Flaubert's Parrot

How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at an end-of-term dance released into the hall a piglet which had been smeared with grease. It squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot. People fell over trying to grasp it, and were made to look ridiculous in the process. The past often seems to behave like that piglet.

I remember the end of L’Education sentimentale. Frédéric and his companion Deslauriers are looking back over their lives. Their final, favourite memory is of a visit to a brothel years before, when they were still schoolboys. They had planned the trip in detail, had their hair specially curled for the occasion, and had even stolen flowers for the girls. But when they got to the brothel, Frédéric lost his nerve, and they both ran away. Such was the best day of their lives. Isn’t the most reliable form of pleasure, Flaubert implies, the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfilment’s desolate attic?

childhood instinct still makes me keep the best until last

Once you catch your bear, says the Macedonian proverb, it will dance for you.

But there are moments when I’m so tired that I feel I’m liquefying like an old Camembert.

1854: I pigeon-hole my life, and keep everything in its place; I’m as full of drawers and compartments as an old travelling trunk, all roped up and fastened with three big leather straps.

When you write the biography of a friend,
you must do it as if you were taking revenge for him.
Flaubert, letter to Ernest Feydeau, 1872

When you write the biography of a friend,
you must do it as if you were taking revenge for him.