919 compare them to the purified, sterile prose of 00:09:57.919 --> 00:10:00.080 his finished novels. This is one of the biggest 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:02.879 contradictions of the man. The unflinching realist 00:10:02.879 --> 00:10:05.259 was often the most unsparing subject of his own 00:10:05.259 --> 00:10:08.700 documentation. Flaubert lived with venereal diseases 00:10:08.700 --> 00:10:11.899 for most of his life. He notably contracted syphilis 00:10:11.899 --> 00:10:13.940 in Beirut. And he didn't just contract it. He 00:10:13.940 --> 00:10:16.299 documented the entire experience with the same 00:10:16.299 --> 00:10:18.720 detached rigor he would later apply to a fictional 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:21.139 scene. Exactly. He was incredibly frank in his 00:10:21.139 --> 00:10:23.220 letters about his sexual activities, often with 00:10:23.220 --> 00:10:26.200 this strange clinical tone. He suspected a chancre 00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:28.379 on his penis was from a Maronite or Turkish girl. 00:10:28.539 --> 00:10:30.879 He even details engaging in intercourse with 00:10:30.879 --> 00:10:33.620 male prostitutes in Beirut and Egypt, describing 00:10:33.620 --> 00:10:36.679 one as a pockmarked young rascal wearing a white 00:10:36.679 --> 00:10:39.820 turban. That level of documentation, this raw... 00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:42.399 unvarnished chronicling of his own life, his 00:10:42.399 --> 00:10:45.340 disease, his desires. It's extraordinary. How 00:10:45.340 --> 00:10:47.879 did he reconcile the meticulous scientific recording 00:10:47.879 --> 00:10:50.679 of his own chaotic physical experiences with 00:10:50.679 --> 00:10:53.340 the rigid, pure objectivity he demanded in his 00:10:53.340 --> 00:10:55.019 published fiction? The correspondence was his 00:10:55.019 --> 00:10:56.879 testing ground. It was his laboratory notebook. 00:10:57.240 --> 00:10:59.440 It suggests that the objective method wasn't 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:02.559 a rejection of passion, but a transmutation of 00:11:02.559 --> 00:11:04.730 it. A transmutation. I like that. By observing 00:11:04.730 --> 00:11:06.909 his own chaos and his own suffering with scientific 00:11:06.909 --> 00:11:09.970 detachment, he found the mechanism to observe 00:11:09.970 --> 00:11:12.629 the chaos and suffering of the world. He couldn't 00:11:12.629 --> 00:11:14.649 write about Emma Bovary's adultery and decline 00:11:14.649 --> 00:11:17.429 truthfully unless he was equally honest about 00:11:17.429 --> 00:11:20.649 his own biological and sensual reality. It laid 00:11:20.649 --> 00:11:22.549 the foundation for his unwavering commitment 00:11:22.549 --> 00:11:25.649 to seeking truth, even if that truth repelled 00:11:25.649 --> 00:11:27.570 the reader. Which makes the later struggles of 00:11:27.570 --> 00:11:30.309 the 1870s even more poignant as his health and 00:11:30.309 --> 00:11:33.250 his finances started to fail him. Yes, the final 00:11:33.250 --> 00:11:35.330 decade of his life was marked by suffering that 00:11:35.330 --> 00:11:37.870 was less romantic and more brutally mundane. 00:11:38.909 --> 00:11:42.009 During the Franco -Prussian War in 1870, Prussian 00:11:42.009 --> 00:11:44.809 soldiers actually occupied his house. A devastating 00:11:44.809 --> 00:11:47.429 intrusion on his precious solitude. And then 00:11:47.429 --> 00:11:50.529 he lost his mother in 1872, a profound... personal 00:11:50.529 --> 00:11:53.250 blow. And finally, compounding all that grief 00:11:53.250 --> 00:11:55.470 and his ongoing health struggles, he fell into 00:11:55.470 --> 00:11:57.610 severe financial difficulty because of the business 00:11:57.610 --> 00:12:00.169 failures of his niece's husband. So the ultimate 00:12:00.169 --> 00:12:03.409 romantic artist facing invasion, death and bankruptcy, 00:12:03.570 --> 00:12:06.330 the very petty miseries he skewered in his own 00:12:06.330 --> 00:12:09.070 fiction. He was trapped by the reality he had 00:12:09.070 --> 00:12:11.460 sought to transcend through art. He struggled 00:12:11.460 --> 00:12:14.279 on until the end, dying at Crocette in 1880 at 00:12:14.279 --> 00:12:16.720 the relatively young age of 58 from a cerebral 00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:18.980 hemorrhage. It was a life that spent on this 00:12:18.980 --> 00:12:22.440 intense, even reckless physical sensation, and 00:12:22.440 --> 00:12:24.580 at the same time, this rigorous intellectual 00:12:24.580 --> 00:12:27.679 pursuit and profound, painful solitude. Okay, 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:30.679 that brings us to part two, the career. scandal, 00:12:30.860 --> 00:12:33.460 satire, and these incredible five -year projects. 00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:35.899 Right. And understanding the man's contradictory 00:12:35.899 --> 00:12:39.240 drives, that romantic impulse versus the scientific 00:12:39.240 --> 00:12:41.820 rigor, is essential for understanding his output, 00:12:41.940 --> 00:12:44.259 which was defined by its glacial pace and its 00:12:44.259 --> 00:12:46.799 incredible intensity. His first finished work, 00:12:46.940 --> 00:12:49.179 a novella called November, wasn't published until 00:12:49.179 --> 00:12:50.960 after he died, so it didn't really shape his 00:12:50.960 --> 00:12:53.879 reputation. The first real indicator of the Flaubert 00:12:53.879 --> 00:12:56.159 method and the struggles it entailed came with 00:12:56.159 --> 00:12:58.870 his attempt at a fantastic subject. The temptation 00:12:58.870 --> 00:13:01.389 of St. Anthony. The story around St. Anthony 00:13:01.389 --> 00:13:04.090 is legendary. It perfectly encapsulates the tension 00:13:04.090 --> 00:13:07.549 between the artist and his audience. In 1849, 00:13:07.750 --> 00:13:10.830 he finished the first version. And to test it... 00:13:11.120 --> 00:13:13.000 And this tells you everything about his seriousness. 