SOURCE: Brady, Patrick. “Archetypes and the Historical Novel: The Case of Salammbô.” Stanford French Review 1, no. 3 (winter 1977): 313-24.

[In the following essay, Brady concentrates on the archetypal structure of Salammbô, including its eroticized imagery and suggestions of alchemical transformation.]

One of the most influential modern evaluations of Salammbô is that made by Georgy Lukács, and it is negative.¹ According to Lukács, “La modernisation de la psychologie des personnages … est la seule source du mouvement et de la vie,” and he continues a little later: “Cette modernisation détermine la structure de l'action. Sa base est formée par deux motifs qui ne sont liés que d'une manière tout à fait extérieure: un conflit historique et politique entre Carthage et les mercenaires en révolte, et l'épisode amoureux de Salammbô elle-même. Leur entrelacement est tout à fait extérieur et doit nécessairement le rester. Salammbô est tout aussi étrangère aux intérêts vitaux de sa patrie que Mme Bovary à la pratique médicale de son mari” (pp. 211-12). Lukács sees Salammbô as a paradigm of the historical novel in its decline, characterized by “la monumentalisation décorative, la désanimation, la déshumanisation de l'histoire et en même temps sa limitation à la vie privée” (p. 223).

In spite of this negative judgment by Lukács, it would be erroneous to conclude that Marxist critics are inevitably opposed to the tendencies represented by Salammbô. Bertolt Brecht, for example, as early as 1938, defended post-Romantic writers for their perceptiveness and honesty in portraying man as ever more alienated in the evolving bourgeois society. Brecht also criticized Lukács's habit of blaming these post-Romantic writers for not leaving the novel form at the Scott-Balzac stage of omniscient third-person narration, centrally dominant protagonist, and simplified, idealized psychology.² Such comments are most obviously applicable to the novel of contemporary life (as distinguished from the historical novel); but if Lukács may validly base his hypothesis of the decline of the historical novel on the decline of contemporary bourgeois society, then Brecht's rebuttal is equally valid for both types of novel.³

It would also be erroneous to assume that those critics who make severely negative evaluations of Salammbô are all of a Marxist persuasion. A negative criticism based on quite different criteria from those applied by Lukács is made by Nathalie Sarraute.⁴ For Sarraute, in this novel “la psychologie est inexistante.” She laments the absence “de la révélation, de la mise en oeuvre de forces psychologiques encore inconnues, qui est la base de toute littérature,” and declares that “cette absence de complexité psychologique … fait de Salammbô une imagerie enfantine.” She sums up its principal features (which she finds deplorable) as follows: “le beau style redondant et glacé, l'imagerie de qualité douteuse, des sentiments convenus, une réalité en trompe-l'oeil.”

Both Sarraute and Lukács, then, attack the psychology, but whereas Lukács decries it as excessively modernized and divorced from politics, Sarraute declares it to be nonexistent, being supplanted by description. The thesis proposed here will involve by implication the view that this judgment represents an unjust condemnation based on conceptions of “psychology” which are rigid, narrow, or superficial, and to a large extent mutually contradictory.⁵ What both Lukács and Sarraute apparently fail to realize (or refuse to admit) is that there is another level of “psychology” which registers deeper in the reader's mind (much of it subliminally) and operates through symbolization: this is the archetypal level, which exploits that stratum of “external” description which both our critics have failed to appreciate because their view of its function is so reductive.

The symbols which appear in Salammbô have been studied by Demorest and Dane.⁶ The symbolic dimension may also contribute to the enrichment of the structure (and itself derive completion and effectiveness from that structure)—but the structure of Flaubert's other two major novels attracted the attention of critics like Furst, Rinehart, and Proust⁷ before the same aspect of Salammbô was approached. Thus, for some time no real challenge was issued to Sainte-Beuve's declaration that the work lacks formal unity: “Je ne vois nulle part l'architecte. L'auteur ne se tient pas au-dessus de son ouvrage: il s'y applique trop, il a le nez dessus: il ne paraît pas l'avoir considéré avant et après dans son ensemble, ni à aucun moment le dominer.”⁸ In 1973, however, a fine article by R. B. Leal at last showed that “there is in fact a symmetry and simplicity in what we may term the ‘ground plan’ or ‘skeletal framework’ of the novel.”⁹

