The Temptation of Saint Anthony

263 Pages·2012·1.21 MB·English

by  Gustave Flaubert

2001 Modern Library Paperback Edition
Biographical note copyright © 1992 by Random House, Inc.
Foreword, glossary, notes, appendix, and revisions to translation © 2001
by Random House, Inc.
Introduction translation copyright © 1977 by Cornell University Press
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Modern Library, a division of Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Cornell University Press for permission to reprint material
from “Fantasia of the Library,” by Michel Foucault, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice:
Selected Essays and Interviews, edited by Donald F. Bouchard. Copyright © 1977 by Cornell
University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Flaubert, Gustave, 1821–1880.
[Tentation de saint Antoine. English]
The temptation of Saint Anthony / Gustave Flaubert; translated by Lafcadio Hearn; introduction
by Michel Foucault; foreword, glossary, notes, appendix, and revisions to the translation by
Marshall C. Olds.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-30782413-4
1. Anthony, of Egypt, Saint, ca. 250–355 or 6—Fiction. 2. Christian saints—Egypt—Fiction. I.
Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850–1904. II. Foucault, Michel. III. Olds, Marshall C. IV. Title.
PQ2246.T4 E5 2001
843′.8—dc21 2001044480
Modern Library website address:
www.modernlibrary.com
v3.1
v3.1
C
ONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
F M C. O
OREWORD BY ARSHALL LDS
I M F
NTRODUCTION BY ICHEL OUCAULT
THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
A
PPENDIX
G
LOSSARY
N
OTES
B N
IOGRAPHICAL OTE
F
OREWORD
Marshall C. Olds
It is generally the practice, when offering a new edition of a classic
literary work written in a foreign language, for publishing houses to
present a newly translated text. After all, new translations with an ear
for contemporary idiom are among the principal means by which such
works can cross the combined gulfs of time and culture. Each generation
deserves its own translation of Madame Bovary. Yet crossing those gulfs
effortlessly and transparently does not always provide the recommended
access to the work in question, particularly if there is a strangeness
about it that was felt even by its first readers and in the original
language. With that in mind, a different approach is being used for the
present volume, and the reader of this new edition of Gustave Flaubert’s
Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874) may be surprised to learn that the
text here presented is, in fact, the oldest of the three translations of this
work into English. Surprise should not entail alarm, however;
justification for the decision is twofold. First and foremost, the
translation begun by Lafcadio Hearn in 1875 or 1876 has an
incomparable beauty and elegance that is a perfect match for the very
particular language adopted by Flaubert in this, the most curious of his
works. In the choice of an English Romantic idiom, a highly literary one
at a remove from all other usage of the day, Hearn found the equivalent
to the French of the Tentation de saint Antoine, a language markedly
different from that of Flaubert’s own Realist novels. But there is more:
Hearn’s translation not only matches the strangeness sensed by the
reader of 1874, it has weathered so well that it communicates to the
reader of English in 2001 the same distance communicated by Flaubert’s
text to the contemporary reader of French. Unlike Madame Bovary, The
Temptation of Saint Anthony cannot best be appreciated by being in some
sense linguistically contemporary and so culturally relevant. It never was
either, really, or at least not in any obvious way.
