And Chimera replies, "Thou unknown one! I am enamored with thine eyes; like an inflamed hyena I circle about thee. Oh, embrace me! Fructify me!"
The Sphinx rises up; but Chimera flees in terror of being crushed beneath the stony weight. "Impossible!" says the Sphinx, and sinks into the deep sand.
I see in this scene the last confession of Flaubert, his stifled wail over the imperfection of his entire life-work, and this master-work of his life in especial. The Sphinx and the Chimera, science and poetry, desire each other in him, seek each other again and again, circle about each other with passionate yearning and ardor; but the true impregnation of poetry through science he did not accomplish.
Not that his principle was unsound or incorrect. On the contrary, the future of poetry is embodied in it; this I most truly believe, for in it was its past. The greatest poets, an Æschylus, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, possessed all the essential knowledge of their day, and deposited it in their poetry. True, erudition and scientific culture, in and for themselves, have no poetic value. They can never in the world take the place of poetic sentiment and artistic creative power. When the poetic endowment, however, exists, the gaze is sharpened by an acquaintance with the laws of nature and the human soul, and expanded by the study of history. In our day, when modern science is reconstructed in every direction, however, it is undoubtedly far more difficult than ever to span the materials of science without being overwhelmed, and Flaubert did not possess that native harmony of spirit which renders difficult things easy, and reconciles the profound antitheses of the world of ideas.
"La Tentation de St. Antoine" was disposed of in Paris with a merry boulevard jest. Few people, indeed, had the patience to enter thoroughly into the volume, and the public at large was soon ready with its judgment: the book was mortally tedious. How could the author expect that such a work would entertain the Parisians? Now "Madame Bovary" was quite another thing. Why did not Flaubert repeat himself (as all poor writers do)? Why did not he write ten new "Madame Bovarys"?
He retired to Croisset, shut himself up in solitude, deeply wounded as he was, for long months, and slowly began to work anew. He grew old. He lost by death his older friends, George Sand and Théophile Gautier; the friends of his youth and those who were his comrades in thought, Louis Bouilhet, Feydeau, Jules de Goncourt, and others. He grew lonely. His health gave way; there came a time when he could not endure walking,—indeed, could not even bear to see others walk. He became poor. He lost his property, which from the kindness of his heart he had intrusted to his only niece, and which her husband had foolishly squandered, and during the latter years of his life he was tormented with anxieties regarding means of subsistence. Toward the last he rarely went to Paris; indeed, he did not even go into his garden. His sole exercise consisted in an occasional walk from his bed-chamber to his study, and down stairs to take his solitary meals.
He died in May, 1880, and was buried at Rouen. The funeral procession was small; only a few friends from Paris followed him to his last resting-place. From Rouen scarcely any one attended the funeral, for he was almost entirely unknown to the majority of the inhabitants, and by the minority who knew him, he was hated as an immoral and irreligious writer.
[1] The titles are: Madame Bovary, Salammbô, L'éducation sentimentale, La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, Le Candidat, Trois Contes, Bouvard et Pécuchet.
[2] See Th. de Banville's Odes funambulesque: Vilanelle des pauvres housseurs, and two Triolets.