Beyond the presence of symbols in the work (Demorest, Dane) and their contribution to its structure (Leal), there is an archetypal dimension emanating from those symbols which are universal (the term “archetype” will be defined here as meaning “universal symbol”), and moreover this further dimension has a psychological function which is far from conventional and above all totally divorced from private life. Furthermore, this dimension, which is capable of expression in any novel, and is in fact particularly rich in those of the nineteenth century,¹⁰ is especially characteristic of the historical novel of that period, of which it is a centrally distinguishing feature, although totally ignored by Lukács in his massive work on Le Roman historique. If imagery and description appear to dominate “to the detriment of” psychology, it is merely that “psychology” (in a broad but deeply meaningful sense) finds a new mode of expression precisely in the exploitation of such imagery and description.

THE FORCES IN CONFLICT

What Lukács calls “l'épisode amoureux” and Bruce Jay “the love interest,” “the love story,” “the fate of two star-crossed lovers,”¹¹ is scarcely that, for Salammbô and Mâtho are not essentially living individuals (even in the shadowy, mitigated sense of paper characters in a novel). They are embodiments or incarnations of mysterious, superior forces, whose instruments they are in the working out of vast nonhuman interrelationships. Sarraute is thus right in declaring that there is no “psychology” in the conventional sense; she is mistaken, however, in making of this a defect, for there is another psychology present here, a Parnassian psychology of symbols and archetypes.

While the traditional opposition between urban and agrarian cultures (symbolized by the clash between Cain, founder of cities, and Abel, the pious shepherd) does not appear applicable here (because, if Carthage represents the urban pole, the agrarian would be represented not by the mercenaries but by the soldier-peasants of Rome), another opposition may be drawn between the civilized (Carthage) and the barbaric, primitive, or savage (the mercenaries), as between peace and war, or indeed between Thanatos (primacy of the inanimate) and Eros (activity) as outlined by Freud.

The opposition of forces which contributes a static organizational framework for Salammbô has been studied by Demorest and Dane on the symbolic level. Essentially, the political opposition between Carthage and the mercenaries is mirrored on the level of “individual psychology” (however with the reservations I have indicated) by the relations between Salammbô and Mâtho, and on the anagogic plane, by the conflict between the divinities Tanit and Moloch. The latter level is much more essential than the former: as Victor Brombert points out, “the dialectic of the eternal couple, Tanit and Moloch, is indeed at the core of the novel.”¹² On the astrological level the corresponding conflict opposes moon and sun: Tanit, the moon-goddess, is “la Divinité de Carthage,”¹³ “l'âme de Carthage” (p. 64), while Salammbô herself is assimilated in turn with the moon, Tanit, and the city (pp. 61, 407, 752); Moloch (also known as “Baal”) is identified with the sun (pp. 237, 757), the mercenaries,¹⁴ and Mâtho (pp. 241, 265, 759). Finally, yet a further dimension is added by the explicit association of the sun with fire, war, and destruction, and of the moon with water, peace, and conservation (p. 752).

To this level of analysis must be added the dimension provided by the archetypal perspective. Among the sets of opposed symbols I have evoked, those which have archetypal significance are: sun/moon and fire/water. The significance of such elements as these has been studied by many scholars, and by none more comprehensively than Gaston Bachelard, in such works as La Psychanalyse du feu (1938) and L'Eau et les rêves (1943). In Salammbô, these elements represent the dialectical relationship between the male and female principles; the fact that these two principles are not only mutually contrary but also complementary is suggested by the symbol of the serpent, its tongue like a flickering flame of fire and its body flowing forward in endless curves like the meandering of a watery stream. Male because phallic in form, it nevertheless is female in that it comes from, and remains bound to, the earth (sister element to water). And the serpent is not only present in the novel, but its symbolism permeates (through direct textual allusions) other elements such as the sacred veil, or zaïmph, and the ankle-chain, as we shall see later, in a conjunction I believe to be absolutely central to the structure of thematic symbolism underlying the plot-development of the work.