—
—
If Flaubert did not write his Temptation of Saint Anthony with modern life
and language foremost in mind, this did not mean that the haunting
work fell on deaf ears. To the contrary: A young generation comprised
largely of poets and artists greeted the Temptation avidly. There have
always been two readerships of Flaubert’s works (in fact, there still are),
who, more often than not, are quite distinct. There are those readers
who much prefer the contemporary realism of Madame Bovary and the
Sentimental Education to the works that attempt to resurrect a distant
past. Among the younger writers of Flaubert’s day who had this view
were Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant, who would follow the path
leading to Naturalism and psychological Realism. Then there were those
who admitted to having a weakness for Salammbô, the novel of ancient
Carthage, and for the Temptation. It is revealing to see how many young
poets, after the publication of the Temptation, wrote to Flaubert “in
respectful homage,” sending copies of their work for him to notice. This
was the generation that would bring forth Symbolism and the fin-de-
siècle Decadent movement. Among these was the young Stéphane
Mallarmé, who in 1876 sent Flaubert a copy of his poem “The Afternoon
of a Faun,” printed on impossibly expensive paper with Manet’s
engravings, and personalized “To Gustave Flaubert, the Master.” It was
to the author of the Temptation that Mallarmé wished to pay his respects,
for having given to this generation, as Mallarmé wrote in his preface to
Vathek, a totally unique work “blending epochs and races in a prodigious
celebration” of the literary imagination, and capturing the distinct scent
of “bouquins hors de mode,” of old and rarely frequented books. There
was no higher praise.
Only eight years younger than Mallarmé, Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)
may be thought of as the French poet’s contemporary in every sense but
that of place. He was born Patricio Lafcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn, on
the Greek island of Santa Maura (today Levkás), which in ancient times
was called Levkádhia, the source of his given name. His mother was
Greek, and his father was a British army surgeon. Handed over for his
education to a doubting and not especially wealthy aunt in Dublin,
young Patrick was sent to school with the priesthood in mind, attending
Irish and French Jesuit institutions. Doubtless to alleviate the torment of
the strict and largely rote education he was receiving, he read
voraciously in contemporary and ancient literatures, in mythology, and
on all Oriental topics. A schoolyard accident cost him his left eye, and
his right was said to have grown disproportionately large from overuse.
He was rebellious, it seems, running away from school on at least one
occasion. His aunt finally gave him up for lost and paid his passage to
America in 1869, where he made his way to Cincinnati and found work
as an assistant in the public library. He became a feature writer for the
Cincinnati newspapers, and then continued journalistic work in New
Orleans, where he moved in 1877. In 1887 Hearn began writing for
Harper’s magazine; postings took him to the West Indies and then, in
1890, to Japan, where he chose to remain for the rest of his life.
Hearn was drawn by nature to the peculiar and the exotic, and as a
journalist, often wrote about violent crime and vice. In the United States
at midcentury, these were topics that could only be handled by the
newspapers, certainly not in magazines or novels, prompting Malcolm
Cowley’s observation that journalism was the Realism and Naturalism of
American writers, and was the sole medium through which American
writers could explore in their own way what writers in France were able
to develop in more substantial literary forms. While living in New
Orleans, and during his two-year stay in the West Indies, Hearn
developed a passion for the French Creole people, their language and
their literary and folk cultures. In Japan it was to be the same, and his
voluminous writings of this period embrace all aspects of Japanese
culture: social, religious, folkloric, historical, and literary. In Japan,
Hearn finally married, to a woman of the Samurai class, and converted
to Buddhism. He published much during his lifetime, beginning with
translations of Théophile Gautier (One of Cleopatra’s Nights, 1882) and
two books of collected legends (Stray Leaves from Strange Literatures,
1884, and Some Chinese Ghosts, 1887), several books from his time in
Louisiana and the Caribbean (notably Youma, 1890, about a slave
insurrection), and then more than a dozen books in Japan (especially
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, 1894, and Japan: An Attempt at
Interpretation, 1904). Not just family members (especially his son and
wife) but also admirers from the literary world continued to publish
Hearn’s original material well after his death. He has had at least a half-
dozen biographers. His collected articles, essays, and letters are
