"I carry with me the melancholy of the barbaric races, with their instincts of migration, and their innate distaste of life, which forced them to quit their homes in order to escape from themselves. They loved the sun, all those barbarians who came to die in Italy; they had a frenzied aspiration toward the light, toward the blue skies, toward an ardent existence..." -- Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert died on this date in 1880. While most famous for his novel, Madame Bovary, and dubbed "The Father of French Literary Realism", Gustave nonetheless had a strong influence on the early formation of sword-and-sorcery.

Flaubert was born in Rouen, France of Norman stock in 1821. In his twenties and thirties, he was tall and athletic. During that period, Gustave traveled to the wilds of Celtic Brittany, as well as Corsica, the Barbary Coast, Egypt, the Levant, Turkey and Greece. During that same period, Gustave--a man of strong appetites and an aversion to marriage--contracted syphilis, which very likely helped shorten his life.

In 1838 Flaubert published Memoirs of a Madman, but it was the publication of Madame Bovary in 1857 which brought him worldwide success and notoriety. While Madame Bovary remains the best-known of Gustave's novels, in later years he felt that his novels Salammbo and The Temptation of Saint Anthony deserved the greater accolades. Those two novels are what concern us here.

Salammbo--published in 1862--is loosely based upon the events following the First Punic War. The Carthaginians had lost their war with Rome and then decided to stiff the mercenaries who had fought for them. Predictably, mayhem and atrocities ensued during what has been dubbed the "Mercenary War".

Mucha’s classic painting for Salammbo. — Mucha’s classic painting for *Salammbo*.

Historically, the ringleaders on the mercenary side were Mathos, a respected Berber warrior, and Spendius, an escaped slave of the Carthaginians. In Salammbo, Flaubert calls Mathos "Matho" throughout and refers to him as a "Lybian". Gustave also provides the name of Hamilcar Barca's third daughter, whose name is unknown to history: Salammbo. It is Salammbo, and Matho's raging desire for her, which drives much of Flaubert's novel.

Despite his reputation for "literary realism", Flaubert's novel is replete with color and rich descriptions. Here is a short example from early in the novel, describing the mercenaries at a feast:

"Men of all nations were there, Ligurians, Lusitanians, Balearians, Negroes, and fugitives from Rome. Beside the heavy Dorian dialect were audible the resonant Celtic syllables rattling like chariots of war, while Ionian terminations conflicted with consonants of the desert as harsh as the jackal's cry."

Flaubert could also write good action scenes, at least by nineteenth century standards. In the quote below, a Gaulish mercenary has just insulted the beauteous and nobly-born Salammbo. The Numidian chieftain, Narr' Havas--blaming the entire situation on Matho--takes drastic action:

"[The Gaul] had not finished when Narr' Havas, with a bound, drew a javelin from his girdle, and, leaning his right foot upon the edge of the table, hurled it against Matho.
The javelin whistled among the cups, and piercing the Lybian's arm, pinned it so firmly to the cloth, that the shaft quivered in the air.
Matho quickly plucked it out; but he was weaponless and naked; at last he lifted the over-laden table with both arms, and flung it against Narr' Havas into the very centre of the crowd that rushed between them. The soldiers and Numidians pressed together so closely that they were unable to draw their swords. Matho advanced dealing great blows with his head. When he raised it, Narr' Havas had disappeared."

Matho does not relent in his pursuit of Salammbo's fine ass. As I said above, atrocities and mayhem--on both sides--ensue. According to history, neither side in the conflict had the right of it. Polybius, our main source, was a Greek. The Greeks held grudges against both the Carthaginians and the Romans, so we can figure that his account is probably on the even-handed side. Also, the whole affair sounds very tragically plausible. Things go from bad to worse more often than we like to think about.

Let's take care of the elephant in the room--or would it be the Elephant in the Tower? Robert E. Howard very likely never read Salammbo and quite possibly never read anything from Flaubert whatsoever. In his article, "Conan and Matho", L. Sprague de Camp tries to make the case for REH reading Salammbo by citing one paragraph from Salammbo and then one paragraph from "The God in the Bowl".

Spraguey fails to take into account the fact that Howard had ample opportunity to mention Flaubert and Salammbo to Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith during their extensive correspondences. Both men were Flaubert fans--see below--and, yet, Bob never saw fit to let them know that he loved Salammbo as well. As John Maddox Roberts once said, "Salammbo is one of those novels that you would think REH should have read, but probably didn't."

Anyone who doubts what I say, feel free to check out the "F" section of the "REH Bookshelf" here. No Flaubert.