STAGES OF EVOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT

The picture I have sketched so far is essentially static in character, and therefore, while quite simple and unsophisticated, it shares the limitations of certain tendencies of criticism in the 1960's associated by many writers with structural analysis. The “synchronic” (rather than “diachronic”), anti-sequential thrust of the mode of analysis sketched out by Lévi-Strauss in Anthropologie structurale is shared by such earlier approaches as that of Rousset—leading Derrida to categorize Rousset pejoratively as “structuralist” because of his neglect of sequential textual thrusts. Riffaterre, like Derrida, emphasizes the importance of progression through a text.¹⁵ There does, indeed, appear to be little doubt that the reader's experience of moving through the text from beginning to end, with a particular, pre-ordained chronological order between the elements with which he comes in contact, is of primary importance in the functioning of a literary construct and must therefore be emphasized in our analysis of the work and its impact.

A first step towards elucidating the dynamic evolution of the conflict between opposing forces in Salammbô has been taken by Leal on the level of the analysis of symbols. His analysis seeks precisely to emphasize the sequence of events; it may be reorganized for succinct representation in the following schema:

• A. CONFRONTATION (i-iv)
  • I Mercenaries and Carthage: Mâtho and Salammbô (i)
  • II Description of mercenaries and their camp (ii)
  • III Description of Salammbô and Carthage (iii)
  • IV Breakdown of negotiations (iv)
• B. CONFLICT (v-x)
  • I Ascendancy of Moloch (v-vi)
    • a. Theft of zaïmph
    • b. Revolt of states tributary to Carthage
    • c. Defeat of Carthaginian forces
  • II Ascendancy of Tanit (vii-viii)
    • a. Hamilcar's decision to fight for Carthage N.B. but note importance of Moloch
    • b. Bataille du Macar
  • III Ascendancy of Moloch (ix-x)
    • a. Hamilcar's army besieged
    • b. Apostasy of Schahabarim
• C. CONJUNCTION (xi-xiii)
  • I Mâtho and Salammbô (xi)
    • a. Neutralization
    • b. Sacrifice of virginity
    • c. Recovery of zaïmph
  • II Continuing conflict (xii)
    • a. Hamilcar's triumph
    • b. Carthage besieged
  • III Sacrifice of children to Moloch (xiii)
• D. CONCLUSION (xiv-xv): ultimate triumph of fertile Tanit
  • I Destruction of mercenaries
  • II Death of Mâtho
  • III Death of Salammbô

In order to move from this description to the stage of interpretation, I should like to suggest here that the four stages of struggle discerned by Leal (confrontation, conflict, conjunction, conclusion) correspond broadly to the four major stages of transmutation postulated by alchemy: calcination (sin), solution (innocence), conjunction (passion), and sublimation (transcendence).¹⁶ This structure provides a framework for the core of our discussion: the interpretation of three closely interrelated symbols in the novel whose archetypal character and function has so far received little or no attention from critics of Salammbô.

HIEROGAMY: THE VEIL, THE SERPENT, AND THE ANKLE-CHAIN

The union of Salammbô with Mâtho is associated with effects on three objects intimately and symbolically connected with Salammbô: the serpent (a python) with whom she goes through the ritual of preparation; the ankle-chain, which is broken in the course of her encounter with Mâtho; and the zaïmph or sacred veil which she recovers and takes back to Carthage.

