Sentimental Education; Or, The History of a Young Man. Volume 1
Sentimental Education; Or, The History of a Young Man. Volume 1
On a boat journey home from Paris, a young law student catches sight of a dark-haired woman across the deck. It is the beginning of an obsession that will consume the next twenty years of his life. Frédéric Moreau will never possess Madame Arnoux, will never quite abandon her, will let everything else slip away while he chases the ghost of that first glimpse. Based on Flaubert's own devastating youthful passion, Sentimental Education is the unsparing portrait of a man who mistakes longing for living. As Frédéric circles around the married Arnoux, befriends her husband, drifts through revolutions and business schemes and affairs that mean nothing, the novel asks what happens to a generation that believed in feeling above all else. The result is both a heartbreak of a love story and a ruthless diagnosis of a certain kind of modern soul: the one who spends his life waiting for life to begin.
Editions
X-Ray
“It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.””
— Gustave Flaubert
“Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.””
— Gustave Flaubert
“The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go to a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!””
— Gustave Flaubert
“There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.””
— Gustave Flaubert
“And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.””
— Gustave Flaubert
“I'm the sort of man who's doomed to be a failure and I'll go to my grave without ever knowing whether I was real gold or just tinsel!””
— Gustave Flaubert
“While there's life there's hope.””
— Gustave Flaubert
“Never had he beheld such a magnificent brown skin, so entrancing a figure, such dainty, transparent fingers. He stood gazing in wonder at her work-basket as if it was something extraordinary. What was her name? Where did she live and what sort of life did she lead? What was her past? He wanted to know what furniture she had in her bedroom, the dresses she wore, the people she knew; even his physical desire for her gave way to a deeper yearning, a boundless, aching curiosity.””
— Gustave Flaubert
“Besides, she had just reached the autumnal period of womanhood, in which reflection is combined with tenderness, in which the beginning of maturity colours the face with a more intense flame, when strength of feeling mingles with experience of life, and when, having completely expanded, the entire being overflows with a richness in unison with its beauty. Never had she possessed more sweetness, more leniency. Secure in the thought that she would not err, she abandoned herself to a sentiment which seemed to her justified by her sorrows. And, moreover, it was so innocent and fresh! What an abyss lay between the coarseness of Arnoux and the adoration of Frederick!””
— Gustave Flaubert
