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Title: Salammbo (Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, A.J. Krailsheimer ISBN: 0-14-044328-2 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: September, 1977 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A stirring mixture of war and myth
Comment: Flaubert's _Salammbo_ is an often stirring mixture and intertwining of the history of the Punic Wars and of the myths held by the people of ancient Carthage. The novel begins and ends with a banquet held in the gardens of Hamilcar, the Carthaginian leader. The mercenaries are feasting in these gardens at the beginning and a wedding feast is being held at the end, with an important leader of the Barbarians as "the special guest of honor."
The book describes in great, often gory detail the horrors and the carnage of war. The gods must be appeased if there is no food or if the soldiers are dying of thirst. These rituals include children being sacrificed with, perhaps, Hamilcar's son being one of the victims. Cannibilism is an alternative
to mass starvation. Torture is the sport of kings and the masses alike.
In the middle of all these goings on is Hamilcar's daughter, the lovely and exotically beautiful Salammbo. Her conniving to recapture the Zaimph from Matho, the Libyan leader of the Barbarians, includes some of the most erotic passage in 19th century literature. Her pet serpent figures very prominently in these scenes. A priest advises Salammbo that without reobtaining the Zaimph, an important holy relic in their possession, Carthage is doomed to defeat.
Having previously read Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_ and _Sentimental Education_, I believed them to be totally different from _Salammbo_, the former two being romantic melodramas and the latter a historic war novel. This is incorrect. All three novels focus on a major female character, who for better or for worse, forms key relationships, romantic or otherwise, with the novels' lead male characters, and which ultimately determine the shape and the final outcome of each of these books. "All is fair in love and war" may be a cliche, but in _Salammbo_ it becomes the ultimate truth.
Rating: 4
Summary: for guys
Comment: a book for guys who likes books -- a contradiction? perhaps, but it's all here: gratuitous violence and sex. forget hollywood, forget your video games, forget gansta rap, forget cutting edge alternative this and that, it's all here (flaubert's salammbo). truly, i kid not.
Rating: 3
Summary: La Vie Ennuyeuse
Comment: "Delenda est Carthago! Delenda est Carthago!"("Carthage must be destroyed!") were some of the best-remembered words of Marcus Porcius Cato, a senator of Rome during the second century BC. He got his wish at the end of the Third Punic War, when Carthage effectively ceased to exist. I used to feel a certain sympathy for the Carthaginians. Then I read Salammbo.
I first encountered this novel at the impressionable age of 13, and had no idea what to make of it. I had to gain a lot more knowledge (and cynicism) before I could approach it with anything but nausea. It is not a pretty book, nor do the actions of the protagonists make much sense, until one takes them in the context of Flaubert. He did do a good deal of historical research, but he was, as A.J. Krailsheimer points out in the introduction, also an enthusiastic student of de Sade. This novel is not simply about violence (although the reader will need hip-waders to get through the gore); it is about the torture of futility. It brims with sensual enticements, only to see every effort come to disaster. Even Salammbo herself is doomed by the very thing she wants most: she only wishes to become an initiate of Tanit, but her wish leads to her downfall.
All that said, I had some fairly significant troubles with the plot, and that started in the very first chapter. The soldiers are rioting through the garden, and Salammbo comes out of her room to scold them (in tongues) for destroying her pet fish. Why, I said to myself, does a father who wants to marry his daughter off well leave her without guards in a place where a bunch of drunken mercenaries can get at her? Once I started reading critically, things went downhill from there. The characters seem to have no control over what happens to them, so they struggle on through an atmosphere of dreamy, cynical futility until the bloody finale. I kept wanting to give someone, preferably Flaubert, a swift kick in the pants.
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Title: Bouvard and Pecuchet (The Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, Alban J. Krailsheimer ISBN: 0140443207 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1976 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Modern Library Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, Lafcadio Hearn, Michel Foucault, Marshall C. Olds ISBN: 0375759123 Publisher: Princeton Review Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: A Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man by Gustave Flaubert, Douglas Parmee ISBN: 0192836226 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: The Charterhouse of Parma (Oxford World's Classics) by Stendhal, Margaret Mauldon, Roger Pearson ISBN: 0192839578 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Princesse De Cleves (Penguin Classics) by Madame De Lafayette, Walter J. Cobb, Madame de Lafayette, Madame De La Fayette, Madame De Lafayette ISBN: 0140445870 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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