I'd not intended to read Salammbô, Flaubert's close-to-unknown second novel, but I was at the end of Madame Bovary and saw a yellowing 1922 edition in the 1 Franc pile at the Geneva flea market's book stall. How could I resist? It's a strange book, and at first I had trouble getting into it. I'd expected it to be like Madame Bovary, and it really isn't. Instead of the tedium of French provincial life and the brilliant character development, we have a wide-screen historical epic set around Carthage, shortly after the end of the first Punic War. There is no character development to speak of, and the story is a non-stop thrill ride featuring, among other things, mass gladiatorial combat, cannibalism, parades of crucified lions, war-elephants with scythes strapped to their trunks, and magic rites involving nude women and pythons. For the first few chapters I wondered if Flaubert had gone mad, or was at best having a really serious off-day.As I got further into Salammbô, though, I began to like it more, and by the time I was half-way through I couldn't put it down. You have to hand it to Flaubert. With Madame Bovary, he created the modern psychological novel; most authors would have been content to do it again for the rest of their careers. Flaubert thought he'd try something different, and created another, less respectable type of book, the decline-and-fall blockbuster. Since then, it's been copied innumerable times, and is particularly popular in the SF/fantasy genre: Salammbô reminded me rather strongly of Foundation, Dune, Conan the Barbarian and Star Wars, to name just a few. I immediately recognised the decadent, overcivilized Empire, the uncouth but virile barbarians, the sexy virgin priestess, the twisty, double-crossing intrigues and the graphic battle scenes. They've become standard ingredients that any author can take down from the shelf and stir into a plot that needs a little livening-up. But the 20th century imitations I'd come across had mostly been written by hacks; it was weird to see it all presented in Flaubert's beautiful, ornate French. It's a remarkably modern story. Carthage is playing host to a large army of mercenaries, who are waiting to be paid for their services in the recently concluded war; the greedy council are reluctant to part with their gold; negotiations turn sour; soon the merceneries have started an insurgency that lays the country waste. As the war becomes more and more savage, the polytheistic Carthaginians lose faith in the benevolent Tanit, goddess of the Moon and fertility, and come under the sway of the dreadful Moloch, god of fire and destruction. The scene where the children are sacrificed in the belly of the bronze Moloch-idol is the most horrifying thing I have read this year. If the novel had came out today, I would have believed I saw references to current events. We are turning away from Tanit, and towards Moloch. It'd make a good movie: I can already see the poster, with Gerard Butler as Mâtho, the hunky leader of the Mercenaries, Emmy Rossum as Salammbô, the beautiful priestess of the Temple of Tanit, and Sean Penn as General Hamilcar, her father. If you happen to be in the movie business and you're looking for ideas, consider asking a hungry young screenwriter to put together a draft script.Oh yes, and here's the oddest thing: I looked it up on Wikipedia, and pretty much the whole story is true. That really made me think._________________________________________Ah... I was saying it was surprisingly modern, and would make a great movie. Having done a little googling, I've discovered that there is indeed a bad and completely forgotten 1960 movie. More interestingly, there's a video game! Here's a picture of the title character:I don't think they've taken the costume directly from the book (at least, I don't recall her wearing this precise outfit), but it's true to the spirit of the thing. Salammbô is a hot chick and dresses to display her assets to best advantage.I'm still stunned by the idea that one of Flaubert's novels exists in game form. What other classics have been given this treatment?_________________________________________After some more googling, I find that there's a moderately famous painting by Gaston Bussière featuring the aforementioned scene with the magic rites and the python. Given this site's strict no-nudity policy, I'd better not include the picture itself. But you can see most of it on the cover of the edition I'm reviewing here.
Salambò è stata una sorpresa per me, lettrice affezionata di Flaubert. Il romanzo si discosta totalmente dalle altre opere da lui scritte per contenuti e toni. Si tratta di un romanzo epico, in cui sono narrate le gesta belliche tra i Cartaginesi, guidati dall’astuto genio militare di Amilcare Barca, e i Barbari, guerrieri mercenari provenienti dalle più svariate parti del mondo allora conosciuto, dai Greci ai Galli, dai Lusitani ai Libici, privi di un’organizzazione militare stabile ma coraggiosi e temerari lottatori guidati dal colosso libico Matho. Mentre leggevo ho sempre avuto la sensazione di trovarmi di fronte a un kolossal, con scene grandiose di accampamenti di soldati che tengono sotto assedio le città della costa nordafricana, battaglie in pianure sterminate con duelli corpo a corpo tra guerrieri risolti all’ultimo dall’uso dei mastodontici elefanti trasformati in macchine da guerra, che distruggono ciò che incontrano sul cammino, il tutto descritto con un’attenzione quasi morbosa per i particolari macabri: il sangue scorre a fiumi e tinge ovunque gli uomini, la terra ed il mare. In ogni capitolo, come in una serie di quadri, ci sono scene truculente in cui viene sottolineata la crudeltà ferina che uomini dimostrano contro altri esseri umani, in un mondo cruento dove domina la violenza. Sullo sfondo una storia d’amore in nuce, un amore impossibile quello tra Matho e Salambò, figlia di Amilcare Barca, sensuale e bellissima fanciulla i cui sensi vengono risvegliati dall’incontro con il libico, un tocco di dolcezza e passione nel mondo bestiale che gli fa da cornice.Il tutto descritto da Flaubert, quale osservatore esterno, quasi come un archeologo che riporti in vita da un lontanissimo passato scene di vita, con la solita dovizia di dettagli: arredi ed abiti sontuosi sono descritti con ricchezza di colori, suoni e profumi riempiono di esotismo gli ambienti.Un romanzo storico, che va oltre la ricostruzione d’epoca, pone l’uomo di fronte agli oscuri sotterranei della crudeltà e della violenza, aprendo la strada agli studi psicoanalitici del secolo successivo.
