Prophecy is a recurrent voice in Flaubert's collection of tales, and provides a parabolic narrative model for a kind of textual transmission rooted in historical social commentary—the visionary challenge to a community through the voice of a prophet.¹ In this [essay], I will examine the role of the prophet in Trois contes, the ways in which prophetic utterances affect narrative structure, and the role of irony in the process of challenging the characters continually to reinterpret the meaning of prophecy and of their very nature. I use the term “irony” here to mean the progressive revelation to a character of a misunderstanding or limitation, often involving a recognition of hubris. Looking at irony this way, we see parallels between prophecy and irony. Prophetic discourse points ahead to a textual “future,” and implies an external authority, the source of the prophecy. Irony also invokes a more complete knowledge, a different narrative perspective, in its disclosure of the dissonance between reality and appearance. The use of these devices complicates issues of narrative coherence and voice, and reveals in the text elements of social criticism.

Prophecy in Trois contes presents a variable presence, but in all three tales there are voices of revelation which share certain characteristics, evoke similar reactions in those hearing the voices, and set in motion a progression from misinterpretation to correction to new interpretation. The prophetic voice is most apparent in the third tale, “Hérodias,” which recounts the events surrounding the death of the biblical figure of John the Baptist, Iaokanann. His diatribes follow the model and evoke the wrath of the ancient Hebrew prophets. He is imprisoned in the depths of Hérode's citadel; nonetheless his voice travels freely and mystically. It reveals the crimes of incest, murder, and assassination, and predicts continued sterility and impending deaths. The fact that nothing can stop this unusual voice distinguishes it from the efforts of Phanuel and Hérodias, who show considerable powers of divination in their attempts to read the inevitable in signs and stars. Phanuel's messages, one of which is that an important man will die that night, are continually interrupted, which adds to the suspense of the story. The tale develops suspense, as well, in the theme of departure and return, through its portrayal of debates about the resurrection, the return of the prophet Elijah, the coming of the Son of David. Prophecy is central to the main intrigues: the possible renunciation of Hérodias and Salomé's consequent training and dance, the political attacks on Hérode's power, the death of Iaokanann.

In “Hérodias,” prophecy is not a private, potentially imaginary or hallucinatory incident but a social interaction. The prophet's message is repeated, translated, free to spread beyond its context, beyond the citadel, beyond its own narrative. This enrages Hérodias, terrifies Hérode, frustrates Mannaëi, entrances the Romans, seduces Phanuel, revives the people's image of their exile; it functions in different ways in the characters' various private dramas. The classical containment of time and place in this story contributes to the pressure on the various events, desires and subplots. The overabundance of narrative possibilities and potential outcomes is illustrated in the reactions to Iaokanann's voice. The narrative suggests, through Hérode's search for a scapegoat, that one single death could satisfy everyone and fulfill the various elliptical statements repeated throughout the story. The characters expect certain results from the prophecy, and from the death of this man, but such expectations bring narrative silence, not freedom, for those who sought to cut off prophetic language at its source, or at what they thought was its source. The many factions and enemies present at the banquet are represented as members of an antique world which is passing. At the end of the tale, the characters are divided into those who believe and those who do not. The latter are left within the citadel, the isolated and solitary place of the story. For the believers, there is an escape or departure, as the disciples leave carrying Iaokanann's head with them. In representing this remnant, Flaubert shows in an understated manner the profound compulsion to save something from the death of time's passing and the resolution of endings, though no key is offered for how one escapes decline, or fate, or death.

In the second tale, “La Légende de saint Julien l'Hospitalier,” the prophetic voice has a more legendary, mystical character. Three voices offer prophecies: A hermit speaks to Julien's mother during the night and has the unearthly character of a supernatural speaker, both in his words and in his presence and disappearance—he predicts her son will be a saint. A gypsy outside the castle speaks to the father, predicting worldly glory. The mother says nothing of the prediction of sainthood for fear of being seen as proud; the father says nothing of the prediction of worldly power for fear of being ridiculed. Yet they both await the outcome of their separate predictions. The words of the black stag, who addresses Julien in the forest, become the foundation for the central scene of the tale (central in structure as well as plot). His pronouncement, “Maudit! Maudit! Maudit! Un jour, coeur féroce, tu assassineras ton père et ta mère!”² (“Accursed! Accursed! Accursed! One day, cruel heart, you will kill your father and mother!”) introduces the specific threat of parricide, as well as the underlying preoccupation with damnation and salvation. This is the legend of a saint; Julien must absolutely reach sainthood. The title, like the prophetic messages, informs the progress of the story, as it introduces expectations of a certain kind of fulfillment.

