SOURCE: Dugan, J. R. “Flaubert's Salammbô, A Study in Immobility.” Zeitschrift für Französische Sprache und Literatur 79, no. 3 (September 1969): 193-206.

[In the following essay, Dugan analyzes the style, imagery, symbolism, and form of Salammbô, concentrating on the novel's rendering of aesthetic immobility.]

Since the publication of Salammbô, critics have been faced with the difficulty of categorizing it. There is evidence from within the work to support any one of a number of points of view—a historical novel in the great tradition of Sir Walter Scott, a long prose poem with a markedly «Parnassian» flavour, or simply a novel in the most conventional sense of the word.

Any such interpretation is of course subjective in the final analysis, and in fact has very little meaning. The intention of the present study is not to label the book but to look in some detail at one aspect of it which would appear to be central. How does Flaubert achieve certain stylistic effects, and do these effects conform in any way to his basic sensibilities?

Flaubert's statement that «il ne faut jamais conclure» is a well-known fact. If we accept this fact, that his work contains no moral or philosophical lesson, and indeed we must at least as a point of departure, then it must follow that it is with aesthetic problems that we must begin. We must approach the author's work on his own terms, that is to say, in terms of style. As Thibaudet says with regard to Salammbô:

De sorte que Flaubert prend ici un sujet qui soit étranger à la continuité humaine d'Occident, comme il avait pensé prendre dans Mme Bovary un sujet étranger à son courant intérieur, un sujet qui se tienne suspendu par lui-même, pur de toute attache d'actualité, et qu'on puisse traiter du point de vue unique du style.¹

Within the context of the novel, stylistic techniques, that is to say, aspects of syntax and imagery, provide ample evidence of the novel's lack of motion, and it is here that we must begin.

I. SYNTAX

It is a cliché of Flaubertian criticism to note his painstaking care with composition. His taste for erudition and documentation are indeed very well known. By its very subject matter, Salammbô required immense amounts of research, and among the material used we can include the reading of numerous classical epic poems, especially Virgil's Aeneid.

From a syntactical point of view, the epic style offered to Flaubert certain techniques which he exploited with considerable effect. The sentence structure of Salammbô is varied. It covers a broad range, beginning with the direct ternary rhythm of the opening lines, a sentence which in its poetic simplicity, establishes a certain sonorous tone.

C'était à Mégara, faubourg de Carthage, dans les jardins d'Hamilcar.²

In contrast, one can find extremely complex, broad, sweeping sonorities in some of the highly developed descriptive passages. However, the simple, seemingly primitive statement is used with some frequency in the novel, with a calculated impact on the reader. After a lengthy description of the crucifixion of Hannon, we read:

Il écumait et se tordait, comme un monstre marin que l'on égorge sur un rivage, en leur prédisant qu'ils finiraient tous plus horriblement encore et qu'il serait vengé.

Il l'était.³

These last words, so simple, carry a weight, a definitive quality suggesting the omniscience, cruelty and primitivity of the Carthaginian gods which dominate the novel.

Such simple statements often are combined in a rapid succession, without connectives, dependent clauses, or indeed any kind of grammatical relationship:

Comme par les temps de peste, toutes les maisons étaient fermées; les rues s'emplissaient, se vidaient soudain; on montait à l'Acropole; on courait vers le port; chaque nuit le Grand-Conseil délibérait.⁴

Such structures, frequently found in the classical epic, are known as paratactic sentences. Characterized by a repetitiousness and a grammatical monotony, Flaubert's use of parataxis suggests a primitive, almost naïve effect. It would be dangerous to see here a direct influence of Greek and Latin writers on Flaubert, but the device does suggest an effort on the part of the modern writer to reproduce a certain epic tone.

