Three Tales • Gustave Flaubert

One of my most eagerly awaited new releases this year was Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert. His masterpiece Madame Bovary still lingers very fondly in my memory. Beyond that, I love the Hanser Classics series, which—with its high-quality new translations, extensive supplementary material, and bibliophilic production—is simply always perfect. If you browse my reviews, you’ll find numerous posts on these classics there. Whether Three Tales is, like the other books, also a clear buy recommendation—you’ll find out in this review.

When I first saw the title Three Tales, I assumed Hanser had put together a small volume of their own to score again with a big name. Elisabeth Edl is a much-lauded translator whose highly praised new edition of Madame Bovary surely remains memorable to many. And Gustave Flaubert—well, there isn’t much more to say about him. However, Three Tales is in fact a book that Flaubert himself assembled in precisely this form. It contains three short stories that he published in 1877, burdened by financial worries. Due to political unrest, economic turbulence put the publishing industry under heavy pressure, and so the book did not pay off quite as hoped. Yet if you consider how these three stories came into being, it quickly becomes clear that Flaubert worked on them with his customary care and dedication. It was to be the last book he himself completed and published (Bouvard and Pécuchet was published posthumously and unfinished).

The first story is called A Simple Heart and is about the humble maidservant Félicité, sketching her entire life in not even fifty pages. Flaubert does so in his typical, masterful style—clear and precise in expression—the very voice you know from Madame Bovary. Through the various stations of her life, lived primarily in the service of Madame Aubain and her children, he characterizes a simple woman of modest disposition. He portrays her nature, her way of thinking, and creates a figure that seems utterly realistic and plausible. Set in the rural Normandy milieu, the reader gains insight into the customs of that environment, and the overall provincial setting also recalls Madame Bovary.

I’m deeply enthusiastic about this first story; I found here again a masterpiece that completely pulled me in and is simply perfectly achieved. If you want to get to know Flaubert, this story is a must, because it contains everything that defines him. And if you already know his books, A Simple Heart is likewise a clear recommendation—this is Flaubert at his best.

Flaubert’s aim was the perfect “outer beauty,” the one right and possible formulation. The book includes some of his letters, and when you read them, it quickly becomes evident how he wrestled with his texts and how high his ambition was in this regard. He would spend days on a single page until the phrasing was exactly as he wished, working tirelessly. You can feel this in the prose: he describes scenes, landscapes, and thoughts with such precision, with so few and apt words, that I often reread a passage only to realize how little he needs to convey an atmosphere of striking density.

As with Madame Bovary, I couldn’t help being reminded of Johann Sebastian Bach’s fugues. If you read the text attentively but at a normal pace, the lines evoke a clear picture of the situation, the settings, and—on an abstract level—the emotional life of the people. It’s like listening to a fugue as a whole. But if you examine individual sentences more closely—the formulations and how he chooses words—you inevitably lose sight of the whole. One can’t quite focus on both the entire melody and the individual voices; this is the abiding impression of his style.

“In the garden there is a terrace from which the Seine can be seen. Here Virginie walked at her arm, on fallen vine leaves. Sometimes the bursting sun made them squint as they looked at the sails in the distance and the whole horizon, between the Château de Tancarville and the lighthouses of Le Havre. Afterwards they rested in the arbor.” (p. 37)

The second story, The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller, is set in the Middle Ages and reads like a hero’s legend. It tells of the life of Julian, who takes delight in hunting animals and then falls victim to a retaliatory prophecy he tries to avert. The tale is a curious blend of fairy tale, legend, and narrative. Flaubert works with many images and symbols, and I actually found the premise quite interesting. But in the end, it didn’t really yield much for me, and according to the afterword there is no deeper meaning to the plot—which, given the structure, I found rather odd. In a letter he writes that this story was merely a kind of finger exercise, composed “solely to busy myself with something, to see whether I could still turn a sentence” (p. 231). He was inspired by an image on a stained-glass window in Rouen Cathedral, though he did not follow a strict model. All in all, this story captivated me little.

The inspiration for the third story, Hérodias, likewise came from the sculptures on the main portal of Rouen Cathedral. Its background is antiquity; it deals with Herod Antipas and his wife Herodias and the biblical story of the beheading of John the Baptist. Flaubert had already researched these historical topics extensively while writing Salammbô and knew the terrain well. In addition, between 1849 and 1850 Flaubert undertook a grand journey to the Orient and was able to see Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem for himself—something clearly felt in the descriptions here. This third story, however, didn’t win me over at all; neither the background nor the reading experience worked for me. Flaubert uses numerous historical and biblical figures one simply has to know. The appendix documents and explains everything excellently, so you can certainly follow the content, but reading thus becomes correspondingly strenuous, slow, and not particularly enjoyable.

The edition itself is as excellent as all those in the Hanser Classics series. The stories proper cover 159 pages. Then follow 52 pages with a selection of Flaubert’s letters exchanged, while he was writing these three stories, with his niece, George Sand, and other close correspondents. I found them very interesting because they truly give insight into the creative process. The afterword also discusses the genesis and Flaubert himself very well. Overall, this is definitely worth reading—likewise the notes, which repeatedly connect to Madame Bovary and Flaubert’s life. Together with the bibliophilic production, the book is once again superbly done.

Conclusion: The first of the three stories, A Simple Heart, delighted me. Here the reader gets Flaubert the realist in pure form, and anyone who loves Madame Bovary will love this story too. The typically precise, incisive sentences—the “outer beauty” of Flaubert’s style—are fully present. The second and third stories, The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller and Hérodias, did not win me over. In terms of story, background, and idea, they felt uneven to me, and I couldn’t really sink into them. Reading Hérodias is also rather bumpy, because many figures are introduced only via the notes. The letters, annotations, and afterword are once again of the highest quality and give the reader a strong sense of Flaubert’s craft, the background of these stories, and his life. For Flaubert fans and anyone who was enthralled by Madame Bovary, this book is an absolute must. Otherwise, I would give priority to Madame Bovary or Sentimental Education.

Book information: Three Tales • Gustave Flaubert • Hanser Verlag • 315 pages • ISBN 9783446256590