Memoirs of a Madman by Gustave Flaubert summary

 

About the Author

 Gustave Flaubert  is regarded as one of the most influential French writers of the nineteenth century. He is known for his novels, short stories and plays. His narratives are known for the realistic depiction of the nineteenth century lower middle-class life in France. The novel, Madame Bovary published in 1857 is often regarded his masterpiece.

 Memoirs of a Madman is one of Flaubert's earliest writings. He was sixteen when he wrote Memoirs, It is one of his rare first person narratives. These memoirs form the Reflections of a young man.

Summary of the text

At the outset he states that there is a soul in the memoir, it may be his own soul or someone else's.   In fact he wanted to write an introspective( self examining) novel but due to his doubtfulness he could not accomplish it. Whenever he started writing the personal feelings took over the story.

The soul (his own or someone else's) managed his pen and took a complete control over his writing.  He wanted to leave everything about writing in the area of mystery and speculation. Readers can never formulate a definite conclusion. In many places readers may believe that writer has used an elevated language and deliberately used certain unclear imageries. But remember one thing, it is the mad man who has written all these pages. There should be a frequent feeling that the words go beyond the boundaries of feelings (exaggeration). It is simply because they were overburdened by the weight of the heart.

Farewell,  may your thoughts be with me.

 
But, he thinks it is foolish to go asking people the reason for their actions or their writings.  Do you know why did you open these miserable pages that are to be covered with the scribblings of a mad man. A mad man how horrifying.
And what kind of a reader are you fool or madmen. Your vanity would prefer the second one. So, yes let me ask you once again that why do you read or what is the use of a book which  is not at all instructive, nor amusing, nor chemical, nor philosophical, nor agricultural, nor elegiac, a book which gives no formula for sheep or for fleas, which does not speak of the railways, of the stock exchange, of the intimate recesses of the human heart, of dress in the Middle Ages, of God or of the Devil. But, which speaks of a Madman. In other words it's book by a fool who has been turning around in space for so many years without physically moving an inch, who cries by shedding tears and tear himself apart.

I know more than you what are you going to read . This is not a novel or drama with a fixed plan or single idea. All that he did is converted his thoughts into words.  His ideas and his memories. His impressions,  dreams, follies, everything that may pass through his thoughts and through his soul, from laughter to tears and from white to black, the sobbing that begins in the heart and is spread like paste through loud  sentences, the tears that are diluted into romantic metaphors. It weighs on him, however, to think that he shall wear out a whole packet of quills(feather used for writing in ancient times), use an entire bottle of ink. bore the reader and bore myself.

He has the habit of mocking and being in doubtfulness in his writing. There is also a sense of irony. Those who like to laugh can find out the moments of laughter or sometimes author himself brings it.

In this book you will see how we have to believe in the order of the universe, in the moral duties of man, and in the ideas of virtue and philanthropy (generosity/ humanitarianism)-the latter being a word I should like to have inscribed on my boots (when I get some) so that all people may read and learn it by heart, even those with the lowliest vision, the smallest and most crawling of bodies, the nearest to the gutter. It would, then, be wrong to see in this anything other than the distractions of a poor madman! A madman!