"Darwin? Descending from the monkey." You can find many laconical statements like this in the 950 entries of the "Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (commonplaces)". The "Dictionaire de Idées Reçues" has been published as an appendix of Flaubert's final novel "Bouvard et Pécuchet", 1881, one year after the death of Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). To the same (Darwinism-) topic the ironical German author Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) noticed: "After the human being comes the monkey (in the system of zoology) - after a broad ravine. But if one should want to organize the animals with regards not on their intellect's but on their bliss and cosiness -- then some people would reach a position under the miller donkeys and hounds."
Lichtenberg's sentences needed more words than Flaubert's. Lichtenberg wrote a little bit didactically and cordially: "The health prefers to see the body dancing more than writing". Flaubert noticed with sarkasm on dancing: "One does not dance today any more; one marches, winds himself etc. "
To the topic "NOVEL" Flaubert made the comment: "Novels ruin the masses. However there are novels for example which are written with the top of a scalpel: Madam Bovary." Here Flaubert becomes trivial, his point of view becomes dull, because he tries to support his own major work. - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) wrote in his comparable "Devil's Dictionary", 1906: "The former art of the novel is everywhere dead already -- unless in Russia where this art is still new. Peace to his ashes -- it still sells well."
Flaubert's (1821-1880) sarcasm in this respect occupies between Lichtenberg (1742-1799) and Bierce (1842-1914) a kind of middle consciousness.
This dictionary makes a parody on the tone of some pompous omniscience other works of his time.
Flaubert probably died of syphilis which he had contracted at his Orient journeys. His satirical statement (with a hidden sort of double irony - back-fighting against the author): "Syphilis? Everyone is more or less affected by..." -- not a quite correct medicine sociologically definition - but one with a high self comfort effect, straightly consoling.
Flaubert makes his jokes on the usual medical dictionaries - and on the fear to die.
Flaubert liked to mock against himself permanently: "ARTISTS. All charlatans. Boast of their disinterestedness (old-fashioned). Express astonishment that they dress like everybody else (old-fashioned). They earn insane amounts, but fritter it all away. Often asked to dine out. A woman artist cannot be anything but a whore."
If you read Flaubert quietly and stopping sometimes to think it over, you have the chance to learn how to make relative your own opinions...