On the other hand, Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber are both known to have been fans of Salammbo. In fact, Flaubert's novel had some impact on the creation of a certain grey-clad rogueish swordsman:

"As for the Gray Mouser, one can point out faint similarities to Loki, Peer Gynt, François Villon, Etzel Andergast in Wassermann’s Kerkhoven trilogy, Spendius in Flaubert’s Salammbo..." -- Fritz Leiber

In regard to the influence of Salammbo on Klarkash-Ton, I would point to the extravagant conte cruel atmosphere of "The Dark Eidolon". Beckford's Vathek would also be a likely influence upon that CAS classic, but I certainly see Salammbo as well. It's a pity that Clark--who translated both Beckford and Baudelaire from the French--never did his own translation of Salammbo.

Before we move on, here's an excerpt from David Maclaine's excellent and concise review of Salammbo:

"The story drips in violence and casual cruelty: armies are slaughtered wholesale in ambush, children are sacrificed to the fires of Moloch, captured soldiers are driven to stab their own friends to death, and every form of execution gets a scene as the story reaches its climax, in which victims are crucified, trampled by elephants, and, in the final pages, suffer a long, bloody passage through a murderous mob. Readers who want to gaze on scenes of vanished splendor, tinged with unbearable horror, will be happy to follow Flaubert into an incredible lost world."

Read the full review here.

A good etext of Salammbo can be found here.

Were Kuttner or Moore fans of Salammbo? I would guess "no" for the former and a "maybe" for the latter.

The other Flaubert "novel" we need to look at is The Temptation of Saint Anthony. Gustave worked on it for most of his adult life and it was published in 1874, not long before he died. Flaubert wrote it in the form of a play, in which Saint Anthony is visited during the course of a single night by various supernatural entities, all trying to destroy his faith. To paraphrase Lovecraft, it is a phantasmagorical saraband of weirdness.

Here is Ormuzd, speaking of Mithra:

"Mithra, my son, dwelt in heavens inaccessible. There he received souls, from thence did he send them forth; and he arose each morning to pour forth the abundance of his riches."

Here is Isis, speaking of Egypt and Osiris:

"Egypt extended, below us, monumental and awful, long-shaped like the corridor of a temple; with obelisks on the right, pyramids on the left, and its labyrinth in the midst. And everywhere were avenues of monsters, forests of columns, massive pylons flanking gates summit-crowned with the mysterious globe—the globe of the world, between two wings. (...)

"And that Egypt, vaster than the Egypt of the living, extended beneath the earth.

"Thither one descended by dark stairways leading into halls where were represented the joys of the good, the tortures of the wicked, all that passes in the third and invisible world. Ranged along the wall the dead in their painted coffins awaited their turn; and the soul, exempted from migrations, continued its heavy slumber until the awakening into a new life."

Long before I noticed it, others had pointed out the connections and similarities between The Temptation of Saint Anthony and Clark Ashton Smith's epic poem, "The Hashish-Eater". Both employ the same sensory assault and panorama of non-earthly revelations.

Lovecraft, in his landmark essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" said:

"Gustave Flaubert ably continued the tradition of Gautier in orgies of poetic phantasy like The Temptation of St. Anthony."

A fine translation of “Saint Anthony” by Lafcadio Hearn—another author admired by CAS—with a good biographical introduction by Elizabeth Bisland, can be found here.

With Klarkash-Ton and Fritz in his corner, Flaubert is a strong contender for a Forefather slot. However, there is also L. Sprague de Camp, the originator of the third branch of S&S. LSdC was definitely a fan of Salammbo. As he said in "Conan and Matho":

"[I]f you want a story of violent events, told in the grand manner, and a picture of an ancient world where everything is larger and more brilliantly colored than life...then here is the story for you."

*As a postscript… Several days after I posted my original article, S&S author, Scott Oden, had these words in regard to Flaubert:

“I made great use of Flaubert's Egyptian diaries while writing The Lion of Cairo. He was one of my main sources for local detail and color. I've read his Egyptian diaries and Salammbo. Gave Madame Bovary a hard pass.”

I informed Scott that nobody I hang with would judge him harshly for having better things to do than read Madame Bovary. Things like reading Salammbo and Flaubert’s Egyptian diaries, for instance. In addition, I recently learned that S&S powerhouse, Schuyler Hernstrom, is also a Flaubert fan. Both authors are living proof that Flaubert continues to influence sword and sorcery right up into the twenty-first century.

Repose in paix, Gustave.

This blog entry is dedicated to my friend, Miguel Martins. He was a scholar of Sword and Sorcery and a fan of Gustave Flaubert. Repose in paix.

Other installments in the "Forefathers" series:

Sword and Sorcery: The First Dynasty