00:13:13.220 --> 00:13:16.120 He read the entire manuscript aloud to his trusted 00:13:16.120 --> 00:13:19.019 friends, Louis Boulet and Maxime Ducamp. And 00:13:19.019 --> 00:13:21.500 he read it over four consecutive days without 00:13:21.500 --> 00:13:23.460 letting them interrupt. Can you just imagine 00:13:23.460 --> 00:13:26.779 that? The physical ordeal of reading a drag for 00:13:26.779 --> 00:13:29.519 96 hours, forcing them to just sit there in silence. 00:13:29.659 --> 00:13:31.700 It speaks to his absolute commitment to hearing 00:13:31.700 --> 00:13:34.259 the rhythm of the prose. He needed to sound the 00:13:34.259 --> 00:13:37.399 sentences to find the flaws. But when he finally 00:13:37.399 --> 00:13:40.419 stopped, completely exhausted, the verdict from 00:13:40.419 --> 00:13:43.259 his lifelong friends was brutally, almost hilariously 00:13:43.259 --> 00:13:45.279 honest. What did they say after four days of 00:13:45.279 --> 00:13:46.740 listening? They told him to throw the entire 00:13:46.740 --> 00:13:49.379 manuscript in the fire. In the fire? In the fire. 00:13:49.580 --> 00:13:52.220 They suggested he abandon fantastic esoteric 00:13:52.220 --> 00:13:54.840 subjects and instead focus his immense descriptive 00:13:54.840 --> 00:13:57.840 power on day -to -day life. It was a catastrophic, 00:13:58.120 --> 00:14:00.639 soul -crushing failure after this monumental 00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:03.159 effort. The genius of Flaubert, though, is how 00:14:03.159 --> 00:14:05.740 he reacted to that criticism. He didn't burn 00:14:05.740 --> 00:14:08.639 it. But he did internalize their demand for realism. 00:14:08.940 --> 00:14:12.259 He absolutely pivoted. This failure was the catalyst 00:14:12.259 --> 00:14:14.039 that propelled him toward the work that would 00:14:14.039 --> 00:14:16.899 define him. He did later rework and publish versions 00:14:16.899 --> 00:14:19.639 of St. Anthony, but that core lesson, abandon 00:14:19.639 --> 00:14:22.220 the fantastical self and focus on observing others, 00:14:22.399 --> 00:14:25.620 that stuck. And that pivot led him directly to 00:14:25.620 --> 00:14:28.960 his defining revolutionary work, Madame Bovary. 00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:31.399 Precisely. After he got back from Egypt in 1850, 00:14:31.600 --> 00:14:33.919 he accepted their challenge to write about Nothing, 00:14:34.159 --> 00:14:36.759 a story of provincial life of a bored doctor's 00:14:36.759 --> 00:14:39.580 wife. And this novel alone took him five agonizing 00:14:39.580 --> 00:14:41.659 years to write. It was first serialized in the 00:14:41.659 --> 00:14:44.700 Revue de Paris in 1856. And the serialization 00:14:44.700 --> 00:14:47.480 immediately set off a public firestorm that elevated 00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:50.059 the novel from a regional drama to a literary 00:14:50.059 --> 00:14:52.909 flashpoint. The immorality trial. It triggered 00:14:52.909 --> 00:14:55.309 a massive high -stakes legal scandal. The Second 00:14:55.309 --> 00:14:57.250 French Empire, specifically the state prosecutor, 00:14:57.529 --> 00:14:59.769 brought legal action against the publisher and 00:14:59.769 --> 00:15:03.330 Flaubert himself in 1857. The charge was outrage 00:15:03.330 --> 00:15:06.129 au bon mur, outraging public and religious morality. 00:15:06.490 --> 00:15:08.629 This wasn't just censorship. It was an attack 00:15:08.629 --> 00:15:11.889 on the very concept of realism. It was the state 00:15:11.889 --> 00:15:14.409 demanding that literature should moralize and 00:15:14.409 --> 00:15:17.409 idealize. In Flaubert's defense, essentially 00:15:17.409 --> 00:15:20.570 argued that his objective method, his lack of 00:15:20.570 --> 00:15:23.529 authorial commentary, meant he wasn't endorsing 00:15:23.529 --> 00:15:25.769 Emma Bovary's actions, he was merely documenting 00:15:25.769 --> 00:15:28.450 them truthfully. Right. The state was arguing 00:15:28.450 --> 00:15:30.889 that the book's power lay in its ability to seduce 00:15:30.889 --> 00:15:33.549 the reader because Flaubert refused to overtly 00:15:33.549 --> 00:15:35.870 condemn his protagonist. But the defense prevailed. 00:15:36.049 --> 00:15:38.690 Both the author and the publisher were acquitted. 00:15:39.179 --> 00:15:41.320 And this acquittal was a landmark moment for 00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:43.960 literary freedom in France. It proved that objective 00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:46.860 observation, even of distasteful subjects like 00:15:46.860 --> 00:15:49.779 adultery and debt, had a place in serious art. 00:15:49.919 --> 00:15:51.700 And the result? The result was that when the 00:15:51.700 --> 00:15:54.240 novel finally came out in book form, its notoriety 00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:56.820 fueled this incredibly warm reception. It was 00:15:56.820 --> 00:15:59.039 immediately established as a foundational text 00:15:59.039 --> 00:16:02.120 of modern realism. It showed the public that 00:16:02.120 --> 00:16:04.340 the most meticulous artistic labor could result 00:16:04.340 --> 00:16:07.279 in explosive social impact. I have to mention 00:16:07.279 --> 00:16:09.179 that delightful detail from the sources about 00:16:09.179 --> 00:16:12.080 the novel's strange tangential cultural influence. 