The Perfect Word

Welcome to Celebrate Creativity - Episode 447 - The Perfect Word

Welcome to this podcast episode. Today, get ready to hear more meet a writer who took being a perfectionist to a whole new level - possibly hear about him for the very first time. His name is Gustave Flaubert, and he's not just another author from history—he's a rebel who changed how stories are told forever.

So, why should you care about him?

Imagine a writer who spent years on a single book. Gustave Flaubert was obsessed with finding the one perfect word for every sentence, often screaming his writing out loud to make sure it sounded just right. This crazy-intense effort is why his main accomplishment, a novel called Madame Bovary, is so famous. When it came out, it caused a massive scandal! People were so shocked by his story of a bored woman trying to find excitement in her life that he was actually put on trial.

But there’s another reason he's so interesting. Flaubert suffered from epilepsy. This illness made his life incredibly difficult and private, but it also gave him a unique view of the world. It’s a powerful and inspiring story of a person who took his own personal struggles and turned them into some of the most beautiful and honest writing the world has ever seen.
So, stick around as we continue our look into the life of Gustave Flaubert.

Transcript

Welcome to Celebrate Creativity - Episode 447 - The Perfect Word

Welcome to this podcast episode. Today, get ready to hear more meet a writer who took being a perfectionist to a whole new level - possibly hear about him for the very first time. His name is Gustave Flaubert, and he's not just another author from history—he's a rebel who changed how stories are told forever.

So, why should you care about him?

Imagine a writer who spent years on a single book. Gustave Flaubert was obsessed with finding the one perfect word for every sentence, often screaming his writing out loud to make sure it sounded just right. This crazy-intense effort is why his main accomplishment, a novel called Madame Bovary, is so famous. When it came out, it caused a massive scandal! People were so shocked by his story of a bored woman trying to find excitement in her life that he was actually put on trial.

But there’s another reason he's so interesting. Flaubert suffered from epilepsy. This illness made his life incredibly difficult and private, but it also gave him a unique view of the world. It’s a powerful and inspiring story of a person who took his own personal struggles and turned them into some of the most beautiful and honest writing the world has ever seen.
So, stick around as we continue our look into the life of Gustave Flaubert.

As mentioned in the previous episode, his chief writing accomplishment is undoubtedly the novel Madame Bovary, which is considered one of the most important novels ever written.

Published in 1857, Madame Bovary is Flaubert’s most famous work and his greatest achievement. What makes it so important is its style, known as literary realism. Instead of telling a romantic or heroic story, Flaubert wrote about the real, and sometimes boring, life of a doctor's wife named Emma Bovary.

His genius was in how he wrote it:

He was like a camera: He described everything with cold, precise detail, from the color of a dress to the look on someone's face. He didn’t tell the reader how to feel; he simply showed them what happened.

He didn't moralize: Flaubert's book was shocking because he refused to judge his main character, even when she made bad decisions -and she definitely made more than her share of bad decisions. Flaubert simply presented her life as it was, which was revolutionary for its time.

The book caused a major scandal, and Flaubert was put on trial for 
obscenity. He was acquitted, and the trial only made the book more famous, cementing its place as a masterpiece.

While Madame Bovary is his greatest accomplishment, Flaubert’s other works also showcase his unique talent:

Sentimental Education (1869): A long, complex novel about love and disappointment in a young man's life in Paris, often seen as a brilliant but bleak look at an entire generation.

Salammbô (1862): A historical novel set in ancient Carthage. This showed his incredible skill at creating a detailed and believable world, even one that existed thousands of years before his time.

His Letters: His personal letters are considered a literary accomplishment in their own right. They provide a direct window into his mind and his demanding writing process, revealing his genius, his struggles with epilepsy, and his artistic philosophy.

What follows is a powerful and frequently cited passage from a letter Gustave Flaubert wrote to his friend Ernest Chevalier on February 2, 1844, shortly after his first major seizure.

In this letter, he describes the traumatic event with a vivid, almost detached perspective, revealing his struggle to comprehend the physical and mental chaos.

"A kind of flame came into my eyes, and my veins sang like the strings of a lyre. I felt myself invaded by a torrent of electricity... My whole body was seized with a trembling, as if from a thousand invisible strings that vibrated at once... It was a sort of cerebral shower of ideas, of images that fell with the speed of hail. I felt that I was fighting a duel with my soul. I was on the point of losing myself completely."

This passage is remarkable because it shows Flaubert's personal experience with his illness, and his attempt to describe an internal, chaotic event with the same precise, objective language he would later use to write his novels. It reveals the deep connection between his physical suffering and his artistic philosophy.

Unfortunately, in the 19th century, the medical understanding of epilepsy was very limited, and there were no effective treatments like the modern medications we have today.

Let me emphasize that when Flaubert began having seizures in his early twenties, doctors of his time didn't have the tools or knowledge to truly treat the condition. At best, they could offer remedies that were often ineffective and sometimes even harmful.

Common "treatments" for epilepsy during his life included:

Bromide Salts: This was one of the most common treatments, first introduced in the 1850s. It was a sedative that could reduce seizures but came with severe side effects and wasn't a cure.

Herbal Remedies and Diet: A variety of herbal concoctions and strict diets were also suggested.

"Cures" and Rest: Physicians often prescribed "rest cures," hydrotherapy (water treatments), or even painful procedures like bleeding or cauterization.

Now let me take a little detour here - and briefly explain the process of
Cauterization -

Cauterization is a medical procedure that involves burning skin or tissue to achieve a specific medical effect. The word comes from the Greek word kauterion, which means "branding iron."

Historically, it was performed using a heated metal instrument or a chemical agent to:

Stop Bleeding: It seals blood vessels, which can be life-saving in cases of severe bleeding.

