Authors: Gustave Flaubert trans Lydia Davis
Madame Bovary (55 page)
| 66 | the egotism of a bourgeois: One of Flaubert’s main animosities was against what he considered the bourgeoisie and bourgeois ways of thinking—that is, narrow-mindedness, complacency, pride, preoccupation with material gain and material possessions, and lack of deep culture. |
| 66 | like a dead fish: This is “like a shad” in the original, shad being an important food fish, hence more familiar in Europe than in the United States. |
| 67 | tithe: A contribution to the church of approximately one-tenth of one’s yearly income in money or goods that was at first voluntary and later became established as a legal tax. It was outlawed at the time of the French Revolution. |
| 68 | Socrates, Franklin, Voltaire, and Béranger: Socrates (469–399 B.C. ), Greek philosopher famous for his view of philosophy as a pursuit proper and necessary to all intelligent men; he lived by his principles even though they ultimately cost him his life. Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), the independent-minded American statesman, inventor, scientist, and writer, was popular in France, where he was sent on a diplomatic mission following the American Revolution. François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778), a skeptical, rationalist, commonsense philosopher, writer, amateur scientist, and prime representative of the French Enlightenment, was much admired by Flaubert. The poems of Béranger (see note to p. 10) expressed republican and Bonapartist ideas, for which the poet was twice imprisoned. |
| 68 | The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar: Book 4 of Émile , a novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), in which Émile’s moral and religious education is summarized; Rousseau, Swiss-French philosopher, author, and political theorist, advocated a natural religion that offended ecclesiastical authorities. |
| 68 | the immortal principles of ’89: The principles of the French Revolution, as expressed specifically in the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” (1789). |
| 68 | milliner: Maker and seller of women’s hats—an important item of dress at the time in which the novel is set. |
| 69 | wet nurse: A woman who cares for and, specifically, suckles babies who are not her own—this was done for pay, and women of the bourgeoisie and the upper classes would usually give their children into the care of a wet nurse for the period of their infancy or even for the several years of early childhood. In the novel, Emma Bovary will employ one for her own child. |
| 70 | coryza: Common head cold. The pharmacist, Homais, tends to favor a specialized scientific vocabulary. |
| 70 | scrofula: Tuberculosis of the lymph glands, especially in the neck, most common in children; or the swellings or abscesses that are symptoms of it. |
| 70 | novenas: A series of prayers extending over nine days and made in honor of a saint to ask for his or her intercession. |
| 70 | Réaumur: A temperature scale in which 0 is set at the freezing point of water, while the boiling point of water is 80. Réaumur was once in wide use but was gradually replaced by other scales during the nineteenth century. |
| 72 | “L’Ange Gardien”: This may be either a poem by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786–1859)—a highly regarded poet much admired by her contemporaries, and whose reputation has endured—set to music by composer and singer Pauline Duchambge (1786–1859), or a song by Béranger (see note to p. 10). |
| 73 | Delille … L’Écho des Feuilletons: Jacques, Abbé Delille (1738–1813), was a French poet and translator and member of the Académie Française who specialized in descriptive nature poems. L’Écho des Feuilletons (The Echo of the Literary Supplements) was a collection of stories, anecdotes, et cetera, compiled from contemporary newspapers and magazines. |
| 73 | Le Fanal de Rouen: “The Rouen Beacon”—a fictitious Rouen newspaper. Flaubert was at first going to have Homais write for the real Journal de Rouen , which he despised, but was persuaded to change the name of the newspaper. |
| 73 | Buchy, Forges, Neufchâtel, Yonville, and vicinity: Of these places, only Yonville is fictitious. |
| 73 | list slippers: Slippers, often homemade, woven or braided from “lists,” or strips of coarse, usually woolen cloth. |
| 75 | treble clef: Flaubert is referring to a system of notation of the higher pitches in music, used, for instance, to write a tenor part. He may be insinuating that Léon has only a partial or superficial knowledge of how to read music. |
| 75 | sacristan: An officer of a church in charge of the sacristy and ceremonial equipment. |
| 75 | law of 19 Ventôse, Year XI, Article 1: A law passed (on March 10, 1803) when France was still using the Revolutionary calendar, established in 1793 and lasting until 1805. Ventôse was the sixth month of that calendar, and ran from February 19 or 21 to March 19 or 21. |
| 76 | ermine: The prosecutor’s ceremonial robe would have been ornamented with a traditional band of ermine, the white winter pelt of the weasel. |
| 78 | this sinner’s name: The name Madeleine is derived from the name of the biblical Magdalena, who was, until recently, mistakenly believed to have been a prostitute. |
| 78 | Napoléon … Franklin … Irma … Athalie: Napoléon Bonaparte (Napoléon I, 1769–1821) was emperor of France (1804–15). For Benjamin Franklin, see note to p. 68. Irma is perhaps named after the character in Irma, ou les malheurs d’une jeune orpheline (Irma, or the Misfortunes of a Young Orphan), an Indian story by Elisabeth Guénard de Méré (1751–1829). Athalie is the heroine of a tragedy of the same name by Jean Racine (1639–99), France’s foremost classical playwright. |
| 78 | six boxes of jujubes: The jujube, or Chinese date, is the fruit of the jujube tree. It can be made into a paste that is used as a remedy for cough, bronchitis, and pneumonia. |
