A passage from Madame Bovary

I encountered this passage in an earlier draft of Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The imagistic expression of voracious sorrow and devouring memory is enchanting. The English translation is by Paul de Man.


'She clung to this memory; it was the center of her lassitude, all her thoughts converged upon it and nourished it. It was the intimate creation of her idleness. In her life, abandoned, cold, naked and monotonous, it stood alone like a fire of dead twigs left in the middle of the Russian Steppes by departing travelers. She threw herself upon the remembered image, crushed herself against it, joyously, jealously, and with a trembling hand stirred up the embers which were about to go out. To make it burn brighter and flame higher, that she might re-light her sadness by this love-flame which was flickering in the night, she looked around her for things with which to feed it; the most insignificant details of the past or the future, reminiscences of simple words, whims, comparisons, dislikes, all these she threw in and warmed herself before this hearth with the full length of her soul.

For a long time, she watched over this fire to keep it going. Bending over it she nourished the flame. But the flame no longer burned so brightly, perhaps because her provision of fuel was exhausted, or else she had smothered it by piling her fuel on too high. Little by little, through absence, her love too went out, and even her reveries diminished in routine. From this hearth, there now came more smoke than flame, more despair than desire, and the purple light which had reddened her pale sky grew lesser by degrees. The pricks of her daily existence, which fell on her like sharp hailstones, disappeared more slowly. She mistook her hatred for Charles for a longing for Leon, the searing smart of hate for the warmth of love; but, while her torment increased and its cause receded, her hope departed, blowing out the cold embers of her consumed passion. Then she remained alone, and all was total night, an immense wasteland.' (273, Madame Bovary, Norton Critical Edition)