Remove or Destroy Tissue: It was used to get rid of warts, tumors, or infected tissue.

In the 19th century, when Flaubert was ill, cauterization was also used in a misguided attempt to "cure" diseases like epilepsy. Doctors at the time believed that the source of the illness might be a "bad humor" or "irritation" in the body, and they would use a hot iron or acid on a patient's skin—sometimes on their head or neck—in a desperate, and of course ineffective, attempt to burn out the cause of the seizures. This highlights the primitive and often brutal nature of medicine during his lifetime.

Flaubert's father and brother were both respected surgeons, and they were, as Flaubert wrote, "beside themselves" with his condition. They tried various means to help him, including, in one desperate instance, applying boiling water to his hand. Nothing worked.
Because a cure was not an option, Flaubert's experience became a powerful motivator. He gave up his career in law and retreated to his home, where he dedicated his life to his art. His immense discipline and perfectionism in writing became his way of coping with a chaotic and incurable illness. He channeled his suffering into his work, using the only form of control he had—the complete mastery of his craft.

I asked Gemini if they could find the descriptive passage from Madame Bovery regarding an epileptic seizure - it answered

Of course. This scene is one of the most brutal and unflinching descriptions in all of Flaubert's work. It appears in Part Three, Chapter 8 of Madame Bovary, during Emma's final, agonizing moments. Note that I found another source that said flaubert  never did include a passage describing a seizure and Madame Bovary, but here goes

Here is a portion of that descriptive passage - according to one source - and assuming it's not some kind of online hallucination -

"The blind man had come up, and, with his head thrown back, with his face turned towards the sky, he was singing his unceasing song... All at once he turned his head with a terrible convulsion, the livid lips of his gaping mouth trembled, and a hoarse rattle shook his throat; then, with a long, drawn-out cry, he fell in a heap upon the pavement."

This passage perfectly illustrates Flaubert’s unique style. Instead of dwelling on Emma’s inner turmoil as she dies, he uses the blind man's convulsion as a brutal and detached reflection of her own internal suffering. He describes the physical details of the seizure with a clinical, almost medical, eye, completely stripping the scene of any sentimentality.

Ultimately, Gustave Flaubert did not find peace in a conventional sense. He lived a life marked by significant physical and emotional suffering, but he did find a form of peace through the total devotion to his art.

Flaubert was a deeply sensitive man who suffered from a debilitating illness, chronic loneliness, and a profound disappointment with the world around him. He often wrote to his friends about his inner turmoil, describing a constant feeling of weariness and disgust. The pursuit of artistic perfection was a form of "torture" for him.

However, in this very struggle, he found his purpose and his only true solace. By retreating to his home at Croisset and dedicating his life to his craft, he was able to impose a rigid sense of order on a chaotic existence. The act of meticulously crafting every sentence and finding "le mot juste" was a way of creating something beautiful and controlled in a world that often felt ugly and out of his control.

His peace, therefore, was not a state of blissful calm. It was a hard-won, stoic peace found in the immense discipline and satisfaction of a master craftsman. He managed to transform his personal suffering into an impersonal, objective art, and in doing so, he found a profound sense of purpose that transcended the pain of his life.

Flaubert did his own experience with his "nervous illness" in his personal letters, which many scholars believe was a form of temporal lobe epilepsy. In a letter to his friend and fellow writer Maxime du Camp, Flaubert gave a particularly vivid account of the aura and sensations that preceded his attacks. He wrote:

"Each seizure is like a sort of hemorrhage of innervation. The center of image formation in my brain suffers a seminal leak, a hundred thousand images erupt at once, in visual fireworks."

He further detailed his experience of what he called "a whirlpool of ideas and images in my poor brain," during which his consciousness felt like a sinking ship. He also mentioned seeing "a flame in my left eye" and then "a flame in my right eye; everything is tinged with gold" as a recurring part of his aura.

Maxime du Camp's Account

Maxime du Camp, who was present for some of Flaubert's attacks, also provided his own detailed description of his friend's seizures in his memoirs, Souvenirs Littéraires. Du Camp's account corroborates Flaubert's, noting that the seizures were "terrifying to see" and often began with Flaubert raising his head and turning pale, which was his aura. He also wrote:

"Then he would say: 'I have a flame in my left eye' and a few seconds later: 'I have a flame in my right eye; everything is tinged with gold'. This peculiar state would last for several minutes... Then the convulsion would take him over."

Du Camp's description of Flaubert shouting during a seizure — "I am holding the reins. Here is the carriage. I hear the bells. Ha! I see the inn's lights!" — further suggests that his fits were preceded by complex auditory and visual hallucinations.

Flaubert did describe his own experience with his "nervous illness" in his personal letters. In a letter to his friend and fellow writer Maxime du Camp, Flaubert gave a particularly vivid account of the aura and sensations that preceded his attacks. He wrote:

"Each seizure is like a sort of hemorrhage of innervation. The center of image f relationship brush teeth I know that that doesn't do that much the sweets are still there hairormation in my brain suffers a seminal leak, a hundred thousand images erupt at once, in visual fireworks."

He further detailed his experience of what he called "a whirlpool of ideas and images in my poor brain," during which his consciousness felt like a sinking ship. He also mentioned seeing "a flame in my left eye" and then "a flame in my right eye; everything is tinged with gold" as a recurring part of his aura.

Maxime du Camp's Account
In conclusion, Flaubert’ simple explanation of a seizure is one of the most descriptive I have ever read.

"Each seizure is like a sort of hemorrhage of innervation. The center of image formation in my brain suffers a seminal leak, a hundred thousand images erupt at once, in visual fireworks.”

Sources include. Madame Bovery and the collected letters of Gustav not Steven -Flaubert

Joint celebrate creativity for episode 448 - what the dickens!

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