The temptation of St. Anthony (Flaubert)
The temptation of St. Anthony (original title: La Tentation de saint Antoine ) is a novel by Gustave Flaubert , the final version of which was published in Paris in 1874. It deals with a night in the life of the Egyptian hermit Antonius , during which he is exposed to various temptations - a topic that has often been dealt with in European art and literature since the Middle Ages .
History of origin
Flaubert completed the first version of the material in 1849, but after negative criticism from his friends Maxime Du Camp and Bouilhet and his own dissatisfaction with the text, he decided to revise it. Excerpts from his second version appeared in 1856 as a sequel story. The third and final version is significantly shorter, largely removes the classic allegorical elements (deadly sins) that had previously played a major role, and pushes back the medieval traditions of the material in favor of texts from late antiquity. In preparation, Flaubert conducted extensive source research, which shows up in the text as an overwhelming series of historical, mythological and literary facts. Although other works of Flaubert achieved greater notoriety, he named The Temptation of St. Anthony as his most important text.
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Chapters 1 + 2: Antonius - dissatisfied with his hermit existence in the Egyptian desert - remembers his youth and his role in the religious conflicts of the time. In order to distract himself from doubts about his choice of life, he opens the Bible at random places that only arouse temptations (including wealth, fame, sexuality).
Cape. 3: Antony's former pupil Hilarion appears, mocks the hypocrisy of the ascetic life and deconstructs - while Antony insists on the dogmas of the church as the only source of truth - the sometimes contradicting doctrines of faith. As a way out, Hilarion offers the freedom of research and science.
Cape. 4: Antony is confronted with a large number of Christian sects (including Manichaeans , Arians , Montanists ), all of which claim sole validity.
Cape. 5: Led by Hilarion, whose shape is gradually assuming gigantic proportions, Antony encounters religions of bygone times and other peoples, all of which rule for a limited time and then pass. At the end of the chapter, Hilarion is identified as a science and, by Antony, as the devil.
Cape. 6: Hilarion (now the devil) takes Antonius on his wings, shows him the infinity of the world and insists on the divinity of matter.
Cape. 7: In the morning hours, Antony considers taking his own life and experiences the dualism between life / lust and death as a last temptation. In the end, Antonius, overwhelmed by the spectacle of life, wants to sink into the matter himself before the face of Jesus Christ appears in the solar disk and he resumes his prayer.
worldview
Flaubert's Antonius is a passive, tearful man, dissatisfied with his fate, who can only partially resist temptation. Contrary to most earlier descriptions in Flaubert's work, images of sexuality only play a subordinate role. More important are questions of science and competing belief systems, in which Flaubert refrains from evaluating. He is more interested in working out the parallels between the teachings than a hierarchy. The apparent neutrality of the author also corresponds to the ambivalent final scene in which Antonius neither clearly surrenders to belief nor to matter.
shape
The Temptation of St. Anthony is written in dialogue form, but sometimes contains long passages that describe spatial situations and silent actions in haunting and pictorial language.
reception
After its publication, the temptation of St.Anthony was largely met with incomprehension. Above all, the lack of willpower of the saint and the equal portrayal of religions were criticized. The Russian translation suggested by Turgenev was banned as an "assassination attempt on religion".
But the structure of the work also provoked criticism. Edmond Goncourt described the then unpublished text in 1871 as undigested written notes that were not worth the effort of finding meaning. Even Paul Valéry stressed its Stückhaftigkeit and the lack of compositional unity. For Michel Foucault , due to Flaubert's extensive research, the text is primarily a library phenomenon that “exists in and through the network of what has already been written”. The incessant sequence of images and associations makes The Temptation of St. Anthony a prototype of dream literature and becomes one of the key works for symbolism.
Impact history
Odilon Redon produced three lithograph series (1888, 1889, 1896) that deal with Flaubert's work and make up a quarter of his lithographic oeuvre .
Text output
- Gustave Flaubert: The Temptation of St. Anthony . Translated from the French by Barbara and Robert Picht. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996.
- Gustave Flaubert: The Temptation of St. Anthony . Translated from the French by Hermann Lismann . Publishing house for practical art studies, Munich / Berlin / Leipzig 1921. archive.org
- Gustave Flaubert: The Temptation of St. Anthony . Translated from the French by Frederick Philip Grove . JCC Brun's Verlag, Minden 1905. archive.org
Remarks
- ^ RB Leal: The Unity of Flaubert's "Tentation de saint Antoine (1874)" . In: The Modern Language Review . Vol. 85, No. 2, Apr. 1990, p. 330.
- ↑ Claudia Müller-Ebeling: The "Temptation of St. Antonius" as a "microbial epic" . VBW, Berlin 1997, p. 88.
- ↑ Claudia Müller-Ebeling: The "Temptation of St. Antonius" as a "microbial epic" . VBW, Berlin 1997, p. 98.
- ^ RB Leal, The Unity of Flaubert's "Tentation de saint Antoine (1874)" . In: The Modern Language Review . Vol. 85, No. 2, Apr. 1990, p. 331.
- ^ Paul Valéry, La Tentation de (saint) Flaubert . In: Variétés . V, Paris 1945, p. 207.
- ↑ Michel Foucault: Afterword . In: The temptation of St. Anthony . Translated from the French by Barbara and Robert Picht. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 223.
- ↑ Claudia Müller-Ebeling: The "Temptation of St. Antonius" as a "microbial epic" . VBW, Berlin 1997, p. 18.