Excerpt from November
“I studied in books the passions that I wished to have had myself. For me, human life revolved on two or three words, around which everything else turned like satellites around their planets. Thus I had peopled my infinite with a quantity of golden suns: in my head love-stories were set beside noble revolutions, grand passions fronted great crimes; I dreamed at once of the starry nights of tropical lands and the sack of burning cities, the lianas of virgin forests and the pomp of lost monarchies; of tombs and of cradles; the murmur of the stream among the reeds, the cooing of the turtles in the dovecotes, the myrtle woods and the scent of aloes, the clash of sword on breastplate, prancing horses, shining gold, the glitter of life, the agonies of despair, all these I contemplated with the same wide-mouthed stare, as if they were an ant-heap stirring at my feet. But over this life, so active on the surface, so resonant of varied cries, there mounted an immense bitterness that was its synthesis and its irony.”
-Gustave Flaubert
