“[Flaubert] didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.” ~ Julian Barnes, “Flaubert’s Parrot”
(confession ~ i’ve not read “Faubert’s Parrot but have stumbled upon its mention as the thoughts swirl around an idea or two or three hoping a few land long enough to answer a question posited for this weeks paper due – i believe in less than 24 hours. last night around 1AM, i found myself stumbling around the wide net of digital land getting caught here & there with many soliloquies -what were they thinking about Progress and history?)
“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.”
~ Gustave Flaubert
(those readers who have remained patient – read my stumbled words of poetry over the years of this blog know of my affinity for the word ‘plastic’ – the above quotes fulfill a desire to answer Flaubert’s stance on progress whilst highlighting THAT word in a context that delights.)
“The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.” ~ John Locke
(Locke? the more i dig deeper, tangled in this enlightening web of enlightenment, there is new understanding that philosophers are no different from us mere humans – they repeat, regurgitate, slowly consuming and reworking knowledge gained from those who have come before them. Rousseau was no different as he quoted Locke on property and his words echo from Locke’s cave)
THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse On The Origin of Social Inequality”
(and it is here, dear readers, that i offer great apology for upon further readings – perhaps the brain is more open after all others have gone sleeping – a light-bulb moment reading another lecture combing Rousseau’s anti-Enlightenment sentiment and his link to Romanticism that i discovered my error of interpretation — Rousseau does NOT want nor believe that we must go back to fix this inequality, but we must come together as a Society in order to establish “General Will”.)
“The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.” This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution. ~ Rousseau, “Social Contract”
(seriously, though, where does that lead us — lead me — to progress toward an essay on progress in light of history and philosophy. well, perhaps, in the wee hours after i sit back with a glass of wine, popcorn and a movie, these quotes will form to help support my belief that Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” was simply a clever manifesto of anti-progress ala Rousseau. what grand mirth – how he must of guffawed at his own brilliance to poke holes through man’s conventions and beliefs in progress – to show how we mimic Rousseau’s words perfectly (Locke’s too) when we will do Anything to keep up with society only to find our unhappiness continues and the boredom stretches until it is too late – we die a fool chasing a dream that was not our own.)
Madame Bovary reminds me why certain fiction is not really fiction at all…perhaps that is why it was such an outrage to society -why any literature that creates ripples within our conversation with objection – not because it is objectionable, but because it drops the scales from our eyes allowing us to see the beasts we’ve become — no better than the common dog chasing its tail..
Gustave flaubert (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
peculiaritiesandreticences
/ 2013/03/04“no better than the common dog chasing its tail..”
Were we ever any different?
Susan Scheid
/ 2013/03/05Love the quote from Flaubert’s Parrot. I remember enjoying that book quite a bit, but now don’t remember a thing! Time to read it again, maybe . . . Well, after I finish the stack in front of me, that is.
angela
/ 2013/03/06Susan, as stated, I have never read this, but it is now at top of reading list — one problem: too much Coursera, oy!