The internet can sometimes disappoint you, but sometimes it can be so very, very satisfying. When you’re quote-hunting these days, it’s usually just a disappointment. For instance: I have long loved a quotation from Gustave Flaubert that is translated as follows:
“Be regular and ordinary in your life, so you can be violent and original in your work.”
Supposedly Philip Roth had it pinned above his desk, or maybe that’s just what Geoffrey Braithwaite did in Flaubert’s Parrot. But while you can find this in various books of quotation, the source is rarely mentioned. It’s not from Madame Bovary, and it doesn’t really feel like something Flaubert would have one of his characters say, exactly. In the few cases it’s mentioned, it’s attributed to a letter written to Gertrude Tennant, a salonnière and grand dame of the time, dated December 25, 1876. That’s from a period in his life when the correspondence isn’t widely available, at least in English. But where is the letter? A quick Google search suggests that others have tried and failed to hunt it down.
But with a letter like this, there must be an archive somewhere, right? Several biographers mention it. As it turns out, that archive is now entirely online, and at the prompting of Kate Norlock I was able to hunt down this specific letter in short order! Google didn’t want to cough it up.
Here is a link to the entire letter. (In French, obviously!)
Perhaps most exciting, beyond confirming the quote is indeed Flaubert’s, is getting the context and the exact French, for re-translation.
“Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d’être violent et original dans vos œuvres.”
Advising Tennant on her son’s adventures in Paris, Flaubert suggests that she needn’t worry about the temptations and distractions there:
“You’re right that sensible people tend to do crazy things. The most serious eccentricities are the product of judicious people, or those who pass for having good judgement. That’s why there aren’t actors in prison… that profession is an outlet for their insanity. So here is an aesthetic principle (I bring everything everything back to my profession, you see), a rule for artists: ‘Be regulated in your life, and boringly bourgeois, so that your art can be violent and original.’ As for your son, I get why you’re worried about Paris, but I think your concerns are exaggerated. Anybody can lose their way! Nobody is ever tempted; we tempt ourselves.” (my translation)
I still think this is a great quote! I’m reminded of another Frenchman, Michel Foucault, who we tend to think of as a bit of a queer icon who spent lots of time in bathhouses and sex dungeons, but who actually spent the vast majority of his life in archives pouring over manuscripts and writing and lecturing. In short, his work is so important not because of his debaucheries but because of his boringly middleclass work ethic! (The internet archives of today would have given him more time for other pleasures, surely, but I wonder if that would have been more disappointing that exciting for him. Probably he’d just be trolling folks on Twitter.)
Indeed, having been childhood friends and briefly reunited in their late adulthood after Tennant’s husband died—during which time he wrote this letter—Flaubert and Tennant never saw each other again. Flaubert poured out his heart and considerable ardor to a pretty girl he used to know, and that was the end of it. I guess he kept all that passion bottled up for the work? Tennant came to be known primarily through her editions of his correspondence, in which she included only a few of the least flirtatious letter, suppressing her own insights and brilliance to celebrate the artists, politicians, and intellectuals who were drawn to her. But she lived a grand life and is rightly being celebrated now. (Tennant had an interesting biography written about her in 2009, as is fitting.)
Here’s the rest of the letter. The famous quotation is on pages two and three:
Second Opinions