voluminous. E. C. Hill has observed that “Hearn was a writer who
combined the fin-de-siècle love of the exquisite with a touch of primitive
vigor that led him to strange places and gave his writing a hardness that
that of his British contemporaries often lacked.”*
It should be clear from this thumbnail literary biography that, even at
an early age, Lafcadio Hearn would have been drawn to a work like The
Temptation of Saint Anthony.† One might venture to say that he was, in a
very special sense, the reader in that first generation that this book
demanded. He had traveled from East to West, been born to a Greek
Orthodox mother, educated into the Catholic faith through his aunt, and
then educated further in Catholicism, church history, the Gospels, the
lives of the saints, Latin, Greek.… At least as much as his French
contemporaries, Lafcadio Hearn was immediately attuned to the
intellectual and historical perspective acquired by Flaubert over some
thirty years in order to finish his work.‡
Newly arrived at the Cincinnati public library in 1869, the nineteen-
year-old Hearn freely indulged his passion for books (so much so that he
was fired for reading too much). He passed much time with midcentury
French authors: Charles Baudelaire, Gautier, and Flaubert. One may be
impressed with the accuracy of his taste and judgment, which aimed
unerringly at major figures. (Hearn’s interest in contemporary French
writing would be ongoing and would lead to many short translations
published in newspapers and in Harper’s; Hearn played an important role
in introducing American readers to these authors.) According to
Elizabeth Bisland,§ an intimate during the New Orleans years and
Hearn’s first biographer, it was in 1875 or 1876 that Lafcadio Hearn
began his translation of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, only a year or
two after its first publication in Paris. It was to be a labor of love,
finished in New Orleans in 1882 as he fought off malaria. Hearn’s
immense erudition—his knowledge of Scripture and of Church history,
of the early saints and martyrs, all so painfully acquired in his seminary
schools, joined with his wide reading in Orientalism, in ancient religions
and mythologies, as well as his command of classical languages—gave
him privileged access to the world of the third-century anchorite that
Flaubert had set himself to resurrect.
If we are to believe the confidence made to Willa Cather by Caroline
Franklin Grout, Flaubert’s niece and literary heir, The Temptation of Saint
Anthony was the work that the author loved best.‖ Flaubert himself
called it “the work of my entire life.” Indeed, it spanned nearly the
whole of the novelist’s life: from its germ in the marionette shows of
Flaubert’s childhood, depicting a ludic version of the hermit and his
temptations, to the partial figurations in some of the juvenilia (Smarh,
for example), to an encounter in Genoa with Pieter Breughel’s painting
of the subject, to a full-blown first version of the work, written as a play
and finished in 1849. Flaubert was dissuaded by his friends from doing
anything further with the dramatic work. In 1856, as he was completing
Madame Bovary, Flaubert came back to that imposing manuscript,
cutting it by half but venturing only so far as to publish a few excerpts,
among them the episode with the Queen of Sheba. Baudelaire noticed
the publication and, in the close of his 1857 essay on Madame Bovary,
referred to the Temptation as “the secret chamber of Flaubert’s mind,” a
work at once very personal and very different from the novel that had
just appeared. Finally, in 1869, after completing the Sentimental
Education, Flaubert returned again to the abandoned work, in a three-
year revision that would protect its essence yet change it profoundly. In
1871, a brief interruption: the Prussian army occupied the Flaubert
house at Croisset, downstream from Rouen on the Seine, and the
manuscript was buried in the garden for safekeeping. Flaubert finished
in 1872 but still hesitated, finally going ahead with publication in 1874.
The Temptation was indeed the work of a lifetime, and in senses other
than just chronological. As has often been pointed out, Flaubert lived the
life of a recluse, generally shunning Parisian life and remaining holed up
in Normandy, at Croisset, receiving only the friends he chose,
maintaining a massive correspondence, reading, writing brutally long
hours, and pacing up and down in his study declaiming at full volume all
that he had composed. Anthony’s solitary life and his visions appear to
us today, as they doubtless did to Flaubert, as the very image of the
author’s own life. And then there was the sheer personal investment.
Flaubert was no stranger to intensive research. In 1857 he had thrown
himself into gathering information on ancient Carthage for Salammbô,
following the work he had already done on the world’s religions for the
Temptation of 1849. For the Temptation of 1872, as Michel Foucault
observes, the preparation was of a different magnitude entirely: The
library was ablaze. In the manuscripts for the final version, one can find