In contrast to the social character and repeated quotation of Iaokanann's prophetic utterances in “Hérodias,” the predictions in “La Légende” remain (with one significant exception) within the individual experience of the different characters, who keep hidden from each other their potentially mystical encounter with prophetic speakers. The lack of communication in this realm contributes both to the suspense of the intrigue and to the actual working-out of the narrative. When Julien finally confides in his wife, telling her of the stag's words and of his fear of fulfilling them, a prophetic utterance is passed on to a third party for the first time. Her reaction is to reason with him, to analyze the utterance within a logical context:

[…] enfin, un jour, il avoua son horrible pensée.

Elle la combattait, en raisonnant très bien: son père et sa mère, probablement, étaient morts; si jamais il les revoyait, par quel hasard, dans quel but, arriverait-il à cette abomination? Donc, sa crainte n'avait pas de cause, et il devait se remettre à chasser.³

(“But at last one day he told her of his dreadful fear. She fought against it, reasoning very soundly: his father and mother were probably dead; but if he were ever to see them again, what chance or purpose could possibly lead him to commit such a horrible crime? His fear was completely groundless, and he ought to take up hunting again.”)

When Julien's parents arrive in an unlikely and (to the wife's logical reasoning) unpredictable meeting of principals, he is in fact out on a solitary hunt. In his absence, his wife becomes the intermediary in establishing identity and in interpreting the appropriate response to the prophetic utterance. She renders possible the realization of the prophecy in part by placing them in her own bed, as a mark of honor, in part by not communicating in turn her knowledge of Julien's fear: “Ils firent mille questions sur Julien. Elle répondait à chacune, mais eut soin de taire l'idée funèbre qui les concernait.”⁴ (“They asked her countless questions about Julien. She answered every one, but was careful not to mention the gloomy obsession in which they were concerned.”) Julien arrives in the darkness before dawn to feel two bodies asleep in his bed. He thinks his wife is with another man, kills his parents in a murderous rage, thus fulfilling the prophecy.

When Julien's wife appears at the door with a lighted candle, “elle comprit tout” (“she took everything in”), and in horror drops the candle which Julien picks up. By its light he recognizes his parents. His wife contributes both to the fulfillment of the crime and to his realization of its nature, participating in the progressive and therefore partial revelation of the prophetic utterance. Though this scene seems to fulfill the prophecy, the tale continues as Julien recounts his story and seeks salvation. This comes finally in the form of a mystical leper—with an uncanny voice, glowing eyes, compelling demands—who asks the sacrifice of Julien's life. He provides an answer, not to the prediction of assassination, but to the threat of damnation. Julien becomes a saint.