The symbolic meaning of the serpent within the context of the novel is explicitly stated: “Le serpent était pour les Carthaginois un fétiche à la fois national et particulier. On le croyait fils du limon de la terre, puisqu'il émerge de ses profondeurs et n'a pas besoin de pieds pour la parcourir; sa démarche rappelait les ondulations des fleuves, sa température les antiques ténèbres visqueuses pleines de fécondité, et l'orbe qu'il décrit en se mordant la queue l'ensemble des planètes, l'intelligence d'Eschmoûn” (p. 903). We are also told that “on tirait des augures d'après l'attitude des serpents.”¹⁷ The serpent is specifically associated with Salammbô in several ways: her father Hamilcar has upon his forehead “une longue cicatrice [qui] s'agitait comme un serpent entre ses sourcils” (p. 851), she calls her great black python “le Génie de ma maison” (p. 753), and when, in the course of stealing the zaïmph, Mâtho encounters the serpent, he exclaims: “C'est elle! Je la sens” (p. 809). It is also associated with Salammbô through its association with the moon: mention is made of “les quatre moineaux vivants qu'on lui présentait à la pleine lune et à chaque lune nouvelle” (p. 903), and because of its patterned skin it is associated, like the moon, with the starry night sky: “Sa belle peau [est] couverte comme le firmament de tâches d'or sur un fond tout noir” (ibid.). There is at times a negative effect in the evocation of the serpent: “A force de le regarder, elle finissait par sentir dans son coeur comme une spirale, comme un autre serpent qui peu à peu lui montait à la gorge et l'étranglait” (ibid.). But no doubt it is indeed this autre serpent (representing most likely male sexuality) that is negative; her python, on the contrary, is an incarnation of Tanit; with regard to the goddess, of whom Salammbô is an embodiment, we read: “A mesure qu'elle [Salammbô] … était plus disposée à secourir Tanit, le python se guérissait, grossissait, il semblait revivre” (p. 909). This must be kept in mind when we interpret the ritual embrace between the serpent and Salammbô, for it makes a purely phallic interpretation paradoxical and incomprehensible. A logically consistent exegesis is, however, possible: the ritual in which she embraces the serpent in the moonlight may be seen to have the function of consecrating her first embrace to the moon (in a virginal simulacrum of the male sexual embrace to which she must soon submit)—through the python, erect (“il se leva tout droit”) but cold, associated with the female element (it is described as flowing towards her “comme une goutte d'eau”)¹⁸: like Danaë inundated by the golden rain, “en fermant à demi les yeux, elle se renversait sous les rayons de la lune.”¹⁹ When, eventually, the python becomes gravely ill, Salammbô, on the contrary, gets well, and her old servant believes that her indisposition has been taken upon itself by the snake. She is therefore moved by its death, although Salammbô herself appears quite indifferent.²⁰

Beyond the symbolic significance given to the serpent in the novel, this reptile has meanings derived from many symbolic traditions. Through the simplicity of its structure (neither legs, nor hair, nor feathers), the serpent has a primordial character, representing ancient wisdom; lacking members, it has the appearance of being nothing but a stomach or a womb and hence is associated with initiation. Its phallic appearance suggests the male principle. On the other hand, its invisibility in many habitats (through stillness and dissimulation) suggests hidden forces, as of the subconscious, while its undulating movement suggests water and hence the female principle. The shedding of its skin symbolizes metamorphosis, rejuvenation, even immortality.²¹ The poison of its bite suggests danger and evil. Of these various associations, those emphasized in Salammbô relate to the male/female confrontation, which I have already discussed, and to confirmations of initiation, metamorphosis, and the primordial (through its resemblance to the firmament). It is in this light, then, that we should perhaps interpret the death of the python: Salammbô's primordial virginity, essential to her relationship with the virgin moon goddess, has perished, and she has sacrilegiously laid eyes on the sacred veil; so that, initiated into “the mysteries of the universe,” she must die, as is prefigured by the death of the sacred serpent.

Serpent-symbolism is also associated with Salammbô's golden ankle-chain, of which we are told when she first appears at the feast of the mercenaries: “Elle portait entre les chevilles une chaînette d'or pour régler sa marche” (p. 752). When she visits the mercenary leader in his tent, “Mâtho lui saisit les talons, la chaînette d'or éclata, et les deux bouts, en s'envolant, frappèrent la toile comme deux vipères rebondissantes” (p. 924). When sated, he falls asleep, “elle s'aperçut que sa chaînette était brisée. On accoutumait les vierges dans les grandes familles à respecter ces entraves comme une chose presque religieuse, et Salammbô, en rougissant, roula autour de ses jambes les deux tronçons de la chaîne d'or” (pp. 925-26; cf. p. 931). The golden ankle-chain is thus a symbol of virginity: its breaking symbolizes the breaking of the hymen.

