Two more remarks on Flaubert's style: 4) Flaubert's paragraphs often begin with a pronoun (il, elle), but many times the reader is uncertain of which character is indicated by it until he specifies it with proper nouns in the middle of the paragraph. Of course we'll soon get accustomed to this stylistic trick, but the point is that however we get used to it, pronouns are still left undetermined and suspended for a moment, thus forcing us to read them in multiple ways simultaneously until we decipher them correctly in each act of reading that is therefore always hypothetical and experimental at the begining (certainty comes to us only in the middle and we have to begin with doubts); 5) as Proust points out, Flaubert uses the imperfect and simple past tense in quite distinct ways, so that different moods and colors are to be generated in the mind of the reader. The former implies the duration of a state (ex. I was reading a book), while the latter indicates the instantaneous act (ex. I finished reading a book). And more interestingly, these two different past tenses introduce an uneven pace and rhythm into the text. Indeed, the length of Flaubert's paragraphs vary from a few words to several sentences, and shorter paragraphs tend to use the simple past, as if punctuating the flow of narration and making it very crisp and angular. In this respect Flaubert's style is very different from Standhal's: the latter flows very elegantly and evenly, without weird interruptions. I'm tempted to compare Standhal's text to Mozart's unforceful elegance, while relating Flaubert's to Haydn's humorous irony. Flaubert's style is not smooth, not proportionate; it's rather rugged and unbalanced; what is remarkable here is that this seeming awkwardness in Flaubert is a product of tremendous refinement and elaboration (and probably this is where Flaubert's aesthetic distinguishes itself from that of his contemporary, Baudelaire whose vocabulary--especially in poetry--is, it seems to me, still within the traditional beauty of the French language and writing). In various realms of modernism, from painting to music to literature, we can observe this sort of aesthetics of "ugliness" and "uncomfortable." For instance, refined primitiveness and deliberate emptiness in Mahler's music, which is never found in Richard Strauss whose music is always rich and sonorous, where the traditional ratio of low-middle-high notes and string-wind-brass-percussion instruments is amplified to an ultimate degree, but always within the limit and without transgressions. Anyway, I think it's very interesting that this ironic elaboration of the textual surface (form) is as it were in disharmony with the romantic naivete of Flaubertian characters (content). Aesthetic representation of banality and mediocrity, which is, paradoxically, noble and sublime.
