Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
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Monday, 28 April 2008
[Rodolphe] could not see – this man of such broad experience – the difference of feeling, beneath the similarity of expression. Because wanton or venal lips had murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings: as if the soul in its fullness did not sometimes overflow into the most barren metaphors, since no one can ever tell the precise measure of his own needs, of his own ideas, of his own pain, and human language is like a cracked kettledrum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity.
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary (1856)
Translated by Margaret Mauldon
Posted at 8.19 am in /Quotes
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