00:16:12.279 --> 00:16:15.659 Ah, yes, the color detail. The novel is famously 00:16:15.659 --> 00:16:17.779 credited with spreading the popularity of the 00:16:17.779 --> 00:16:20.879 color Tuscany Cypress. Tuscany Cypress? Yes, 00:16:20.879 --> 00:16:22.740 because the color is mentioned so frequently 00:16:22.740 --> 00:16:24.519 in the descriptions of the provincial setting 00:16:24.519 --> 00:16:27.500 and Emma's environment, it just... entered the 00:16:27.500 --> 00:16:30.159 popular imagination. It's a small quirky piece 00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:32.580 of evidence for the sheer power of Flaubert's 00:16:32.580 --> 00:16:35.379 brilliant telling detail. He could make a color 00:16:35.379 --> 00:16:37.980 famous through the sheer precision of his observation. 00:16:38.909 --> 00:16:41.610 So moving past the Bovary scandal, Flaubert just 00:16:41.610 --> 00:16:44.070 goes right back to his slow burn, multi -year 00:16:44.070 --> 00:16:46.730 approach for his later grand projects. The dedication 00:16:46.730 --> 00:16:49.950 is just staggering. After five years on Bovary, 00:16:50.049 --> 00:16:52.629 he then spent four years on his Carthaginian 00:16:52.629 --> 00:16:55.730 historical epic, Salambo, which came out in 1862. 00:16:56.049 --> 00:16:58.289 And that was after his specific research trip 00:16:58.289 --> 00:17:00.990 to Carthage in 1858. And then came what many 00:17:00.990 --> 00:17:03.990 critics consider his true masterpiece of detachment, 00:17:04.329 --> 00:17:07.329 sentimental education. L 'Education Sentimentale, 00:17:07.450 --> 00:17:09.859 published in 1860. was an even more painstaking 00:17:09.859 --> 00:17:13.339 project. That one took seven years. It focuses 00:17:13.339 --> 00:17:15.539 on the romantic and professional disappointments 00:17:15.539 --> 00:17:18.539 of this young man, Frédéric Moreau, set against 00:17:18.539 --> 00:17:20.579 the massive political upheaval of the French 00:17:20.579 --> 00:17:23.480 Revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second 00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:26.680 French Empire. It's a masterful blend of personal 00:17:26.680 --> 00:17:29.920 melancholy and vast, objective political history. 00:17:30.339 --> 00:17:33.460 It perfectly illustrates the failure of youthful 00:17:33.460 --> 00:17:36.279 romantic dreams against the grinding reality 00:17:36.279 --> 00:17:39.369 of history. But the project that he fixated on 00:17:39.369 --> 00:17:41.569 most in his final years, the one he believed 00:17:41.569 --> 00:17:44.390 would be his true final statement, remains unfinished. 00:17:44.970 --> 00:17:47.910 And it's maybe the greatest testament to his 00:17:47.910 --> 00:17:50.349 cynicism. You're talking about Bouvard et Pécuchet. 00:17:50.349 --> 00:17:53.119 Exactly. The unfinished masterpiece. This was 00:17:53.119 --> 00:17:56.140 the ultimate, ongoing, obsessive project of the 00:17:56.140 --> 00:17:59.839 1870s. It was originally titled Les Deux Cloports, 00:18:00.019 --> 00:18:02.559 or The Two Wood Lice. The premise itself is just 00:18:02.559 --> 00:18:05.480 peak Flaubertian satire. Two Parisian copy clerks, 00:18:05.500 --> 00:18:07.640 Bouvard and Picochet, inherit some money, move 00:18:07.640 --> 00:18:09.700 to the country, and proceed to try and exhaust 00:18:09.700 --> 00:18:11.619 the entirety of human knowledge. From agriculture 00:18:11.619 --> 00:18:14.420 to philosophy. Everything. Agriculture, medicine, 00:18:14.660 --> 00:18:16.720 philosophy, science. Only to demonstrate that 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:19.119 all learning is futile and leads only to mediocrity. 00:18:19.369 --> 00:18:21.390 It sounds like the ultimate artistic admission 00:18:21.390 --> 00:18:24.549 of defeat, or maybe the ultimate act of aesthetic 00:18:24.549 --> 00:18:27.769 rigor, a novel dedicated to proving universal 00:18:27.769 --> 00:18:30.990 foolishness. It's the ultimate paradox. This 00:18:30.990 --> 00:18:33.410 novel was intended as a grand, comprehensive 00:18:33.410 --> 00:18:36.809 satire on the futility of human knowledge and 00:18:36.809 --> 00:18:39.490 the ubiquity of mediocrity. He believed it would 00:18:39.490 --> 00:18:41.710 be his masterpiece. He dedicated the rest of 00:18:41.710 --> 00:18:43.809 his life to it, collecting immense amounts of 00:18:43.809 --> 00:18:45.789 information just to demonstrate that information 00:18:45.789 --> 00:18:48.430 is worthless. And yet, despite the intensity 00:18:48.430 --> 00:18:50.549 of that commitment, it didn't guarantee success. 00:18:50.809 --> 00:18:52.910 Not at all. The unfinished version was published 00:18:52.910 --> 00:18:55.890 posthumously in 1881. It received a very small 00:18:55.890 --> 00:18:59.309 print run and mostly lukewarm reviews. It really 00:18:59.309 --> 00:19:01.589 underscores the risk inherent in his pursuit 00:19:01.589 --> 00:19:05.279 of a pure, uncompromising artistic ideal. He 00:19:05.279 --> 00:19:07.319 sacrificed narrative clarity for this comprehensive, 00:19:07.619 --> 00:19:11.920 cynical satire and the audience. Well, they didn't 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:13.680 quite follow him. It's fortunate he broke that 00:19:13.680 --> 00:19:15.859 obsessive cycle briefly to give us the focused 00:19:15.859 --> 00:19:18.359 clarity of Three Tales. A critical interlude, 00:19:18.420 --> 00:19:22.039 yes. Between 1875 and 1877, he composed Three 00:19:22.039 --> 00:19:25.039 Tales, which includes A Simple Heart, The Legend 00:19:25.039 --> 00:19:27.259 of St. Julian the Hospitaller, and Herodias. 