What do You think about Salammbô (1977)?
I'm only half-way through this time, but this is one of the most excrutiating, unreadable 'great' novels ... partly due to Flaubert's triumph in stripping everything down to its material essence, avoiding all character psychology, and prompting all of us to ask why we are reading. It is essentially a prose poem that deals with a violent, decadent subject (3rd century Carthage) in a style that for the most part eschews psychology and heroics for multi-layered imagery. Cruelty and conquest are everywhere, but only as images, never as part of an enfolding 'tragic' or 'comic' mode of writing ... Apparently this was his most financially successful book, and one can imagine readers of the time enjoying page after page of descriptions of unimaginable, vanished Carthage locales and finding themselves transported (i.e. Orientalism). If you are an admirer of Flaubert's ability to transform a static image into a perfect paragraph, then you will find much to appreciate here: soldiers dining on flamingos, monkey corpses falling from trees, crucified lions, etc ...
—Bryan
Une oeuvre hors-norme, décalée. Comment Flaubert, qui plus qu'un autre a nourri son inspiration de l'air du temps, a-t-il pu s'aventurer six ans durant dans un territoire si lointain, exotique et méconnu que nous avons presque l'impression aujourd'hui de lire de l'heroic-fantasy? Une écriture incroyablement moderne et cinématographique. La description des batailles et des charges d'éléphants carthaginois n'a rien à envier à celle qu'on peut visionner dans le Seigneur des Anneaux par exemple. Cruauté, sadisme, violence, évocations sexuelles à peine voilées (On sent l'auto-censure dans certains passages), il semble que Flaubert ait mobilisé toutes les forces obscures de son inconscient pour donner le jour à ce roman délirant. Je ne crois pas que Salammbô ait été porté à l'écran* mais cela donnerait pourtant un film grandiose et effroyable! On verrait bien un Mel Gibson en Matho! Il faut lire également la correspondance de Flaubert au sujet de Salammbô, sa réponse à Sainte-Beuve notamment. Cela en dit long sur l'érudition et le niveau des débats littéraires de l'époque mais aussi sur le travail de recherche hallucinant, quasi exhaustif, qu'a accompli Flaubert pour écrire son roman.* Après recherche, il semble que 2 films aient vu le jour dont le plus récent est un péplum des années 50 que je n'ai personnellement jamais vu.
—Philippe Bernard
إن الزمن.. عصري الذي أعيشه يمللني بطريقة عجيبة.. فمن أية جهة أتيته لا أرى فيه أكثر من بؤس وكلمات.. كلمات.. وأية كلمات!!. غوستاڤ فلوبيرhttp://i.imgur.com/2jeuqBU.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/tsFbkyG.pngأموات ! كلكن أموات ! لن تعدن فتسمعن صوتي كما كنتن تسمعنه فتطعن لي في الامس الغابر . سلامبو ، غوستاڤ فلوبيرhttp://i.imgur.com/xgyyViA.pngسأحمل معي طلسم بيتي وعبقريته ، حيتي السوداء الراقدة على أوراق السدر ! سأخرج صفيراً من شفتي فتلتحق بي ، سلامبو ، غوستاڤ فلوبيرhttp://i.imgur.com/AMo20yD.pngكثيراً ما تهب من كوامن جسدي أنفاس حارة أثقل من بخار البركان ، واسمع اصواتاً خفية تناديني وأحس ألسنة من نار تتلوى وتتصاعد من صدري فتضيق أنفاسي حتى لأتمنى الموت . غوستاڤ فلوبير . سلامبوhttp://i.imgur.com/ckUexd7.pngكان يجب علي أن أخطفها ! أن أمسك بها وأنتزعها من قصرها ، وهل كان بينهم من يجرؤ على مقاومتي . سلامبو ، غوستاڤ فلوبيرhttp://i.imgur.com/q65wAxF.pngلقد كنت الساعه وانتِ تخاطبينني أحس بأنفاسك تمر على وجهي فأتلذذ بها كالمحتضر المشرف على الموت الذي يشرب من حافه جدول وهو منبطح على بطنه ، هيا أسحقيني على شرط ان احس بقدميك فوقي . سلامبو ، غوستاف فلوبيرhttp://i.imgur.com/F6p86Aw.png
—أقمار المسيري