At first reading, “Un Coeur simple” presents no prophet figure. However, in comparison with these other voices, we see that the kinds of speech, linguistic problems, and misinterpretations presented in Trois contes are introduced and find a first voice in Loulou, the parrot. The prophetic speakers in the last two tales are characterized by voices with unusual volume, character and attraction, blazing eyes, a solemn stance. In “La Légende,” the hermit speaks “sans desserer les lèvres” (“without opening his lips”), the gypsy has “les prunelles flamboyantes” (“blazing eyes”), the stag also speaks “les yeux flamboyants, solennel comme un patriarche et comme un justicier” (“with blazing eyes, solemn as a patriarch or a judge”). The Leper's voice reaches Julien across a great distance and through a storm; he is described thus: “la figure pareille à un masque de plâtre et les deux yeux plus rouges que des charbons” (“his face like a plaster mask and his two eyes redder than burning coals”); at the end of the legend, the Leper's eyes “tout à coup prirent une clarté d'étoiles” (“all at once his eyes took on the brightness of the stars”). In “Hérodias,” Iaokanann also is portrayed with blazing eyes and roaring voice: “Ses prunelles flamboyaient; sa voix rugissait” (“His eyes flashed, his voice roared”), and his voice defies containment. For example, his long diatribe begins with a sigh audible throughout the citadel: “Ce fut d'abord un grand soupir, poussé d'une voix caverneuse. Hérodias l'entendit à l'autre bout du palais. Vaincue par une fascination, elle traversa la foule; et elle écoutait” (“First, in a sepulchral voice, there came a great sigh. Herodias heard it at the other end of the palace. Yielding to an irresistible urge, she made her way through the crowd and bent forward to listen”). As the diatribe continues, Iaokanann's face “avait l'air d'une broussaille, où étincelaient deux charbons” (“looked like a mass of brushwood in which two live coals were glowing”). Finally, the voice completely escapes realistic bounds: “La voix grossissait, se développait, roulait avec des déchirements de tonnerre, et, l'écho dans la montagne la répétant, elle foudroyait Machaerous d'éclats multipliés” (“The voice grew louder and stronger, rolling and roaring like thunder, and as the mountains sent it back, it broke over Machaerus in repeated echoes”).

In comparing Flaubert's portrayal of Loulou, we see that the parrot shares the uncanny volume and attraction of his voice and a peculiar light in his eye, as if Loulou were a lesser version of a prophetic speaker: “Les éclats de sa voix bondissaient dans la cour, l'écho les répétait” (“his shrieks rang round the courtyard, the echo repeated them”). After Loulou's death and return as a stuffed parrot, his glass eye interacts with the light and with Félicité's devotion: “Quelquefois, le soleil entrant par la lucarne frappait son oeil de verre, et en faisait jaillir un grand rayon lumineux qui la mettait en extase” (“Sometimes the sun, as it came through the little window, caught his glass eye, so that it shot out a great luminous ray which sent her into ecstasies”).⁵ Though it is a caricature, the parrot comes to represent the voice of God which speaks in the descent of the Spirit in Félicité's deformed theology. She can hear this voice long after she is deaf to human speech, and attends to his utterances with reverence. The parrot, capable of repeating meaningful sounds, is almost by definition a figure for unusual or random revelation, ironic disclosure, comical misinterpretation, and speaks as if in parody of the prophetic voices which follow in the collection. This simple voice, however, is profoundly appropriate for the nature of crime and belief set forth in the first tale.

Loulou's prophetic utterance is linked to the irony that reveals the reality, the human limitations beneath appearances. In the tradition of Merlin's laughter (the laughter of the prophet who sees through pretense to recognize secret plots and future events, and who signals his prophetic insight through laughter⁶), the parrot laughs at Bourais (Mme. Aubain's financial advisor) long before any question of his propriety is raised in the story:

La figure de Bourais, sans doute, lui paraissait très drôle. Dès qu'il l'apercevait, il commençait à rire, à rire de toutes ses forces. Les éclats de sa voix bondissaient dans la cour, l'écho les répétait, les voisins se mettaient à leurs fenêtres, riaient aussi; et, pour n'être pas vu du perroquet, M. Bourais se coulait le long du mur, en dissimulant son profil avec son chapeau, atteignait la rivière, puis entrait par la porte du jardin; et les regards qu'il envoyait à l'oiseau manquaient de tendresse.⁷

(“Bourais's face obviously struck him as terribly funny, for as soon as he saw it he was seized with uncontrollable laughter. His shrieks rang round the courtyard, the echo repeated them, and the neighbors came to their windows and started laughing, too. To avoid being seen by the bird, M. Bourais used to creep along the wall, hiding his face behind his hat, until he got to the river, and then come into the house from the garden. The looks he gave the parrot were far from tender.”)