00:19:27.740 --> 00:19:30.599 These are concise, powerful demonstrations of 00:19:30.599 --> 00:19:33.279 his descriptive power, but applied to three vastly 00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:35.799 different human and religious experiences. And 00:19:35.799 --> 00:19:37.700 just to round out his scope, he also tackled 00:19:37.700 --> 00:19:39.799 satire more directly in his less known works. 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:42.299 He did. He wrote an unsuccessful drama called 00:19:42.299 --> 00:19:46.440 Le Canidat in 1874 and the highly satirical Dictionary 00:19:46.440 --> 00:19:49.099 of Received Ideas, which is basically an inventory 00:19:49.099 --> 00:19:52.240 of cliches and middle class stupidity that was 00:19:52.240 --> 00:19:55.299 published posthumously in 1911. The range of 00:19:55.299 --> 00:19:58.099 his writing, from historical epic to social satire, 00:19:58.160 --> 00:20:00.779 it truly reflects his broad, cynical interests, 00:20:01.019 --> 00:20:03.779 even if his pace remained agonizingly slow. That 00:20:03.779 --> 00:20:06.099 agonizing pace brings us directly to part three, 00:20:06.220 --> 00:20:08.480 the Flaubert method, the pursuit of L 'Amour 00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:10.539 Just. This is really the intellectual centerpiece 00:20:10.539 --> 00:20:12.619 of our deep dive because it explains why he was 00:20:12.619 --> 00:20:15.000 the martyr of style and how his technical genius 00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:18.099 codified modern realism. Absolutely. The entire 00:20:18.099 --> 00:20:20.900 Flaubertian system revolves around this one principle, 00:20:21.720 --> 00:20:24.309 L 'Amour Just. The right word. This wasn't just 00:20:24.309 --> 00:20:26.769 about finding a nice adjective for him. It was 00:20:26.769 --> 00:20:30.650 a deeply held aesthetic philosophy. It demanded 00:20:30.650 --> 00:20:33.890 total rigor. The correct word was the single 00:20:33.890 --> 00:20:36.950 key, the absolute means to achieve true high 00:20:36.950 --> 00:20:39.650 quality in literary art. It sounds less like 00:20:39.650 --> 00:20:41.990 selecting vocabulary and more like an intense 00:20:41.990 --> 00:20:45.190 moral search for the single. unavoidable linguistic 00:20:45.190 --> 00:20:47.430 truth. That's a perfect way to put it. It was 00:20:47.430 --> 00:20:50.029 a style of rigorous avoidance. Flaubert famously 00:20:50.029 --> 00:20:52.210 avoided anything that felt inexact, anything 00:20:52.210 --> 00:20:54.750 abstract, any vaguely inapt expression, and above 00:20:54.750 --> 00:20:57.710 all, he scrupulously, scrupulously eschewed the 00:20:57.710 --> 00:21:00.430 cliché. For him, a cliché was a lie, a laziness 00:21:00.430 --> 00:21:03.190 of thought that polluted objective reality. Exactly. 00:21:03.250 --> 00:21:05.109 If you rely on a tired phrase, you haven't truly 00:21:05.109 --> 00:21:07.509 looked at the world. And this philosophical rigor 00:21:07.509 --> 00:21:09.829 translated into his notorious labor. We hear 00:21:09.829 --> 00:21:12.130 about writers who rely on speed and volume, but 00:21:12.130 --> 00:21:14.509 Flaubert was the human antithesis of that. The 00:21:14.509 --> 00:21:17.730 psychological and physical process was excruciating. 00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:20.920 He worked in this sullen, self -imposed solitude 00:21:20.920 --> 00:21:23.420 at Crozet, sometimes taking an entire week to 00:21:23.420 --> 00:21:26.059 complete a single polished page. A single page. 00:21:26.319 --> 00:21:28.599 Unbelievable. He was rarely satisfied with his 00:21:28.599 --> 00:21:31.279 initial composition. He'd rewrite sentences dozens 00:21:31.279 --> 00:21:34.279 of times. His own correspondence is just full 00:21:34.279 --> 00:21:36.720 of complaints about it. It confirms that correct 00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:39.779 prose did not just flow out of him easily. It 00:21:39.779 --> 00:21:42.819 was hammered into existence through immense work 00:21:42.819 --> 00:21:45.829 and painstaking, painful revision. You mentioned 00:21:45.829 --> 00:21:48.289 before the anecdote about him reading St. Anthony 00:21:48.289 --> 00:21:51.390 aloud. This relates to a key part of his revision 00:21:51.390 --> 00:21:54.089 process, which was auditory. He wasn't just looking 00:21:54.089 --> 00:21:56.509 at the words, he was listening to them. The sound 00:21:56.509 --> 00:21:59.309 test was essential. He would often read his work 00:21:59.309 --> 00:22:01.730 aloud in his study, which he called the guilloire, 00:22:01.809 --> 00:22:04.789 the galling room or shouting room. He did it 00:22:04.789 --> 00:22:06.589 to ensure the prose achieved the rhythmic quality 00:22:06.589 --> 00:22:09.289 he demanded. He sought to forge a style that 00:22:09.289 --> 00:22:11.450 was, and this is his quote, rhythmic as verse, 00:22:11.630 --> 00:22:14.690 precise as the language of the sciences, undulant, 00:22:14.690 --> 00:22:16.970 deep voiced as a cello tipped with flame. That 00:22:16.970 --> 00:22:21.000 fusion of poetry, music and science. It's incredible. 00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:23.339 And it required the language to sound perfect. 00:22:23.539 --> 00:22:26.140 Which leads to his famous self -imposed technical 00:22:26.140 --> 00:22:28.519 constraints, which we see in his letters to the 00:22:28.519 --> 00:22:30.440 writer George Sand. What kind of constraints? 00:22:30.940 --> 00:22:33.859 He spent significant time trying to write harmonious 00:22:33.859 --> 00:22:36.980 sentences, avoiding assonances. Just think about 00:22:36.980 --> 00:22:39.700 that level of micromanagement. Assonance is the 00:22:39.700 --> 00:22:43.160 involuntary repetition of a vowel sound, a subtle 00:22:43.160 --> 00:22:45.930 musical effect. And Flaubert worried that even 00:22:45.930 --> 00:22:48.329 a slight unintended musicality could draw attention 00:22:48.329 --> 00:22:50.529 to the writing itself, pulling the reader out 00:22:50.529 --> 00:22:52.430 of the objective reality he was trying to create. 