| 78 | “The God of Good Folks”: An anticlerical poem (1817) by Béranger (see note to p. 10). |
| 78 | barcarolle: A Venetian boat song. |
| 78 | the Empire: The rule of Napoléon I, 1804–15. |
| 79 | “The War of the Gods”: A poem in the style of Voltaire’s “Pucelle” by Evariste Désiré de Forges, Vicomte de Parny (1753–1814), published in 1799. A mock-epic poem directed against the church, it was banned by the government in 1827. |
| 79 | the six weeks of the Virgin: The six weeks between Christmas and the Purification (February 2); it was believed that a new mother should abstain from physical exercise during a period of the same length of time. |
| 80 | cows in their wooden collars … horns: In the original, vaches embricolées; in Normandy at that time, cows would be fitted with a sort of wooden collar that prevented them from browsing on trees and particularly from eating the apples from the apple trees in their pastures. Also, they were not usually dehorned, as they almost always are nowadays in the United States. |
| 80 | Mathieu Laensberg: A famous almanac originating in Liège and first appearing in the seventeenth century, distributed by peddlers throughout the nineteenth century. |
| 81 | nankeen: A sturdy, yellowish cloth originally loomed by hand in Nanking, China, from a naturally yellow-brown variety of cotton. |
| 85 | osmazome: Once believed to be the main flavoring component of certain meats and mature poultry, obtainable in making stock or broth. |
| 85 | calefactors: Homais’s abstruse scientific term for “stoves.” |
| 85 | écarté: A card game for two people using thirty-two cards, in which ten cards are dealt, five to each player, the eleventh being the trump. |
| 86 | L’Illustration: A long-lived (1843–1944) popular journal covering politics, manners, art, and fashion. |
| 86 | full double six: The game of dominoes continues until one player has earned three hundred points; the double six is the tile with the highest number of points. |
| 86 | Pierrots: The Pierrot was the stock comic character of French pantomime, played with whitened face and loose, sometimes very ample blouse and pants. The character, broadly or subtly interpreted, is traditionally naïve and sentimentally romantic. |
| 86 | name day: The calendar day honoring the saint after which one was named; in France at that time, this was a more important day than one’s birthday. |
| 86 | phrenological head: A model of the human head marked with the different areas believed to govern different aspects of the personality; phrenology, or the study of the shape of the skull, was a serious science with many devotees at that time. |
| 89 | Born a Gascon: Gascony is a region in the southwest of France that includes the Pyrenees Mountains, which form the border with Spain, as well as the swampy and sandy Landes along the Atlantic coast. |
| 90 | Trois Frères … Grand Sauvage: Fictional stores in Rouen. |
| 92 | La Sachette in Notre-Dame de Paris: A character in Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel—a “pathetic creature,” according to Vladimir Nabokov—who, a single mother, loves her daughter with an intense passion. |
| 95 | Le Pollet: An outlying district of Dieppe where fishermen lived. |
| 96 | cowls: A cowl is the hood or hooded cloak worn by a monk or a nun. |
| 96 | prie-dieux: A prie-dieu (literally, “pray to God”) is a small wooden prayer desk with a cushioned kneeling bench and a sloping shelf on which to rest a book. |
| 98 | Mont-Riboudet: A play on words— mon Riboudet , “my Riboudet,” is a homophone of Mont-Riboudet , “Mount Riboudet.” |
| 100 | Ascension: In the Christian faith, Ascension Day occurs on the Thursday forty days after Easter and commemorates Christ’s ascension into heaven. |
| 100 | genuflecting: An observant Catholic, upon entering a church or, inside a church, when passing in front of the altar, faces the altar and bends one knee as a sign of worship, simultaneously making the sign of the cross. |
| 101 | diachylon: An ointment originally composed of vegetable juices, later containing lead; used as a plaster to be applied to abrasions and wounds to reduce swelling. |
| 102 | Caribs or Botocudos: The Caribs are the Amerindian people of the Lesser Antilles Islands after whom the Caribbean Sea was named; the Botocudos were a tribe of South American Indians of eastern Brazil who wore large wooden plugs in their earlobes and lower lips. |
| 103 | grisettes: Young working-class women who dated students and were known to be rather loose in their morals. |
| 106 | Jesuit: A member of the Society of Jesus, a religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534; in this case, however, Homais simply means that Léon will seem sanctimonious, or “holier than thou.” |
| 106 | Latin Quarter: The district of Paris situated on the Left Bank of the Seine River where the old university was located—its teaching delivered in Latin—and where many institutions of higher learning are still located; it is still the student quarter, with a lively artistic, intellectual, and night life. |
| 106 | the Faubourg Saint-Germain: Once an outlying district ( faubourg ) of Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, situated on the Left Bank of the Seine, borders the Latin Quarter on the east and was at the time of the novel one of wealthiest and most fashionable of Paris neighborhoods. It takes its name from its sixth-century abbey church, Saint-Germain-des-Prés. |
| 110 | vapors: According to beliefs at that time, a nervous or mental disturbance caused by exhalations rising from the blood, “humors,” or bodily organs into the brain. |
| 111 | yellow gloves … gaiters: Flaubert is contrasting the disparate elements of Rodolphe’s outfit. At that time yellow gloves were affected by dandies (see the scene at the opera, p. 195); a gaiter, on the other hand—a cloth or leather garment covering the upper part of the shoe and sometimes the lower part of the leg—would have been more common. |
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