The narrator does not give an authoritative interpretation of the seemingly inexplicable laughter; the explanation, “Bourais's face obviously struck him as very funny” is limited by “sans doute”—“probably, obviously.” Like Julien's wife, the narrator reasons with this odd voice and seeks a reasonable explanation. Something in this scene is peculiar, and unresolved. Bourais hides from Loulou, slinking around “en dissimulant son profil avec son chapeau” (“hiding his face behind his hat”) just as Hérodias hides her face when Iaokanann sees her:

Dés qu'il m'aperçut, il cracha sur moi toutes les malédictions des prophètes. Ses prunelles flamboyaient; sa voix rugissaient; il levait les bras, comme pour arracher le tonnerre. Impossible de fuir! […] je m'éloignais lentement, m'abritant sous mon manteau, glacée par ces injures qui tombaient comme une pluie d'orage.⁸

(“As soon as he saw me, he spat all the curses of the prophets at me. His eyes flashed, his voice roared, and he raised his arms as if to pluck thunder out of the sky. It was impossible to get away from him. […] I moved off slowly, cowering under my cloak, my blood running cold at the insults that were raining down on me.”)

The repetition of vocabulary (“Dès qu'il l'apercevait / Dès qu'il m'aperçut”) and descriptive detail reinforces the correspondence between the two scenes. Characters are drawn to listen to the voice in spite of themselves; like the people in the citadel, the neighbors come to laugh along with Loulou, without understanding why they are laughing. When Bourais commits suicide upon the discovery of his fraud and wrongdoing, the narrative explains implicitly the reason for Loulou's laughter. This is also the work of a kind of irony, a peripeteia, reversal of fortune, that reveals the pettiness of the self-important human dimension. Through its laughter and through its decay, the bird signals the future material downfall of the household, as the stag and Iaokanann each predict the end of a family line. Though the narrative resolution of Loulou's prophetic utterance appears quite simple (the parrot laughs at Bourais; Bourais is unmasked as an unsavory character in contradiction with his image and standing in the bourgeois household and community), Loulou also plays a more and more central role in Félicité's problematic spiritual development, not unlike the Leper and Iaokanann in the other tales. The description of the parrot, his ambiguous relation to divinity, and his role in unveiling a hidden element or coarseness beneath the appearance of gentility and grace, the weakness hidden by a position of power, announce the more elaborate prophetic voices in the other tales.

When a narrative contains a prophecy of some future occurrence, there is an implicit narratological leap, an anticipation by the listener of the fulfillment of the prophecy. The suspense of waiting for the other piece of the puzzle, the scene of completion, can and often does dominate the narrative. In stories containing prophecies, from “Sleeping Beauty” to the Oedipus myth, the characters try to bring about or hinder the realization—to deflect, soften, or avoid altogether the prophesied outcome. Other narratives move without clearly recognizable prophecy, and only at the second scene are we aware that an anterior scene was indeed prophetic. It is this way that Loulou's laughter becomes prophetic, for only when Bourais is disgraced do we understand why the parrot laughed. Julien's wife understands, after the parricide, why her reasoning was powerless. Her understanding of her own participation in the event is ironic. In the final scene of “Hérodias,” Phanuel can interpret an obscure statement that Iaokanann made (“Pour qu'il croisse, il faut que je diminue” [“If he is to wax, then I must wane”]) only in the wake of the prophet's death, and with the unspecified news brought in from the outside. But even then, the tales refrain from any final judgment.

The multiplicity of possible interpretations indicates the ambiguity inherent in this type of expectation. Thinking that one interpretation resolves the prophecy, that one outcome verifies and dispenses with the prophecy, is the fundamental error⁹; Loulou's laughter refers to Bourais, but also to the stupidity of those who trust him. The work of repetition, quotation, interpretation of both the prophecy and its apparent fulfillment suggests that prophetic discourse is not an equation between pronouncement and realization but a continual reevaluation of potential. The citadel in “Hérodias” becomes a figure for the story itself, a place preparing to respond, but not yet ready to answer the riddle of its meaning. In the story of the Gordian knot, Alexander chose to cut the knot with his sword to answer the riddle. This may have led to domination, but the riddle contained in the knot was lost in the process. Prophecy in fiction offers this kind of mystery or riddle.