Parataxis is exploited by Flaubert on numerous occasions for a multiplicity of effects. It can suggest a rapid acceleration of many movements, a kind of simultaneity of confused actions which take place in the briefest possible time lapse. The numerous battle scenes of the novel offer a wealth of examples, such as this one, drawn from chapter fourteen, «Le Défilé de la hache»:

Ils s'étaient réfugiés sur le haut de la colline. Leur cercle à chaque brèche nouvelle, se refermait; deux fois il descendit, une secousse le repoussait aussitôt; et les Carthaginois, pêle-mêle, étendaient les bras; …⁵

The paratactic sentence appears also when Flaubert wishes to deal with a rapid succession of events, that is, the passage of time, in as few words as possible:

Les Barbares faiblissaient; des hoplites grecs jetèrent leurs armes, une épouvante prit les autres.⁶

This very direct presentation is often useful when Flaubert, ever conscious of the fact that he himself must never intrude in the action of his novel, finds it necessary to deal with the psychological level of his characters. Salammbô has entered Mâtho's tent to retrieve the «zaïmph», the famous veil so heavy with symbolism in the work. Drawing a parallel between him and the god Moloch, she pours out her invective, which is more than slightly tinged with an admiration for Mâtho's courage. Mâtho's reaction to this is given in one sentence:

Mâtho se leva d'un bond; un orgueil colossal lui gonflait le coeur; il se trouvait haussé à la taille d'un Dieu.⁷

Parataxis is thus a means by which the author communicates to his reader a knowledge of the non-tangible levels of his narrative—chaotic action, violence, passage of time, psychological reaction—all the while, by the very elemental nature of the sentences themselves, preserving his cherished objectivity.

But the effects of parataxis are certainly more far-reaching than this. Sentences of this type are abrupt, immediate, and often a shock to the reader. They interrupt the flow of words, strip situations to the basics. They are reductive and diminishing. While seeming to accelerate action, they break it into small pieces, and in fact arrest movement by reducing it, temporally speaking, to the moment. The paratactic sentence becomes a series of simultaneous isolated poses, a series of static effects whose accumulation immobilizes the whole into a frieze of a stylized, non-real nature:

Les rues désertes s'allongeaient; les palmiers çà et là sortant des murs, ne bougeaient pas; les citernes remplies avaient l'air de boucliers d'argent perdus dans les cours, le phare du promontoire Hermaeum commençait à pâlir.⁸

In this passage the very subject itself is motionless, and the comparison stresses it, but the repetition of the simple subject and predicate pattern adds a heaviness, and an unending quality to the scene. By contrast, the following passage would appear to be full of an almost mystical rhythm:

La musique au dehors continuait; c'étaient trois notes, toujours les mêmes, précipitées, furieuses; les cordes grinçaient, la flûte ronflait; Taanach marquait la cadence en frappant les mains; Salammbô, avec un balancement de tout son corps, psalmodiait des prières, et ses vêtements, les uns après les autres, tombaient autour d'elle.⁹

But indeed the general effect is heavy, monotonous, primitive, static. Form and content are heavily interdependent.

In his concern with variety of form, Flaubert will often combine the paratactic structure with its opposite, the more traditional compound or complex sentence, as in the concluding movement of the last example. This is known as hypotaxis:

Le continuel glapissement des voix était dominé par le cri des porteurs d'eau arrosant les dalles; des esclaves d'Hamilcar offraient, en son nom, de l'orge grillée et des morceaux de viande crue; on s'abordait; on s'embrassait en pleurant; les villes tyriennes étaient prises, les Nomades dispersés, tous les Barbares anéantis.¹⁰

The initial attack demonstrates clearly the effect of the longer, more complex word structure. Long sentences slow down action, reduce movement to a minimum, and create a ponderous effect which contributes considerably to the immobility of the novel as a whole:

Tous regrettaient leurs familles, leurs maisons: les pauvres, leurs cabanes en forme de ruche, avec des coquilles au seuil des portes, un filet suspendu, et les patriciens, leurs grandes salles emplies de ténèbres bleuâtres, quand à l'heure la plus molle du jour, ils se reposaient, écoutaient le bruit vague des rues mêlé au frémissement des feuilles qui s'agitaient dans leurs jardins;—et, pour mieux descendre dans cette pensée, afin d'en jouir davantage, ils entrefermaient les paupières; la secousse d'une blessure les réveillait.¹¹

