Three Tales (1877)

It seems from what I’ve read that ‘A Simple Heart’ reveals both Flaubert’s his humanity (‘Now, surely, no one will accuse me of being inhuman anymore’ – Flaubert) and ‘a mastery of style acquired in the course of a lifetime’s arduous work’ – Robert Baldick. For me, though, it was a very simple and simply told tale, an observational and rather distant one of a rather ignorant woman ready to accept the vicissitudes of life without doing much about them. Rejected in love, she dedicates herself to a rather arrogant family and ends up worshipping a stuffed parrot as a representative of the Holy Ghost. Apparently even this apparent bit of a jibe isn’t intended as such and we’re just meant to recognise this woman as the salt of the earth. Still, despite Flaubert’s protestations – ‘ce n’est nullement ironique . . . mais au contraire tres serieux et trists. Je veux apitoyer, faire pluerer les ames sensibles, en eeetant une moi-meme’ - , I think he did mean the reader to also see the grim humour at the end with Félicité mistaking her parrot for the Holy Ghost, especially since there is a pun in the original French, Félicité mistaking her Perroquet for le Paraclet, not to mention the way she imagines a giant parrot swooping down presumably to get her as she dies – i.e. word-play followed by slap-stick. This is the sort of double tone Nicola Barker gets into her novels now.

Her inertia, though, while perhaps understandable to an extent given her contemporary circumstances, stopped me from engaging with this Félicité, the distance between me and her being increased by the way the tale is told without any direct speech. Yes, it’s pared language Flaubert uses and you can read quite a bit into it – e.g. a simple life is the most fulfilling – but only if we are simpletons like the protagonist. All right, Félicité is more ignorant than stupid but she also seems far less dynamic than the average person.

I guess I preferred this story, though, to the next one, ‘The Legend of St Julian Hospitator’, based on the thirty windows in Rouen Cathedral depicting his life. Again I couldn’t see much point in this story of an unremittingly violent boy/young man who takes far too long to learn from his mistakes, whose bloodlust seems to know no ends. And to become a saint after all that! This was a quasi-biblical story told in a biblical style, inviting no empathy for Julian.

And I don’t think I’d be alone in having a limited understanding and appreciation of the final tale, ‘Herodias’, the retelling of the execution of John the Baptiste. It’s obviously putting a new slant on the story but not one easily followed without more background knowledge than I have. ( )

Tale, the first, is sweet, sad and a little strange.

Tale, the second, is not very sweet, quite sad and VERY strange. First the guy is completely psychotic, or a sociopath, I'm not sure which (I need to reference my old psych 101 book). Later he becomes a wandering monk. To find out what happens next you'll have to read the story, I'm not ruining it. Suffice it to say that the first two "tales" have really heavy Catholic overtones. Penance is seriously emphasized in tale #2.

You know, I was once in Mexico City and they have this HUGE basilica thing there. They purposefully made this little path up to the alter or whatever with more jagged rock so you could properly hurt while crawling up to it on your knees. Sorry to all of you Catholics our there, I don't mean any offense, but you can have at that sort of thing. No thank you. I don't think that is what is meant by "suffering for the cause of Christ". St. Julian, however, disagrees with me...clearly.

I can totally see where scholars could spend decades and zillions of dead trees debating the end of the second tale. The whys and wherefores must make for endless fun for academics! Though I found this tale the most disturbing and much less comfortable than the first it was far and away my favorite of the three.

Tale, the third, is a fictionalized re-telling of the death of John the Baptist from the perspective of Harod Antipas ( )

Three short stories by Flaubert, each with very different themes, were a very good introduction to the scope of this giant of French literature. Un cœur simple or Le perroquet, known as A Simple Heart in English, narrates the life story of a servant called Félicité, who, having experienced a great romantic deception in her youth, devotes her life to her employer Mme Aubain and her children. When she inherits a live parrot, the animal becomes the recipient of all Félicité's love and passion, even once it passes away, when Félicité has him sent to a taxidermist so she can keep the bird by her side until her dying days. An interesting story about selfless love and devotion. ★★★★

