French novelist Gustave Flaubert died in 1880, leaving his final novel unfinished. Titled “Bouvard et Pécuchet,” it’s a story of two copy clerks who quit their jobs and move to the countryside, seeking knowledge. It is Flaubert’s most realistic work and exhibits his sublime command of the French language.
It highlights the inescapable and universal banality of life. Bouvard and Pécuchet attempt to learn different subjects with a consistency in experiments. They’re always experimenting, always failing.
In the same sense, people are infatuated with the same subjects their entire lives, only altering their perspectives on them as they age (e.g., a traumatic event). Their careers are in the same fields most of their lives. They develop routines and when they break routines, they fail, returning like the person who falls asleep on the couch and lumbers back to bed early in the morning, dragging the blanket on the ground …
Moreover, what makes Bouvard et Pecuchet a great novel is Flaubert’s command of French. His syntax was art in itself, keeping the reader unbalanced with an unexpected turn of a word or phrase. Here is an example:
“He seemed to be wearing a wig, so flat and black was the hair covering his high skull.”
When one reads this sentence, the word “so” initially seems a conjunction. The reader expects that there will be an effect from the character wearing the wig. Instead, they find out that the word “so” is actually an adverb, emphasizing how obvious the wig is on the character.
If one looks closer, they can see that the word “so” is likely becoming an adverb because of the first half of the sentence, where Flaubert indicates that the character may be wearing a wig. Flaubert creates a narrative within the sentence itself, asking a question and then answering it emphatically: Is he wearing a wig? Yes!
Throughout the novel, Flaubert juxtaposes different characters and scenes:
“They lined the steps, the staircases, the bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, and Germaine complained about the dust.”
This juxtaposition exhibits many qualities of Flaubert’s prose: It’s concise; it keeps the reader unbalanced; it’s inclusive; and it’s detailed. The average writer would have written this as two or perhaps even three sentences, but Flaubert writes it in one and along the way creates an image in the reader’s mind: Bouvard and Pécuchet are clumsily lining the entire house, along the way leaving behind a mess, and Germaine walks in and throws her hands up and mutters under her breath and then begins cleaning their mess. It becomes a cycle of work, a repetition of failure.
At one point in the novel, Pécuchet takes Bouvard to his apartment:
“No sooner had they entered than Pecuchet put on a print flannel nightshirt, then showed Bouvard around his apartment.”
The “than” and “then” here show actions successively and give the sentence a poetic quality through assonance when read aloud. They also emphasize the flannel nightshirt instead of the apartment. It’s more personal to Pécuchet than the apartment. He cannot show the apartment before he puts it on.
Later Flaubert does a similar thing with the word “like,” using it once as a verb and then as a preposition, which also gives a sense of balance to the sentence:
“He liked progress, and like them had spent time indulging in such rewarding studies.”
Another example comes later in the novel:
“Feeling sorrier and sorrier, they looked at their tongues, felt their pulses, changed mineral waters, purged themselves, and avoided cold, heat, wind, rain, flies, and above all drafts.”
The use of “and” in this sentence, which planted the seed for writers like Ernest Hemingway to develop a so-called new style, is doubly effective: It piles on treatments that they undertook to feel better, and it makes the sentence parallel and balanced from beginning to end.
Separating this sentence in two after the second “and” midsentence, one can see an equal split of six and six: sorrier, sorrier, tongues, pulses, mineral waters, themselves and then cold, heat, wind, rain, flies, drafts. Both sentences are also balanced by the first and last conjunctions.
One thing that Flaubert is very good at is distraction. Throughout his novels, the reader is distracted by the overwhelming description of material things. In the partial quote below, you can see the distraction as well as the implication by simply using a comma instead of a colon:
“They acquired all the indispensible tools, four horses … “
The reader learns that they buy all the indispensible tools and begins to see a list of items, including the four horses. However, there is only a comma here, not a colon, which implies the list that follows is not of the tools but also that the items listed are dispensable. Flaubert, as he commonly does through death in his novels, devalues life here by listing the four horses as dispensable. How kind!
The novel in its entirety can be summed as an art of negation. Flaubert aims for zero in this novel, painting life as a series of experiences that ultimately lead to nothing. There are many examples of negation in the novel, including:
“And he began demonstrating the workings of the seeder. But a domestic ran up to find him: He was needed back at the chateau.”
The person seeding shows potential but is forced to abandon his work because he’s needed elsewhere. His potential vanishes. The seeds are not given a chance from the start.
Flaubert’s “Bouvard et Pécuchet” is his most artistic and realistic novel. He constructs a novel of nothingness that lives up to his vision of art rendering the subject matter obsolete and standing by sheer beauty. The subject matter here becomes insignificant, as do the characters, because they are only a small part of Flaubert’s artist world just like individuals make up a small part of the world they inhabit before disappearing.
Appendix
The following lists narrative techniques followed by a quote demonstrating their application.
Authorial presence: “As the temperature that day had risen to ninety-two degrees, Boulevard Bourdon was completely deserted.”
Balance based on subject: “Bouvard encouraged him to remove his coat. Personally, he couldn’t care less what people thought!
“Suddenly a drunk zigzagged across the sidewalk; and, from the topic of laborers, they launched into a discussion of politics.” Stark contrasts, yet connected.
“They would reuse the curtains, and that plus a few kitchen utensils would be quite enough.”
Cancelling sentences: “And he began demonstrating the workings of the seeder. But a domestic ran up to find him: he was needed back at the chateau.”
Surprise juxtaposition: “The shaft of the cider press looked gigantic, and they climbed into the dovecote.”
Absence of conjunction: “It was a silent, immobile, naked world.”
“Bouvard sat near the banks and contemplated the waves, thinking of nothing, fascinated, inert.”
Continuous connection with body and action: “And he offered his arm to head into the other room.”
Absence of adjective throws sentence off-balance like character: “She came down after five minutes, cheeks red, flustered.”