The harmony between the slowness of the sentence and the lassitude of its contents is striking. It begins by a short, simple statement, a primitive and naïve suggestion. This thought is slowly developed by grammatical accumulation. There is nothing very complicated about the structure; changes of tone and thought are indicated by the conjunction «et», which is a device also seen in combination with parataxis, and which serves to weigh down the sentence's rhythm. Blocks of words pile up on each other. The description is thus elongated, slowly, painfully, like a row of columns in a colonnade: One last sentence provides an interesting example:

Elle (la trirème d'Hamilcar) s'avançait d'une façon orgueilleuse et farouche, l'antenne toute droite, la voile bombée dans la longueur du mât, en fendant l'écume autour d'elle; ses gigantesques avirons battaient l'eau en cadence; de temps à autre l'extrémité de sa quille, faite comme un soc de charrue, apparaissait, et sous l'éperon qui terminait sa proue, le cheval à tête d'ivoire, en dressant ses deux pieds, semblait courir sur les plaines de la mer.¹²

Flaubert's taste for the «tableau» is well illustrated by this sentence. The description of the ship is very much alive, but the impression of movement that it seems to convey is in the final analysis quite illusory. Thanks to the proliferation of verbs in the imperfect tense—«s'avançait, battaient, apparaissait, terminait,» action is arrested in pose. The trirème which «semblait courir» is in fact motionless.

The fluctuation between simple and complex structures, the use of tense, the rhythmic flow of the prose, characterize the entire novel, including the dialogue. Characters pronounce lengthy, highly stylized speeches, such as that of Hamilcar before the Council of the Ancients on his return to Carthage, or Spendius' exhortations to the Barbarians, or Salammbô's prayers to Tanit. Such incidents are of course not dialogues, but rather monologues, periodically interrupted by interlocutors. Here as well the effect is ponderous, slow, rhetorical, one might say statuesque.

The other extreme is the brief, sudden ejaculation of words exchanged between two characters. Mâtho and Spendius, in stealing the «zaïmph» exchange such comments as: «Et le voile?», «parici», «prends-le». Salammbô and Taanach speak to each other in much the same way:

—«Mais elles reviendront, Maîtresse.»

—«Oui! Je le sais.»

—«Et tu les reverras.»

—«Peut-être,» fit-elle en soupirant.¹³

The effect here is very similar to that of the paratactic sentence—fragmented, primitive. Dialogue makes statues out of characters, either by clothing them in a kind of rhetorical artificiality or by stripping them of psychological complexity, and reducing them to essentials.

The use of the verb also can transfix characters, as it froze Hamilcar's returning ship. It becomes a kind of grammatical equivalent of the whole syntactic structure, not to mention the static imagery which we have yet to examine. For example, we see Hamilcar before the Council of the Ancients:

Hamilcar, emporté par un esprit, continuait, debout sur la plus haute marche de l'autel, frémissant, terrible; il levait les bras, et les rayons du candélabre qui brulait derrière lui passaient entre ses doigts comme des javelots d'or.

(italics mine)¹⁴

The verb «levait» describes an action, but by means of grammar, this action becomes pose, and the static overcomes the active. Hamilcar is immobilized by a verb, and the light image which follows completes the statuesque impression of a god at an altar.

There is indeed a kind of polarity in the style of Salammbô which produces, by the very sonority of the words themselves, the cadences of the sentences and the interplay of grammatical forms, an effect which appears to be full of movement, indeed of violent action, but which is in reality arrested motion.