00:22:52.710 --> 00:22:55.930 The prose had to be so clear, so rhythmically 00:22:55.930 --> 00:22:58.769 perfect, that it became transparent. That ambition 00:22:58.769 --> 00:23:02.170 to fuse musicality with precision while simultaneously 00:23:02.170 --> 00:23:05.450 making the author disappear is astonishing, and 00:23:05.450 --> 00:23:07.450 it leads us directly to his goal of achieving 00:23:07.450 --> 00:23:10.109 authorial invisibility. This is the concept that 00:23:10.109 --> 00:23:12.440 truly defines modern narrative technique. His 00:23:12.440 --> 00:23:14.559 most famous dictums on this are monumental, he 00:23:14.559 --> 00:23:16.740 declared. An author in his book must be like 00:23:16.740 --> 00:23:18.980 God in the universe, present everywhere, invisible, 00:23:19.319 --> 00:23:22.079 nowhere. That's a challenging concept. If the 00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:24.599 author is everywhere, influencing every word, 00:23:24.640 --> 00:23:28.400 every comma, how can they also be nowhere? Because 00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:30.579 the effort is hidden behind the perfection of 00:23:30.579 --> 00:23:33.319 the form. The author's job is to select the details, 00:23:33.500 --> 00:23:35.839 organize the structure, and choose the move just 00:23:35.839 --> 00:23:38.460 so perfectly that the scene just presents itself. 00:23:39.170 --> 00:23:41.549 objectively without any need for commentary or 00:23:41.549 --> 00:23:43.430 moralizing from a narrator. The author's ego 00:23:43.430 --> 00:23:45.490 has to be completely removed from the text. Totally. 00:23:45.549 --> 00:23:48.869 He saw the author's duty as maintaining an unsentimental 00:23:48.869 --> 00:23:52.130 composure, withdrawing like, in his words, a 00:23:52.130 --> 00:23:54.990 good valet from any superfluous commentary. If 00:23:54.990 --> 00:23:57.369 we connect this back to his personal contradictions, 00:23:57.369 --> 00:24:00.750 this man who was so expressive and volatile in 00:24:00.750 --> 00:24:03.039 his private letters and his travels. It seems 00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:05.400 like his art was his way of exercising total, 00:24:05.599 --> 00:24:08.160 almost totalitarian control over his own expressive 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:11.559 impulses. That is the essential insight. His 00:24:11.559 --> 00:24:14.099 writing became a cage for his own romantic excess. 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:17.240 He had to be ruthless with his feelings so he 00:24:17.240 --> 00:24:20.200 could be ruthless with reality. By imposing this 00:24:20.200 --> 00:24:22.720 scientific discipline, he created a style where 00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:24.619 the reader is forced to confront the action and 00:24:24.619 --> 00:24:26.839 the character without the comforting hand of 00:24:26.839 --> 00:24:29.200 the narrator telling them what to think. This 00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:31.319 radically increased the burden of interpretation 00:24:31.319 --> 00:24:34.119 on the reader. And the consequence of this absolute 00:24:34.119 --> 00:24:36.980 self -imposed rigor is what earned him the title 00:24:36.980 --> 00:24:40.000 The Martyr of Style. The primary immediate consequence 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:43.039 was his extremely low output. Forbert published 00:24:43.039 --> 00:24:45.920 far, far less prolifically than his contemporaries, 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:49.059 even other literary giants like Balzac or Zola. 00:24:49.319 --> 00:24:51.720 They often churned out a novel a year at their 00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:54.190 peak. While Flaubert spent five or seven years 00:24:54.190 --> 00:24:56.829 on a single novel, he sacrificed speed, ease, 00:24:57.049 --> 00:24:59.490 and potentially wealth and popular acclaim all 00:24:59.490 --> 00:25:02.089 for linguistic perfection. And that is exactly 00:25:02.089 --> 00:25:04.650 why the critic Walter Pater famously called Flaubert 00:25:04.650 --> 00:25:07.170 the martyr of style. He sacrificed his life to 00:25:07.170 --> 00:25:10.069 the word. This brings us to part four, the permanent 00:25:10.069 --> 00:25:13.390 legacy on modern fiction. So the question is, 00:25:13.660 --> 00:25:16.400 Why does the suffering of this isolated man in 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:19.640 corset still matter so profoundly to us today? 00:25:19.839 --> 00:25:21.759 Because that contradiction between the romantic 00:25:21.759 --> 00:25:23.819 and the real has created something entirely new. 00:25:24.349 --> 00:25:26.950 He's often boxed in as the ultimate realist, 00:25:26.990 --> 00:25:29.589 but the sources emphasize he was a synthesis. 00:25:29.970 --> 00:25:32.990 A bridge between romanticism and realism. He 00:25:32.990 --> 00:25:35.569 is considered nearly equal parts both, which 00:25:35.569 --> 00:25:37.829 is why his legacy is so enduring and fragmented. 