Prophecy and irony both depend upon perspective. Like the chorus in Greek tragedy, or an omniscient narrator, or the voice of irony, prophetic speech points to and challenges the limitations of narrative. In a sacred text, the authority of a divine source of prophecy (implied by the context of belief) calls for and guides interpretation. The authority of a prophetic voice in fiction lies partly within the narrator's scope, but partly beyond. The invocation by the prophet of an authority which knows a larger context and communicates in this parabolic fashion is a vehicle then for a kind of criticism, the revelation of truth; Flaubert's ironic portrayals of “bêtise,” the comparatively lucid powers of the prophetic voices, the urgency of harkening to this voice and the consequences of remaining deaf to it follow the tradition of Western prophetism. The prophetic perspective is linked ultimately with the external voice of commentary, with interpretation, and in many cases, with lament. Both prophecy and irony make explicit in the separation between utterance and revelation the desire for resolution and coherence, and challenge the characters', or the reader's, interpretation of a given event or statement. In the multiplicity of potential itineraries that prophecy ushers in, and in the progressive rejection of possible interpretations, these tales illustrate the ambiguity of meaning, the lack of control, the inevitable downfall of the proud. Flaubert's use of prophecy in Trois contes is evidence of a profound exploration of the potential of language.

Notes

1. Gustave Flaubert, Trois contes, ed. Edouard Maynial (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1969). All quotations from Trois contes will refer to this edition. All English translations are from Robert Baldick's translation (Three Tales, Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin, 1961).

   Numerous critics have studied the religious aspects of the tales, most often through general concepts like sainthood or the Trinity. Two articles have a particular relevance to the question of prophecy: Carla Peterson, “The Trinity in Flaubert's Trois contes: Deconstructing History” (French Forum, 8 [1983], 243-58) and Ian Reid, “The Death of the Implied Author? Voice, Sequence and Control in Flaubert's Trois contes” (Australian Journal of French Studies, 23 [1986], 195-211). Raymonde Debray-Genette explores certain aspects of the subject in “Profane, Sacred: Disorder of Utterance in Trois contes” (in Flaubert and Postmodernism, ed. Naomi Schor et al. [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984], 13-29). Susan Selvin's study, “Spatial Form in Flaubert's Trois contes” (Romanic Review, 74 [1983], 202-20) contains pertinent remarks that can be directly transposed from their slightly different context; the notion of epiphany is outlined by Emily Zants in “Trois contes: a New Dimension in Flaubert” (Nottingham French Studies, 18 [1979], 37-44). I discuss the characteristics of prophecy in secular texts in my doctoral dissertation, “Prophecy and Fulfillment in Flaubert's Trois contes” (Yale University, 1987). A fundamental study of the notion of prophecy as it is used here is Erich Auerbach's essay “Figura,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1973), especially 29-60.

2. Trois contes, 98.

3. Ibid., 108-9.

4. Ibid., 111. This type of narrative suspension is similar to the interrupted or marginalized speech of Phanuel and Hérodias, and characterized by its limitation. Throughout Trois contes the tension between speech and silence becomes implicated in the tension between power and impotence.

5. Ibid., 66.

6. Paul Zumthor writes of this laughter: “Le trait est digne de remarque, car c'est dans le folklore universel un thème très répandu: le sorcier éclate de rire au milieu des opérations magiques […]. [Merlin] rit de la désillusion de ses compagnons et de la vanité de leurs efforts; dans la Vita, c'est qu'il a, seul des assistants, la prescience d'un ridicule caché, d'une situation paradoxale qui va se découvrir.” (“The trait is worthy of note, for it is a widely spread theme in universal folklore: The sorcerer bursts out laughing in the middle of magic operations […]. [Merlin] laughs at the disillusionment of his companions and at the vanity of their efforts; in the Vita, he is the only one who has the foreknowledge of a hidden folly, or a paradoxical situation which is going to be revealed.”) Merlin le prophète (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1973), 45-46.

7. Trois contes, 53.

8. Ibid., 150-51.

9. Cf. Flaubert's remark in a letter to his friend Louis Bouilhet: “L'ineptie consiste à vouloir conclure” (“Stupidity consists in wanting to reach a conclusion”); as presented in Préface à la vie d'écrivain: Extraits de la correspondance, ed. Geneviève Bollème (Paris: Seuil, 1963), 52.