II. THE IMAGE—SIMILE AND METAPHOR

Right from the first chapter of Salammbô, «Le Festin», one can discern numerous visual elements which have a tendency to freeze action. A careful reading will reveal a surprising frequency of use of the adjective «immobile» in relation to the characters. Salammbô herself appears, descends the palace staircase, and we read:

Immobile et la tête basse, elle regardait les soldats.¹⁵

and then at the end of the same chapter:

L'immobilité de Mâtho étonnait Spendius.¹⁶

But beyond the simple word, there is a whole series of static imagery that Flaubert unfolds before us. Some of these images deal with the crowds of people which so often appear in the pages of Salammbô:

D'autres (barbares), qui s'étaient par pompe barbouillés de vermillon, ressemblaient à des statues de corail.¹⁷

The visual impact of the image is its primary strength. An exotic colour is transfixed in stone. But the image is more subtle than that. By its position in the text, at the end of a long paragraph of description of «des hommes de toutes les nations», in which Flaubert gives suggestions as to their manner of dress, their physical build, their languages, etc., this statuesque image tends to transfix the complexity of the mercenary army. By extension, all the Barbarians become statues. The passage becomes a kind of overpopulated oriental bas-relief.

It would be fruitless to attempt to analyse all the sculptural imagery of the novel, but a few examples will give us a clearer idea of Flaubert's techniques.

Les Grecs rasés, plus blancs que des marbres …¹⁸

While the stone of the previous statue was coral, an exotic material, highly coloured, which applies by extension to the entire barbarian hoard, here we have white marble. Notice how Flaubert evokes an entire historical and cultural background. On the one hand we have the Orient, multiform, multicoloured; on the other, the purity and simplicity of ancient Greece. The sculptural image is an evocation in concrete and motionless terms of the ancient world. The characters are established through these images in their cultural milieu, and at the same time Flaubert suggests certain of their personal tastes.

The image of the statue recurs with some frequency. When the mercenary army arrives at Sicca, the men see on the walls of the town priestesses of the goddess Tanit playing musical instruments. Closing this description, the novel reads:

D'autres restaient accoudées, le menton dans la main, et, plus immobiles que des sphinx, elles dardaient leurs grands yeux noirs sur l'armée qui montait.¹⁹

The reference to the sphinx immobilizes these women on the walls. Again we have a sculptural image, transfixing action in stone. But as was the case with the coral and the marble, the sphinx too evokes an entire ancient tradition, one of mystery and religion. One can recognize the fascination of Flaubert himself for the Orient and its mysteries. The reference to the goddess, the musical incantation, and finally the image of the sphinx recreate an entire world of which Flaubert was fond of dreaming, and which he had seen himself in his travels.

But within the context of the novel itself the image is skillfully chosen. By means of this brief, motionless description, Flaubert reminds his reader of the mysterious Salammbô of the first chapter. In short this image, albeit exterior and passive, evokes simultaneously several worlds: that of the author's predilection; that of the historical and cultural background of the novel; and finally that of the hidden desires of its heroine. The granitic image is thus a means by which a lost civilization is reconstituted and an atmosphere is established around a character, a group or a situation. Through this type of image, the reader penetrates from the exterior to the interior world.

This interior world is really the world of psychological reactions, and it is a fact that sculptural imagery is very often associated in this way with the characters themselves. Hannon's arrival at Sicca gives rise to the following description:

Les courtines de pourpre se relevèrent; et l'on découvrit sur un large oreiller une tête humaine tout impassible et boursouflée; les sourcils formaient comme deux arcs d'ébène se rejoignant par les pointes; des paillettes d'or étincelaient dans les cheveux crépus, et la face était si blême qu'elle semblait saupoudrée avec de la râpure de marbre.²⁰

The description is particularly striking because of its concentration on form—«boursouflée, arcs, pointes», etc., combined with colour—«pourpre, or, blême»—an association which we have already seen elsewhere. But the novelty of the image with regard to those already examined is revealed by this very emphasis on form. Hannon's head, bloated as it is, is frozen in marble. But it is a head which the sculptor has not completed, since it is «saupoudrée avec de la râpure de marbre.»²¹ It is obvious that Flaubert wishes to stimulate in his reader an emotional reaction to Hannon. He is a man who lacks form, and is thus a dislikable, one might even say disgusting person. The same image reappears on the following page, again referring to Hannon:

On aurait dit quelque grosse idole ébauchée dans un bloc de pierre; …²²

A physical description by means of a sculptural image can thus reveal something of the sensibilities of the author at the same time as it defines the character in the book. Flaubert detests formlessness, that is to say, lack of style. This sort of image is the external appearance of one aspect of a character's psychology combined with the author's taste.