00:25:38.450 --> 00:25:41.369 Various schools, from intense realists to formalists 00:25:41.369 --> 00:25:43.670 obsessed with structure, they can all trace their 00:25:43.670 --> 00:25:46.549 origins back to him. He was the passionate, highly 00:25:46.549 --> 00:25:48.849 subjective man who created the most objective, 00:25:48.930 --> 00:25:51.710 rigorous method. His romantic impulse was the 00:25:51.710 --> 00:25:53.849 motive for great art, but his realist method 00:25:53.849 --> 00:25:56.349 was the mechanism. And the publication of Madame 00:25:56.349 --> 00:25:59.170 Bovary was the undeniable moment when this synthesis 00:25:59.170 --> 00:26:02.309 took root in the culture. It was seismic. The 00:26:02.309 --> 00:26:05.309 novel, despite the scandal, established the beginning 00:26:05.309 --> 00:26:07.829 of something fundamentally new in French literature. 00:26:08.349 --> 00:26:11.190 The scrupulously truthful portraiture of life. 00:26:11.549 --> 00:26:13.710 it established that literature had a duty to 00:26:13.710 --> 00:26:16.470 seek truth even if that truth the banality of 00:26:16.470 --> 00:26:19.329 provincial life the futility of human desire 00:26:19.329 --> 00:26:23.210 repelled the reader That artistic bravery became 00:26:23.210 --> 00:26:25.670 the new benchmark. And the influence was immediately 00:26:25.670 --> 00:26:28.490 felt by his French contemporaries, setting the 00:26:28.490 --> 00:26:30.869 stage for the next generation of novelists. Absolutely. 00:26:30.950 --> 00:26:33.390 By the time he died, he was widely regarded as 00:26:33.390 --> 00:26:35.950 the most influential French realist. He impacted 00:26:35.950 --> 00:26:38.529 figures like the naturalist Emile Zola, Alphonse 00:26:38.529 --> 00:26:41.950 Taudet, and Edmond de Goncourt. And crucially, 00:26:42.029 --> 00:26:44.089 he maintained a formal mentorship with Guy de 00:26:44.089 --> 00:26:46.329 Maupassant, who was his protege. And Maupassant 00:26:46.329 --> 00:26:48.029 went on to become one of the greatest masters 00:26:48.029 --> 00:26:50.869 of the short story format. So Flaubert's influence... 00:26:50.890 --> 00:26:53.069 wasn't just theoretical. It was pedagogical. 00:26:53.150 --> 00:26:55.809 He taught the next generation. Let's turn to 00:26:55.809 --> 00:26:58.470 the specific elements of modern narration. The 00:26:58.470 --> 00:27:00.690 critic James Wood's assessment of Flaubert is 00:27:00.690 --> 00:27:02.930 essentially a checklist of what we consider good 00:27:02.930 --> 00:27:05.329 prose today, techniques we just assume were always 00:27:05.329 --> 00:27:08.750 there. Wood argues that Flaubert decisively established 00:27:08.750 --> 00:27:11.730 what most readers and writers think of as modern 00:27:11.730 --> 00:27:14.589 realist narration. His influence is so complete 00:27:14.589 --> 00:27:17.769 that it's become, in Wood's words, almost too 00:27:17.769 --> 00:27:20.400 familiar to be visible. These aren't just techniques. 00:27:20.559 --> 00:27:22.940 They are the bedrock assumptions of modern literary 00:27:22.940 --> 00:27:26.700 style. So let's elaborate on some of these elements 00:27:26.700 --> 00:27:28.859 he standardized, which are now sort of invisible 00:27:28.859 --> 00:27:32.079 tools in the modern writer's toolkit. The first 00:27:32.079 --> 00:27:34.799 is about detail. Yes, favoring the telling and 00:27:34.799 --> 00:27:37.420 present detail. Flaubert didn't just describe 00:27:37.420 --> 00:27:40.759 a room. He found the single precise detail that 00:27:40.759 --> 00:27:42.779 symbolized the whole situation. Like Charles 00:27:42.779 --> 00:27:45.859 Bovary's cap. Exactly. The description of Charles 00:27:45.859 --> 00:27:48.700 Bovary's grotesque, misshapen student cap, it's 00:27:48.700 --> 00:27:50.740 not just an item of clothing. It immediately 00:27:50.740 --> 00:27:53.559 signals the mediocrity and the physical awkwardness 00:27:53.559 --> 00:27:56.059 of the character. That one brilliant detail does 00:27:56.059 --> 00:27:58.019 the work of several paragraphs of exposition. 00:27:58.279 --> 00:28:01.000 And linked to that is the second element, privileging 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:03.480 a high degree of visual noticing. This is that 00:28:03.480 --> 00:28:06.440 medical objective eye we talked about, but applied 00:28:06.440 --> 00:28:09.539 to the world. Flaubert forces the reader to see 00:28:09.539 --> 00:28:11.819 the texture, the grime, the colors, the flaws 00:28:11.819 --> 00:28:14.400 of reality. The precision of his descriptions 00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:17.259 of Emma Bovary's dresses or the interiors of 00:28:17.259 --> 00:28:20.279 the dull pharmacist Homay's house. It ensures 00:28:20.279 --> 00:28:23.000 we are entirely grounded in that sensory flawed 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:26.759 world. Third, maintaining unsentimental composure. 00:28:27.079 --> 00:28:29.619 This is the polar opposite of the romantic novel. 00:28:30.039 --> 00:28:32.440 Flaubert refuses to let the reader indulge in 00:28:32.440 --> 00:28:35.049 easy emotion. He presents horrific or pathetic 00:28:35.049 --> 00:28:38.210 circumstances neutrally, which forces the reader 00:28:38.210 --> 00:28:40.470 to generate the emotional response internally. 00:28:41.170 --> 00:28:43.470 This is the hallmark of authorial objectivity. 00:28:43.630 --> 00:28:46.289 The fourth point goes right back to his invisibility 00:28:46.289 --> 00:28:48.890 dictum, knowing how to withdraw from superfluous 00:28:48.890 --> 00:28:51.829 commentary. The good valet analogy. The author 00:28:51.829 --> 00:28:54.029 is there to serve the scene. If the prose is 00:28:54.029 --> 00:28:56.089 doing its job, the author doesn't need to step 00:28:56.089 --> 00:28:57.829 forward and explain that something is tragic 00:28:57.829 --> 00:29:00.150 or ironic. It should simply be apparent. And 00:29:00.150 --> 00:29:02.220 importantly, the fifth element. judging good 00:29:02.220 --> 00:29:05.359 and bad neutrally. The realist avoids moralizing. 