Salammbô is tormented by the desire to see the zaïmph or sacred veil of the goddess Tanit: “Afin de pénétrer dans les profondeurs de son dogme, elle voulait connaître au plus secret du temple la vieille idole avec le manteau magnifique d'où dépendait les destinées de Carthage—car l'idée d'un dieu ne se dégageait pas nettement de sa représentation, et tenir ou même voir son simulacre, c'était lui prendre une part de sa vertu, et, en quelque sorte, le dominer” (p. 784). To see the goddess or even the zaïmph, however, is to commit sacrilege and risk death (p. 786). The zaïmph, like the Python sacred to the same goddess, resembles the great snake in its likeness to the star-studded firmament:²² when Mâtho and Spendius eventually find it, “on aurait dit un nuage où étincelaient des étoiles; des figures apparaissaient dans les profondeurs de ses plis: Eschmoûn avec les Kabires, quelques-uns des monstres déjà vus, les bêtes sacrées des Babyloniens, puis d'autres qu'ils ne connaissaient pas. Cela passait comme un manteau sous le visage de l'idole, et remontant étalé sur le mur, s'accrochait par les angles, tout à la fois bleuâtre comme la nuit, jaune comme l'aurore, pourpre comme le soleil, nombreux, diaphane, étincelant, léger. C'était là le manteau de la Déesse, le zaïmph saint que l'on ne pouvait voir” (p. 810). When Mâtho takes it and goes to Salammbô's bed-chamber, “avec le zaïmph qui l'enveloppait, il semblait un dieu sidéral tout environné du firmament” (p. 815). When he is back in the barbarian camp with it, “il lui semblait … que le vêtement de la Déesse dépendait de Salammbô, et qu'une partie de son âme y flottait plus subtile qu'une haleine” (p. 827). Salammbô is terrified at having seen the zaïmph (p. 836), and the goddess' powers appear weakened: “La Rabbetna, n'ayant plus son voile, était comme dépouillée d'une partie de sa vertu” (p. 902). But Salammbô's feelings on the subject are not unmixed: “Elle était désespérée d'avoir vu le zaïmph, et cependant elle en éprouvait une sorte de joie, un orgueil intime. Un mystère se dérobait dans la splendeur de ses plis; c'était le nuage enveloppant les Dieux, le secret de l'existence universelle, et Salammbô, en se faisant horreur elle-même, regrettait de ne l'avoir pas soulevé” (p. 903). Then the high-priest Shahabarim charges her with the task of retrieving the veil. She succeeds in doing this, and although she is disappointed at the sight of the zaïmph (p. 927), and it does not seem to bring good fortune back to Carthage (p. 959), she remains proud of her exploit (p. 960). As in the case of the Python, so in the case of the zaïmph, we are faced with a paradox of interpretation, for Salammbô-Tanit's loss of virginity is associated not with the loss of the veil but with its recovery. This problem may however be solved thus: the goddess' loss of virginity is symbolized at an earlier point in the narrative, when Mâtho and Spendius penetrate the walls of the goddess' city through the highly symbolic aqueduct²³ and steal the veil, which is the most prized possession and symbol of this goddess of virginity. When this drama is repeated in the persons of Mâtho and Salammbô, the dramatic structure proposed by Leal may be interpreted as suggesting that what Salammbô brings back to Tanit in return for the sacrifice of her virginity is a promise, a token, of fertilization, the zaïmph, whose association with the serpent we have already established.