For after all there is a psychology to the characters of Salammbô, although it lacks the development in depth which Flaubert masters in Madame Bovary and L'Education sentimentale. This psychology is frequently made manifest by concrete, granitic imagery. For example, when Hamilcar gives his daughter to Narr'Havas, we find her total passivity expressed thus:

Salammbô, calme comme une statue, semblait ne pas comprendre.²³

Or indeed, we find this description of Mâtho with Salammbô in his tent.

Il levait ses bras où des veines s'entrecroisaient comme des lierres sur des branches d'arbre. De la sueur coulait sur sa poitrine, entre ses muscles carrés; et son haleine secouait ses flancs avec sa ceinture de bronze toute garnie de lanières qui pendaient jusqu'à ses genoux, plus fermes que du marbre.²⁴

His animality and masculinity appear transfixed forever—physical desire interpreted in stone. Even Flaubert's famous liquid images, of which this passage is a valid example, are arrested by sculptural forms. This is an emotional state transposed into static images. Such a technique gives to the characters of Salammbô a heaviness and an opacity. They are statues erected in the name of desire, abstractions made concrete.

But descriptive passages in this novel are by no means limited to the characters. The settings for the action of the work are very significant. Depictions of material objects by their very nature, can offer a wealth of valuable detail.

… ; un sable noir, mêlé à de la poudre de corail, parsemait les sentiers, et, au milieu, l'avenue des cyprès faisait d'un bout à l'autre comme une double colonnade d'obélisques verts.²⁵

This forms part of the description of the garden of Hamilcar in the first chapter. Here again the general effect is to transfix what is not naturally permanent. Trees become a construction in stone. The comparison has as a point of departure, form—cypress trees, typical of the Middle East, and obelisks. This same image of the column reappears at another point in the book, but the effect is somewhat different:

Ils retirèrent leurs cuirasses pour que la pointe des glaives s'enfonçât plus vite. Alors parurent les marques des grands coups qu'ils avaient reçus pour Carthage; on aurait dit des inscriptions sur des colonnes.²⁶

What is interesting here is the manner in which Flaubert evokes the entire past of the mercenaries. They have been trapped in the «Défilé de la Hache», and are consequently going to die. Time is so to speak arrested by the image, for, like the inscriptions, their scars bear lasting witness to a glorious past. The fleeting is made permanent by the concrete expression of their blind courage.

Certain images cannot be precisely categorized as sculptural or architectural, but, while retaining their original form, change substance, and are thus rendered motionless:

… ; et bientôt ils atteignirent la Lagune, où des places rondes, toutes blanches de sel miroitaient comme de gigantesques plats d'argent, oubliés sur le rivage.²⁷

The metallic comparison, intimately bound up with the round form of the lagoon, serves to immobilize a whole landscape, or more precisely, waterscape. Water, that most unstable of natural forms, is congealed by Flaubert's imagination; the resemblance between water and silver binds together the two elements of the comparison. «Une masse d'ombre énorme s'étalait devant eux, et qui semblait contenir de vagues amoncellements, pareils aux flots gigantesques d'un océan noir pétrifié.»²⁸

Again we have transfixed water, and the comparison develops through a lack of motion. Motionless water is petrified.

