So now [the days] were going to continue one after another like this, always the same, innumerable, bringing nothing! Other people’s lives, however dull they were, had at least possibility that something would happen. A chance occurrence would sometimes lead to an infinite number of sudden shifts, and the setting would change. But for her, nothing happened, God had willed it! The future was a dark corridor, with the door at its end firmly closed.
She gave up music. Why play? Who would hear her? Since she would never be able to play in a concert, in a short-sleeved velvet dress, on an Erard piano, striking the ivory keys with her light fingers and feeling a murmur of ecstasy circulate around her like a breeze, it was not worth the trouble of boring herself with studying. She left her drawing portfolios and her tapestry work in the cupboard. What was the use? What was the use? Sewing irritated her.
‘I’ve read everything,’ she would say to herself.
And she would hold the tongs in the fire till they turned red, or watch the rain fall.
How sad she was, on Sundays, when they rang vespers! She would listen, with dazed attention, as the cracked chimes of the bell sounded one by one. A cat on the rooftops, walking slowly, would arch its back to the pale rays of the sun. The wind, on the big road, would blow trails of dust. In the distance, now and then, a dog would howl; and the bell, at equal intervals, would continue its monotonous tolling, which vanished into the countryside.
”Madame Bovary, Flaubert, p. 54 of the beautiful Lydia Davis translation
Today is Flaubert’s birthday. I discovered this by chance after purchasing Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot at work, which inspired me to do some biographical digging on the great realist himself—this happens to me, I am psychic about dead authors and their significant days. “Je suis Madame Bovary!” indeed—this passage, an excerpt from the part of the book that I think of as Emma’s Ennui, exemplifies how deeply empathetic a character she is despite her shallowness. Who has not had winters exactly like this one, when all activities lose their attraction and each concrete detail of the world seems a brick in an immobilizing prison? Except Flaubert says it better than I.
