Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Ne Plus Ultra
Last Saturday (December 12) was Flaubert's birthday. Garrison Keillor, in The Writer's Almanac for that day, noted the anniversary and quoted Flaubert as having said:
Edgar Degas, Portrait of Edmond Duranty
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I can imagine nothing in the world preferable to a nice, well-heated room, with the books one loves and the leisure one wants.I always want to see chapter, verse, and the original language, which I found in a letter from Flaubert to Emmanuel Vasse (January 1845):
Je ne vois pas qu'il y ait au monde rien de préférable pour moi à une bonne chambre bien chauffée, avec les livres qu'on aime et tout le loisir désiré.Keillor slightly truncated Francis Steegmuller's translation:
For me I can imagine nothing in the world preferable to a nice, well heated room, with the books one loves and the leisure one wants.Literally, "all the leisure one wants." I'm sitting in such a room right now, with some leisure, but not all I want.