Immobility can be suggested by both substance, as is the case here, and by form, as in the previous water-image. Indeed Flaubert at times develops the forms with an almost geometric precision, and in mathematical terms:

Les toits coniques des temples heptagones, les escaliers, les terrasses, les remparts, peu à peu se découpaient sur la paleur de l'aube.²⁹

The subject of the passage is the city of Carthage. We have already noted the capital importance of form as a key to Flaubert's stylistic techniques. When he deals with masses of people, whole cities or entire civilizations, the variety of forms often multiplies. In this regard a description of the battle of the Macar deserves our attention:

Ils frappaient sur la hampe des sarisses: la cavalerie, par derrière, gênait leur attaque; et la phalange, appuyée aux éléphants, se resserrait et s'allongeait, se présentait en carré, en cône, en rhombe, en trapèze, en pyramide.³⁰

The passage is characterized by the interplay between the stability of each individual form and the instability of the movement of the battle. As in the passage concerned with the petrified water, here too Flaubert tries to make permanent what is by nature incessantly changing. The variety of the geometric terminology gives this impression of movement and violence, all the while attempting to stabilize the whole scene. The interplay between action and immobility, between the stable and the unstable is visible in many of his images, and would appear to be one of the most striking characteristics of Salammbô.

Certain of these contrasts are all the more striking for their visual brilliance:

La lune se levait au ras des flots, et, sur la ville encore couverte de ténèbres, des points lumineux, des blancheurs brillaient: le timon d'un char dans une cour, quelque haillon de toile suspendu, l'angle d'un mur, un collier d'or à la poitrine d'un dieu. Les boules de verre sur les toits des temples rayonnaient çà et là, comme de gros diamants.³¹

The image here springs more from colour than from form, although the latter is in evidence. What is curious is that even colour produces an effect of immobility, by its mineral suggestion. Hard, metallic colours of gems and jewellery transform the image into a necklace. Deprived of internal life, the description depends for its effect on exterior «correspondances», especially of visual effects.

Comparisons of these types offer much material for consideration, but the list would be far from complete without another type of imagery which Flaubert develops in Salammbô, that is to say, the symbol.

III. THE IMAGE—SYMBOL

One way of viewing the symbol is to consider it as a metaphor of which only one element remains. Its power comes from the mystery of the lacking element and the effort of the imagination necessary to supply the lacking second element—that is to say to furnish the link between the world of art and exterior reality.

Symbols abound in Salammbô, but the fact that they bear very little mystery renders them somewhat heavy and easily explained. Yet by their very obviousness they contribute significantly to the immobility of the novel as a whole.

The most elaborate symbolic development surrounds the two major characters, Salammbô and Mâtho. Salammbô is a representative of the goddess Tanit. A complex religious symbolism concerning love and vaguely defined desires is thus involved. The simple fact that Salammbô is as closely attached to Tanit as to her own physical incarnation reduces all psychological complexity into a kind of human reflection of an abstract idea, and into a predictable reaction when the heroine is confronted with certain manifestations of the goddess—the snake, the anklet or the moon. For example:

Une influence était descendue de la lune sur la vierge; quand l'astre allait en diminuant, Salammbô s'affaiblissait. Languissante toute la journée, elle se ranimait le soir. Pendant une éclipse, elle avait manqué mourir.³²

Such a passage reduces the character's inner complexity to a strict minimum. She becomes a sort of type, with her unexplainable desire; in fact the symbolism simplifies her and makes of her a living idol. She appears incapable of independent action; she is always under the sign of Tanit, and thus action is decelerated, conflict is arrested on a non-human level.

Mâtho is just as crushed under a religious symbolism—the cult of Moloch, god of the sun and of violence. This symbolism surrounding Mâtho and Salammbô is elaborated in a very complicated fashion, but always based on the concrete, the external. Driven by the desire to possess Salammbô, Mâtho steals the «zaïmph». The sexual value of the penetration and desecration of the temple is too visible to merit detailed study. But one must mention that it is architectural symbolism, which becomes a concrete and inanimate illustration of a state of mind, of the inner world of the book. Again the exterior represents the interior, just as the great statue of Moloch which devours little children becomes a concrete representation of the anger of the Carthaginians.