If we now return to the proposed analogy with the alchemical process, we may view the first state of Salammbô (as the closeted, ignorant virgin) as that of the mere potential of primordial elements (calcination). She then undergoes two purifications in the form of two embraces, that of innocence (with the serpent) and that of passion (with Mâtho). The first represents a mere solution of the initial, negative state of “sinful” ignorance; the second represents the veritable conjunction of opposites which constitutes the hierogamy or Sacred Marriage. A final stage of sublimation is achieved at the end with the triumph of Tanit, transcending all conflict, struggle, and passion in the fruits of fertility.

The symbolic function of the veil and the ankle-chain and above all the archetypal dimensions of the snake symbol enrich our reading of the work, especially with regard to the dynamic relationship between the heroine's ritual with the python and her relations with Mâtho. The latter now take their place in the archetypal structure of the work as the crucial climax in the maneuvering of vast, impersonal forces as old as time.

.....

The present essay constitutes a modest effort to continue the work of critical appraisal of Salammbô illustrated by such distinguished scholars as Harry Levin and Victor Brombert,²⁴ whose perceptive pages on this novel remain perhaps the most valuable studies on the subject up to the present date. It is hoped that the archetypal approach to the interpretation of the symbols of the work, briefly outlined here, may suggest new avenues of investigation and interpretation. Above all, however, this perspective suggests that in a novel like Salammbô “psychology” is neither “nonexistent” (Sarraute) nor “private and modern” (Lukács). There is of course a relationship—and a significant one—between Salammbô and the modern setting contemporary to its creation: in spite of its location in and around ancient Carthage some two thousand years ago, it expresses more fully and more overtly than Madame Bovary the true nature of mid-nineteenth-century society with its thick crust of moralistic appearances masking a system of human exploitation and degradation which had institutionalized the most savage aggression of man against man. And this should help us to grasp the true nature of the psychological dimension of the novel. Far from being overwhelmed by external description, as Sarraute asserts, the psychology is encoded in that very description, through the choice, manner of presentation, and mode of interaction of its constitutive elements, typically symbolized by the hierogamy which unites Salammbô-Tanit to Mâtho-Moloch in the brief but decisive embrace of the Sacred Marriage.

Such an approach may help to throw new light on the French Parnassian aesthetic, with its oft-lamented “dependence on” description, and also on the genre of the historical novel which flourished so brilliantly in nineteenth-century France.²⁵ The latter has too often tended to be analyzed by means of concepts which limit discussion to social and political considerations, surface appearances, instead of searching an ultimate interpretation in deeper structures whose functioning is subliminal and whose meaning—profoundly “psychological” in its own special way—is universal.

Notes

1. Georgy Lukács, Le Roman historique (Berlin: Aufbau, 1956; rpt. Payot, 1965), pp. 205-231.

2. Essay reprinted in Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst (Tübingen: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967), II, 107-8.

3. Brecht's unanswerable criticism of Lukács was a landmark in Marxist criticism; Frederic Jameson's ignoring (or ignorance) of it constitutes a surprising lacuna in his recent volume entitled Marxism and Form (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), which is thereby made incomplete. This is all the more true as it is the Brechtian position which reappears in Louis Althusser (Pour Marx [Maspero, 1966], pp. 142 sqq.), who rejects the method of Lukács, denouncing his theories as “contaminées par un hégélianisme honteux” (ibid., pp. 21, 114, n. 30, and 288, n. 1).

4. Nathalie Sarraute, “Flaubert le précurseur,” Preuves, 168 (1965), 3-11.

5. The superficiality of Lukács's conception of “psychology” (“les sentiments, les idées et les pensées”) can be seen in his declaration that it should be “immédiatement compréhensible pour le lecteur adulte” (Lukács, p. 219).

6. Donald Demorest, L'Expression figurée et symbolique dans l'oeuvre de Gustave Flaubert (Conard, 1931), Ch. 13; Ivo Dane, Die symbolische Gestaltung in der Dichtung Flauberts (Köln, 1933).

7. Norbert Furst, “The Structure of L'Education sentimentale,” PMLA, 56 (March, 1941), 249-60; Keith Rinehart, “The Structure of Madame Bovary,” The French Review, 30 (1958), 300-6; Jacques Proust, “Structure et sens de L'Education sentimentale,” Revue des sciences humaines, March 1967, pp. 67-100.