00:29:05.859 --> 00:29:08.319 Flaubert shows us the foolishness of Homais and 00:29:08.319 --> 00:29:10.700 the tragedy of Emma, but he presents both with 00:29:10.700 --> 00:29:13.220 equal descriptive vigor. He refuses to assign 00:29:13.220 --> 00:29:16.200 simple blame. The author is not a priest or a 00:29:16.200 --> 00:29:19.539 judge. They are a chronicler. These rules explain 00:29:19.539 --> 00:29:22.160 why so many 20th century giants considered him 00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:24.420 foundational. Let's talk about his influence 00:29:24.420 --> 00:29:28.289 on them. His Lean and precise writing style heavily 00:29:28.289 --> 00:29:30.309 influenced subsequent generations, including 00:29:30.309 --> 00:29:33.390 major modernists and postmodernists. The link 00:29:33.390 --> 00:29:35.990 to Franz Kafka is perhaps the most instructive. 00:29:36.049 --> 00:29:39.089 Vladimir Nabokov asserted that the greatest literary 00:29:39.089 --> 00:29:42.619 influence upon Kafka was Flaubert's. That seems 00:29:42.619 --> 00:29:44.539 counterintuitive at first, given that Kafka's 00:29:44.539 --> 00:29:46.819 subject matter is so far removed from 19th century 00:29:46.819 --> 00:29:49.299 provincial France. It's not counterintuitive 00:29:49.299 --> 00:29:50.960 when you look at the mechanism of the prose. 00:29:51.240 --> 00:29:54.019 Kafka adopted Flaubert's objective method, but 00:29:54.019 --> 00:29:56.519 he applied it to the absurdities of modern bureaucratic 00:29:56.519 --> 00:29:59.539 existence. Kafka's language is often drawn from 00:29:59.539 --> 00:30:02.200 law and science. It reads like reports, official 00:30:02.200 --> 00:30:04.960 letters, endless bureaucratic process. And this 00:30:04.960 --> 00:30:07.180 vocabulary gives his narratives an ironic clinical 00:30:07.180 --> 00:30:10.039 precision without any authorial sentiment. So 00:30:10.039 --> 00:30:12.099 Flaubert taught Kafka how to make the absurd 00:30:12.099 --> 00:30:14.920 feel real. By describing the nightmare of a man 00:30:14.920 --> 00:30:17.559 turning into an insect, or the relentless nature 00:30:17.559 --> 00:30:21.079 of the trial, using the precise emotionless language 00:30:21.079 --> 00:30:23.920 of a case report, Kafka achieves this high degree 00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:26.920 of realism in the midst of unreality. Exactly. 00:30:27.059 --> 00:30:29.819 The extreme objectivity is what makes the absurdity 00:30:29.819 --> 00:30:33.359 feel terrifyingly true. This legacy is best described 00:30:33.359 --> 00:30:36.519 as pading the way toward a slower and more introspective 00:30:36.519 --> 00:30:38.920 manner of writing that requires the reader to 00:30:38.920 --> 00:30:40.960 participate in the moral structure of the text. 00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:44.039 Beyond novelists, Flaubert inspired immense critical 00:30:44.039 --> 00:30:47.220 and philosophical admiration. His depth resonated 00:30:47.220 --> 00:30:50.279 deeply with intellectual heavyweights. Jean -Paul 00:30:50.279 --> 00:30:53.119 Sartre dedicated an immense, partially psychoanalytic 00:30:53.119 --> 00:30:55.640 portrait to him, The Family Idiot, which came 00:30:55.640 --> 00:30:58.779 out in 1971. He was trying to deconstruct Flaubert's 00:30:58.779 --> 00:31:01.279 entire existence as a product of his social class 00:31:01.279 --> 00:31:03.160 and his psychology. That's a huge commitment, 00:31:03.319 --> 00:31:05.799 a multi -volume attempt to understand one man's 00:31:05.799 --> 00:31:08.519 life. And the admiration extended through the 00:31:08.519 --> 00:31:10.759 entire critical apparatus of the 20th century. 00:31:11.460 --> 00:31:13.619 Philosophers and sociologists like Michel Foucault, 00:31:13.740 --> 00:31:16.119 Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, they all studied 00:31:16.119 --> 00:31:19.420 his texts not just as literature, but as sociological 00:31:19.420 --> 00:31:21.980 documents demonstrating the structures of power 00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:24.140 and language. And Mario Vargas Llosa, the great 00:31:24.140 --> 00:31:26.900 Peruvian novelist. A major figure himself. And 00:31:26.900 --> 00:31:29.960 he devoted an entire book, Perpetual Orgy, solely 00:31:29.960 --> 00:31:32.660 to Flaubert's art, just analyzing the structural 00:31:32.660 --> 00:31:35.480 genius of Madame Bovary. And we cannot forget. 00:31:35.789 --> 00:31:38.910 The completely unexpected link to media theory. 00:31:39.109 --> 00:31:42.089 It's amazing. Marshall McLuhan, the great prophet 00:31:42.089 --> 00:31:44.309 of media change, claimed in a lecture that he 00:31:44.309 --> 00:31:46.609 derived all my knowledge of media from people 00:31:46.609 --> 00:31:48.910 like Flaubert and Rimbaud and Baudelaire. How 00:31:48.910 --> 00:31:51.690 is that even possible? It suggests Flaubert's 00:31:51.690 --> 00:31:54.799 rigorous, objective dissection of reality. The 00:31:54.799 --> 00:31:56.640 way he saw the world through the lens of pure 00:31:56.640 --> 00:31:59.240 form provided a conceptual framework even for 00:31:59.240 --> 00:32:01.220 understanding technological and communicative 00:32:01.220 --> 00:32:04.339 change. His eye for the telling detail, for the 00:32:04.339 --> 00:32:06.319 objective manifestation of subjective reality, 00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:09.160 was powerful enough to be translated across academic 00:32:09.160 --> 00:32:11.599 fields. So let's talk about his ongoing relevance. 