In Salammbô the type of symbolism has two parallel effects. Firstly it is through the symbols of the book that psychological problems manifest themselves. And secondly the symbol itself, by its very nature, bestows on what it symbolizes a heaviness and a primitivity. The psychology of the book becomes concrete, physical, immobile. The fleeting is petrified; movement stops, man becomes statue; crowds become geometric or architectural constructions; landscapes become metallic; states of mind are externalized and frozen. And it is the symbol which adds to this list the whole psychological level of the book. Salammbô and Mâtho are made static by means of Tanit and Moloch.

The entire Barbarian army has desires too—vague longings for liberty, for self-expression, for the return to their homes. People are constantly prevented from doing what they want. Walls, which appear so frequently in the text, thus take on an added meaning. Everywhere we see barriers—the walls of Carthage, Tunis, and other towns, the ramparts constructed by Hamilcar to protect his army, the cliffs of the «Défilé de la Hache», even the living wall of elephants which crush the barbarian soldiers.

Just as young Emma Bovary, looking at the world through the windows of her convent is prevented from realizing her dreams by the walls of that convent, the humanity of Carthage would seem to be constantly hemmed in by barriers. Walls become a concrete symbol of the impossibility of human dreams. They fragment unity, they arrest movement.

The symbols are as well, of course, evidence of Flaubert's careful documentation, since they furnish a wealth of detail concerning the art, architecture, religion and social behaviour of the period. At the same time as they explain the internal life of the characters, they bind them inextricably to their historic context.

One last example of an immobilizing description should serve as a conclusion to this study of the image. One should note in the passage the concentration on form which we have already examined, on mineral substance, on the symbolism of the rising sun, parataxis and hypotaxis. More than a description, this is an artistic evocation or reconstitution, through language, of the ancient city:

Mais une barre lumineuse s'éleva du côté de l'Orient. A gauche, tout en bas, les canaux de Mégara commençaient à rayer de leurs sinuosités blanches les verdures des jardins. Les toits coniques des temples heptagones, les ecaliers, les terrasses, les remparts, peu à peu, se découpaient sur la paleur de l'aube; et tout autour de la péninsule carthaginoise une ceinture d'écume blanche oscillait tandis que la mer couleur d'émeraude semblait comme figée dans la fraîcheur du matin. Puis à mesure que le ciel rose allait s'élargissant, les hautes maisons inclinées sur les pentes du terrain se haussaient, se tassaient telles qu'un troupeau de chevres noires qui descend des montagnes. Les rues désertes s'allongeaient; les palmiers, çà et là sortant des murs, ne bougeaient pas; les citernes remplies avaient l'air de boucliers d'argent perdus dans les cours, le phare du promontoire Hermaeum commençait à pâlir. Tout au haut de l'Acropole, dans le bois de cyprès, les chevaux d'Eschmoûn, sentant venir la lumière, posaient leurs sabots sur le parapet de marbre et hennissaient du côté du soleil.

Il parut; Spendius, levant les bras, poussa un cri.

Tout s'agitait dans une rougeur épandue, car le Dieu, comme se déchirant, versait à pleins rayons sur Carthage la pluie d'or de ses veines.³³

This passage contains almost all the immobilizing effects which have been examined, and it would be redundant to re-enumerate them.

IV. FORM

All the novels which Flaubert published have a certain resemblance with regard to their form. It would appear, and this is very evident in Salammbô, that he conceived of each chapter as a kind of semi-independent entity. Each one becomes a block in the total structure which is the novel.

Salammbô begins in the garden of Hamilcar, with a violent celebration. The action is thus attached to a setting, a background which Flaubert describes in great detail. In other chapters, the action will hinge on a person or a god—Salammbô, Hannon, Hamilcar, Tanit, Moloch. The very titles of the chapters suggest this.

Each chapter is composed of two major elements—the detailed description of the location or of the principal character—and the action proper, which is adroitly connected with the static description of each block. The combination of action with immobility is revealed even in the plan of the work.

Often this static element dominates an entire chapter. The temple of Tanit determines the actions of Mâtho and Spendius; the walls of Carthage are the object of the futile attack of an entire army; the «Défilé de la Hache» devours a multitude; the statue of Moloch devouring children transfixes an entire chapter. Such images, architectural, sculptural, passive and static, are the skeleton to which the action gives flesh.

