And this, with both authors, is the main point. They obeyed, consciously or unconsciously, a new idea of the relation of poetry to science. They wished to contribute their share toward creating a poesy built wholly upon a scientific foundation.
The highest ambition of Bouilhet was to write a poem which should embrace the results of modern science, and be to our age what that most admirable poem of Lucretius, "De rerum natura," was to antiquity. Flaubert had apparently a similar dream. But in his case the desire was more decidedly stamped with his hatred of human stupidity. He brought it into realization negatively, and in two different forms; in his work, "La Tentation de Sainte Antoine" (The Temptation of Saint Anthony), where he allowed all the religious and moral systems of humanity to pass in review before the reader's eye, as the insane hallucinations of the hermit; and, in his last story, "Bouvard et Pécuchet," where the numerous errors and blunders of two poor blockheads gave the author a pretext for furnishing a sort of encyclopædia of all the departments of human knowledge in which they had made mistakes. In "La Tentation de Sainte Antoine," he gave the tragedy of the human mind, which here reveals itself in magnificent, frantic, and wailing madness, a King Lear on the world's heath. In "Bouvard et Pécuchet" he delineates caricature, naïve ignorance, and the bungling of dilettanteism in all scientific and technical provinces, as personified by two ludicrous old bachelors. The work is posthumous, and only the first part exists, even that being in an unfinished state; but highly characteristic of Flaubert was his design to supplement this first part with a second, in which the two poor old bachelors, who begin and end their career as clerks, carry out the idea of taking notes on the blunders of all the well-known writers (M. Flaubert included), and collecting them into a volume.
Both Flaubert and Bouilhet, therefore, were spurred on in their labors by the powerful impulse to preserve in their works, in one form or another, either positive or negative, the results of modern science. What Flaubert said of Bouilhet is equally applicable to both, that the fundamental thought, the innate element of his mind, was a sort of naturalism, that was a reminder of the renaissance. But while Bouilhet dissipated his best powers in mediocre and traditional romantic dramas, Flaubert has not paid homage to tradition in a single one of his works; on the contrary, he has always made profound scientific study the preparation for literary composition; and for this reason the relation between science and poetry is with him the nerve and sinew and the main interest of the work.
V.
It almost seems as if, in our day, the time were past when the novelist would sit calmly down before a large sheet of white paper some fine day, and, without further preparation, begin the execution of his work of fiction.
Flaubert, at all events, has introduced a method which places poetic production very nearly on a scientific basis. It was his wont to pass whole weeks in the libraries, that he; might gain light on some single point in his subject; and he would devote hours to a careful study of a mass of engravings, in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of the costumes or bearing of a former generation. In the course of his preparatory studies for "Salammbô," he read ninety-eight volumes of ancient and modern literature, and undertook, besides, a journey to Tunis, in view of studying the landscapes and monuments of ancient Carthage. Indeed, even in order to paint phantastic landscapes, such as those in "La Légende de St. Julien," he visited regions calculated to give him an impression similar to that of which he had dreamed.
As soon as he had sketched the plan for a book, he began to seek reliable facts for each separate chapter; each had its own individual outline, which must be gradually filled in. He read through the entire collection of the "Charivari" from the time of Louis Philippe to the latest date, in order to supply the literary Bohemian, Hussonet, in "L'éducation sentimentale," with witticisms in the style of his period. He made a study of not less than one hundred and seven works, in order to be able to write the thirty pages on agriculture in "Bouvard et Pécuchet." His excerpts for this last novel, if printed, would fill no less than five octavo volumes.
During all these preliminary studies he apparently lost sight, for a time, of his novel, and merely kept in view the desire to increase his knowledge. His fondness for accumulating information was almost as intense as that for fashioning the psychic contents of his work, or rather it gradually became so.
If we take a survey of his productions, in chronologic order, we shall find an ever plainer transfer of the centre of gravity from the poetic to the scientific element; in other words, from the human, psychologic element to historic, technical, and scientific externalities, which fill an unwarranted amount of space. Flaubert was always in danger of becoming a tedious author, and grew more and more prolix as time went on.