The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitalier tells the story of how a young man who loved to kill animals for pleasure eventually became a saint. After having killed a mouse as a child, Julian, the son of noble parents develops a taste for killing and takes to hunting with a vengeance. He loves to massacre large quantities of animals without a shadow of remorse. One day, after an especially bloody carnage wherein he massacres an entire valley of deer, he starts having qualms about his favourite hobby, but his reservations dissipate instantly when he spies a family of deer and can't resist killing off the fawn and his mother. When he fails to kill the stag, the animal curses him with the promise that Julian will end up killing both his mother and father. Terrorized that the curse might come true, Julian flees from the parental home, but will he manage to escape his destiny? A great story about redemption, but for animal lovers like me, the scenes of carnage were difficult to stomach, though in retrospect, necessary to tell the story. ★★★★

Hérodias is the retelling of the beheading of St-John the Baptist. I wasn't particularly fond of the religious aspects of the story, but as a historical piece is was interesting, especially with the description of the party Hérodias holds for her new husband Herod Antipas, when guests make themselves vomit between courses so they can continue stuffing their faces; leave it to the Romans to benefit from all the advantages of bulimia without the guilt. Then Salomé arrives on the scene and uses her charms to have John's head served on a platter. Lovely. Very well told, but not my favourite story. ★★★ ( )

"A Simple Heart' tells the story of Félicité, a young woman who begins work as a house servant after her chance for true love evaporated in the blink of an eye. It didn't really strike me as a story but more of a portrait of the young woman, finding comfort in what little she has, striving to always do good by the family for whom she works thought they seem to pay little attention to her wants and needs, and always maintaining her faith when others would start to falter.

In "The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitalier", the young Julian is pre-destined to become a saint from birth, based upon visions witnessed by both his parents, and the two treat him as such, delicately, making sure he has the proper education and spiritual nourishment. Yet after an innocent run-in with a mouse during church, he becomes quite a little demon when it comes to the treatment of animals. His cruelty increases day by day, until one afternoon while on a hunt, he slaughters an entire valley of deer but is cursed by the one remaining stag and his life changes forever.

The stark and bloody imagery seemed a bit contrary to what I would expect from the someone destined to be a saint. I had a difficult time accepting his sainthood when it finally arrived.

"Herodias" is a re-telling of the beheading of John the Baptist by Herod at the request of Salomé. I found this tale very confusing thanks to too many characters and encountered much difficulty trying to keep the story straight in my head. And oddly enough, the title character, Herodias, was hardly seen as was her daughter Salomé. ( )

I'd recommend reading the foreword and introduction after the Tales; though, both are worth reading. By reading the intro first, I anticipated too much of the plots.

The first tale is "A Simple Heart." The title speaks for itself. The story is about a woman who loves completely, selflessly and without hesitation. At first glance, she seems worthy of pity and appears to be a bit nuts. She's actually content and isn't really crazy even though she speaks to a dead, stuffed parrot that she comes to believe is the Holy Ghost. In this tale, Flaubert has a way of rendering the common beautiful-- whether he's describing things like the weather and sounds of a village or the life of a common, illiterate peasant.

"The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller" is about a wealthy man who loses everything, spends the rest of his life making penance and is finally willing to give all that he has for another. The story has a lot to say about human madness and passion. Not quite sure what I think of it yet.

The third tale, "Herodias" didn't work for me on any level. It is sort of anti-Semitic; it is choppy and difficult to follow, and is not interesting in any way. Plot-wise it is about Roman and Jewish politics and the killing of John the Baptist. I love history. I love religious history. I love historical fiction. This piece fails for me on all levels. It does, however, have one of my favorite sentences from all three tales: "So he stretched his arms toward Zion, rose to his full height and, with his head thrown back and his fists clenched, laid a curse on it, believing that words had real power." p. 69.

Curtis and Drabble made nice contributions to the foreword and introduction respectively. Both comment on the power of Flaubert's use of language or his literary style. For them, as they describe Flaubert sometimes laboring for a week at a time to finish just one sentence, "words had real power." The trademark Hesperus binding, thick paperback cover and sturdy pages will help this book hold up through multiple readings, but the stories themselves might fail to stand the test of time if Flaubert hadn't also written "Madame Bovary." ( )