Flaubert himself noted the architectural nature of his novels:

Les livres ne se font pas comme les enfants, mais comme les pyramides, avec un dessein prémédité, en apportant des grands blocs l'un par-dessus l'autre, à force de reins, de temps et de sueur, et ça ne sert à rien! Ca reste dans le désert …

The concentration on form is thus visible on all levels of the novel, from the most minute detail to the structure of the work as a whole. Especially in Salammbô this interest in form manifests itself in statuesque imagery, heavy sentences, static tableaux. Immobility is doubtless an effect consciously sought by Flaubert, as M. Victor Brombert suggests in his recent study of Flaubert.³⁴

V. CONCLUSIONS

It is obvious that in Salammbô Flaubert attempted to reconstruct by artistic means a lost civilization. The imagery, structure, even the syntax contribute to this evocation which is at the same time historical, psychological, tangible, but especially, artistic. By the means at his disposal he achieves a plastic creation of what no longer exists.

There is in Salammbô a kind of rhythmical struggle between the stable and the unstable, through style. In this regard contrasts are outstanding—the stone city of the Carthaginians, the vague and formless society of the Barbarians; stone and water; Tanit, the changing moon, and Moloch, the constant sun. In every case it is the stable, the concrete which conquers the unstable, it is the solid and clearly defined which replaces the vague, the liquid. The novel takes on an impression of density and permanence.

It would appear that the creative process in Flaubert is a kind of “concretization” of an abstract idea, of an internal and sensed reality. The process is especially visible in Salammbô. Monsieur Demorest, in his exhaustive study of the imagery of Flaubert points out that images of physical, external reality are more frequent in Salammbô than in his other novels. Flaubert was not hindered here by problems of contemporary realism, and he could thus permit himself greater freedom in seeking his aesthetic goal of permanence through art.

This heavy, chiseled, immutable aspect, which is as evident in the form as in the imagery and style, is profoundly attached to Flaubert's basic creative instincts. For him, the writing of a novel is hard work. He has to struggle with language, which is a raw material as hard, as difficult to manipulate as marble. His own words should suffice as a conclusion:

Si je pouvais pénétrer la matière, embrasser l'idée, suivre la vie dans ses métamorphoses, comprendre l'être dans tous ses modes, et de l'un à l'autre remontant ainsi les causes, comme les marches d'un escalier, réunir à moi ces phénomènes épars et les remettre en mouvement dans la synthèse d'où les a détachés mon scalpel … peut-être alors que je ferais des mondes. …”³⁵

Notes

1. Albert Thibaudet, Gustave Flaubert, Gallimard, Paris, 1935, p. 122.

2. Gustave Flaubert, Salammbô, Conard, Paris, 1910, p. 1.

3. ibid. p. 385-86.

4. ibid. p. 119.

5. ibid. p. 397-98.

6. ibid. p. 206.

7. ibid. p. 261.

8. ibid. p. 21.

9. ibid. p. 245-46.

10. ibid. p. 402.

11. ibid. p. 228.

12. ibid. p. 138-39.

13. ibid. p. 244.

14. ibid. p. 155.

15. ibid. p. 13.

16. ibid. p. 24.

17. ibid. p. 3.

18. ibid. p. 4-5.

19. ibid. p. 35-36.

20. ibid. p. 44.

21. ibid. p. 45.

22. ibid. p. 275.

23. ibid. p. 263.

24. ibid. p. 2.

25. ibid. p. 377.

26. ibid. p. 196.

27. ibid. p. 20-21.

28. ibid.p. 21.

29. ibid. p. 203.

30. ibid. p. 55.

31. ibid. p. 61.

32. ibid. p. 21.

33. Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance, Vol. IV, Conard, Paris, 1910, p. 212.

34. Victor Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert, Princeton, 1966, Ch. 3, pp. 92-124.

35. Gustave Flaubert, La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, (1849), Conard, Paris, 1910. page 349.