8. Nouveaux lundis 4 (Calmann-Lévy, 1897), p. 82.

9. R. B. Leal, “Salammbô: An Aspect of Structure,” French Studies, 27 (1973), 17.

10. “(Le) roman du 19e siècle … en dépit de toutes les ‘formules’ scientifiques, réalistes, sociales, a été le grand reservoir des mythes dégradés” (Mircea Eliade, Images et symboles [Gallimard, 1952], p. 12).

11. Bruce Jay, “Anti-History and the Method of Salammbô,” The Romanic Review, 63 (1972), 21 and 24.

12. Victor Brombert, Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techiques (Princeton: P.U.P., 1966), p. 101. (My italics.)

13. Salammbô (Pléiade) [Oeuvres Complètes. Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1951], p. 13. All further references are to this edition and will appear in the text.

14. Ibid., p. 902. This assimilation is even clearer in the brouillon version (quoted in Demorest, p. 487).

15. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Plon, 1958), pp. 233-34; Jean Rousset, Forme et signification (Corti, 1963); Jacques Derrida, L'Écriture et la différence (Seuil, 1967), Ch. I, “Force et signification”; Michael Riffaterre, Essais de stylistique structurale (Flammarion, 1971), p. 46.

16. The alchemical process may be represented as follows:

    	Metal	Color	Stage	State
    Primordial elements	lead	black	calcination	sin
    Prime matter	earth	grey	putrefaction
    First purification	mercury	white	solution	innocence
    Second purification	sulphur	red	conjunction	passion
    	sky	blue
    	gold	yellow	sublimation	transcendence

17. Salammbô, p. 909. Mâtho conceives of paradise as a place where “des serpents couleur de lait font avec les diamants de leur gueule tomber les fruits sur le gazon” (ibid., p. 925).

18. The watery image is also applied to serpents by Spendius, who claims “Je peux, comme une vipère, me couler …” (ibid., p. 756), and to Masisabel, Queen of the Dragon-women—” le monstre femelle dont la queue ondulait sur les feuilles mortes comme un ruisseau d'argent” (ibid., p. 753). Masisabel is the enemy of the Queen of Serpents.

19. Ibid., p. 912. Earlier she prays to Tanit “en se renversant la tête sous les rayons de la lune” (ibid., p. 781).

20. Ibid., p. 959. The contrast between the states of Salammbô and the sickening python is prefigured by that between the states of Mâtho and Spendius when the former is ill (ibid., p. 771).

21. A beautiful use of this symbolism occurs at the end of Gilgamesh.

22. This likeness is prefigured in another passage: “Salammbô … s'agenouilla sur le sol parmi la poudre d'azur qui était semée d'étoiles d'or, à l'imitation du firmament” (ibid., p. 780). It is only the serpent, of course, whose likeness to the firmament is natural.

23. Ibid., pp. 801-3. The symbolically sexual character of this penetration is foreshadowed by an earlier declaration of Spendius's, in which the symbol of the serpent may be seen in its traditional phallic significance: “Je peux, comme une vipère, me couler entre les murs” (ibid., p. 756).

24. Harry Levin, The Gates of Horn: A Study of Five French Realists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), Ch. V: “The Dance of Kuchiouk Hanem”; Brombert, Flaubert, Ch. 3: “Salammbô: The Epic of Immobility.”

25. In Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, for example, the stages of alchemical transmutation of the heroine, la Esmeralda, are particularly clear: the stage of sin (calcination) is represented by the baby Agnès being kidnapped by the gypsies and renamed “la Esmerelda”; the stages of innocence (solution) and passion (conjunction) may be seen in her relations with the poet Gringoire (mariage blanc) and the soldier Phoebus. The hierogamy is particularly well represented by this conjunction of both solar and lunar principles (la Esmeralda is the emerald, a lunar symbol). Finally, transcendence (sublimation) is achieved when, recognized by her mother, she recovers the name “Agnès,” which predestines her to ritual sacrifice.