00:32:12.019 --> 00:32:14.759 His work remains essential both in its raw form 00:32:14.759 --> 00:32:17.619 and in continuous adaptation. His bibliography 00:32:17.619 --> 00:32:20.079 is incomplete without his massive correspondence, 00:32:20.480 --> 00:32:23.200 which remains a cornerstone of literary studies. 00:32:23.720 --> 00:32:26.220 For instance, the letters he exchanged with George 00:32:26.220 --> 00:32:29.700 Sand were published in 1884, with a key introductory 00:32:29.700 --> 00:32:32.940 essay by his trotege, Guy de Maupassant. And 00:32:32.940 --> 00:32:35.180 his stories continue to be irresistible to other 00:32:35.180 --> 00:32:38.420 mediums. The adaptations are numerous. His novella 00:32:38.420 --> 00:32:41.319 Herodias was adapted into an opera by Massonet. 00:32:41.609 --> 00:32:44.089 Beto Bovary has been adapted countless times, 00:32:44.269 --> 00:32:47.289 operas, numerous films, TV series across the 00:32:47.289 --> 00:32:50.890 decades. Even his dense Carthaginian epic Salambo 00:32:50.890 --> 00:32:53.869 inspired an unfinished opera by Modest Mussorgsky. 00:32:54.150 --> 00:32:56.829 Flaubert's ability to create powerful, visually 00:32:56.829 --> 00:32:59.029 realized scenes ensures his work will always 00:32:59.029 --> 00:33:01.450 find new life on the stage and screen. So let's 00:33:01.450 --> 00:33:03.170 try and wrap this up. What does this all mean? 00:33:03.410 --> 00:33:05.990 We've traced Flaubert from his secluded, highly 00:33:05.990 --> 00:33:07.789 contradictory beginnings through the defining 00:33:07.789 --> 00:33:10.690 scandal of Madame Bovary to his self -sacrificing 00:33:10.690 --> 00:33:13.109 pursuit of le mot juste. The essential tension 00:33:13.109 --> 00:33:15.490 that defines Flaubert is the romantic artist 00:33:15.490 --> 00:33:18.750 who used an intensely realist method. His passion 00:33:18.750 --> 00:33:20.650 was for the purity of art and the annihilation 00:33:20.650 --> 00:33:23.890 of cliché, but his tool was objective, clinical, 00:33:24.170 --> 00:33:27.619 scientific observation. He proved that to achieve 00:33:27.619 --> 00:33:30.019 profound objective truth about the human condition, 00:33:30.220 --> 00:33:32.519 the author must first disappear from the text 00:33:32.519 --> 00:33:35.200 entirely. And the enduring power of L 'Amour 00:33:35.200 --> 00:33:37.579 Just is really the ultimate takeaway here. It 00:33:37.579 --> 00:33:39.960 shows us how that meticulous labor a week spent 00:33:39.960 --> 00:33:43.119 perfecting one sentence could create prose that 00:33:43.119 --> 00:33:46.079 feels utterly effortless, that achieves a sense 00:33:46.079 --> 00:33:48.859 of reality so solid it seems to defy the very 00:33:48.859 --> 00:33:51.500 artifice of fiction. His work habits paved the 00:33:51.500 --> 00:33:54.160 way toward that slower and more introspective 00:33:54.160 --> 00:33:56.299 manner of writing that defines so much of modern 00:33:56.299 --> 00:33:58.599 literature. He gave writers permission to be 00:33:58.599 --> 00:34:01.599 patient, to be precise, to rely on detail rather 00:34:01.599 --> 00:34:04.000 than declaration, and to reject the easy narrative 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:06.759 path. He redefined artistic integrity as aesthetic 00:34:06.759 --> 00:34:09.440 self -sacrifice. To close out this dive, we have 00:34:09.440 --> 00:34:11.860 to return to the great final contradiction of 00:34:11.860 --> 00:34:14.829 his life. the central tension we identified in 00:34:14.829 --> 00:34:17.869 his core thesis. He was the martyr of style, 00:34:18.130 --> 00:34:20.869 dedicating his entire life to aesthetic perfection 00:34:20.869 --> 00:34:24.210 and the pursuit of truth through form. And yet, 00:34:24.309 --> 00:34:26.949 his ultimate masterpiece, the one he toiled over 00:34:26.949 --> 00:34:30.429 and believed in most, was the uncompleted Bouvard 00:34:30.429 --> 00:34:33.829 et Pécuchet. It was a grand, bitter satire on 00:34:33.829 --> 00:34:36.510 the futility of human knowledge and the ubiquity 00:34:36.510 --> 00:34:39.449 of mediocrity. And you have to consider the profound, 00:34:39.630 --> 00:34:42.079 tragic implication of that. This man, who lived 00:34:42.079 --> 00:34:43.940 the most disciplined and rigorous life dedicated 00:34:43.940 --> 00:34:46.639 to knowledge and effort, intended his final artistic 00:34:46.639 --> 00:34:49.639 statement to be a massive novel dedicated to 00:34:49.639 --> 00:34:51.719 proving that all human knowledge and all effort, 00:34:51.800 --> 00:34:54.760 even his own, are inherently mediocre and ultimately 00:34:54.760 --> 00:34:57.480 useless. Was this the ultimate act of objective 00:34:57.480 --> 00:35:00.659 detachment? Or was it the final despairing concession 00:35:00.659 --> 00:35:03.340 by the romantic idealist who finally realized 00:35:03.340 --> 00:35:05.599 that even perfect language could not redeem the 00:35:05.599 --> 00:35:07.960 basic foolishness of humanity? It remains his 00:35:07.960 --> 00:35:12.000 final provocative challenge to us. It does. And 00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:14.340 in one final detail from our sources that suggests 00:35:14.340 --> 00:35:17.579 the struggle never ended. At the time of his 00:35:17.579 --> 00:35:20.179 death, he may have been planning another grand, 00:35:20.219 --> 00:35:23.480 passionate historical novel, shifting back momentarily 00:35:23.480 --> 00:35:26.460 from savage satire to epic drama. What was it 00:35:26.460 --> 00:35:28.860 about? He was possibly working on a story based 00:35:28.860 --> 00:35:31.039 on the monumental ancient battle of Thermopylae, 00:35:31.079 --> 00:35:33.440 a constant struggle between the cynical realist 00:35:33.440 --> 00:35:35.619 and the grand romantic right until his final 00:35:35.619 --> 00:35:35.880 breath.