It’s a technique

Often I am horrified myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles' sword over our heads.

Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary - 1856


Leaping gracefully from Gustave Flaubert to Rachel Reeves, we might remind ourselves that her forthcoming Budget is intended to be a Damocles' sword generating a mild sense of unease then a temporary sense of escape when it finally fails to fall.

Afterwards, life is a little worse than it need be but it trundles on with Damocles' sword still suspended over us, doing its job. 

Government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that rules us... yes it's still absurd and it still rules us.

It’s a technique.

The exact idea of things

Hussonnet was not amusing. By dint of writing every day on all sorts of subjects, reading many newspapers, listening to a great number of discussions, and uttering paradoxes for the purpose of dazzling people, he had in the end lost the exact idea of things, blinding himself with his own feeble fireworks.

Gustave Flaubert - Sentimental Education (1869)


This is pretty much what goes on now if people aren’t selective enough when they look to the media for information. Feeble fireworks rather than adequate information is what they get. Millions still watching the BBC on a regular basis suggests those millions aren’t selective enough and have probably lost the exact idea of things. Not that there are good reasons to assume they have a powerful desire for the exact idea of anything.

Complexity and big media don’t mix. Big media outfits don’t put in the work and money required to untangle complexity, they don’t want to pay for the expertise and effort. It is unsurprising that what we so often see is lying by omission. Beyond the headline, stories often peter out into minimal effort, padded out with conjecture, gossip a few quotes and some stock images.

A good example occurred in the early days of the US presidential election where Donald Trump claimed that the election of Joe Biden was fraudulent. I recall an online BBC response which claimed that Trump’s allegation was false without explaining that this was an editorial opinion, not something the BBC knew.

The BBC response was too quick, it was too early to know one way or the other and probably still is. The issue was too incomplete and complex for definitive analysis to have been done, but big media and complexity don’t mix.

Like the perfume of a mummy

Royal residences have attached to them a peculiar kind of melancholy, due, no doubt, to their dimensions being much too large for the limited number of guests entertained within them, to the silence which one feels astonished to find in them after so many flourishes of trumpets, to the immobility of their luxurious furniture, which attests by the aspect of age and decay it gradually assumes the transitory character of dynasties, the eternal wretchedness of all things; and this exhalation of the centuries, enervating and funereal, like the perfume of a mummy, makes itself felt even in untutored brains.

Gustave Flaubert - Sentimental Education (1869)


Not only royal residences, but many of the National Trust’s stately homes too. They have that peculiar kind of melancholy which seems determined to tell us that gilded excess cannot endure for long.

It can be hard work wandering round a stately home, trying to bring history to the foreground while battling against an enervating and funereal ambience. The impression isn’t something the National Trust manages to dispel with much success.

Its determination to be politically correct merely makes the situation worse, as the National Trust itself gradually assumes the transitory character of dynasties.

Off to Davos

source

His robust pride prevented him from experiencing any discouragement, but he was always irritated, and in that state of exaltation, at the same time factitious and natural, which is characteristic of comedians.

Gustave Flaubert - Sentimental Education (1869)

Salammbô

Salammbô by Alfons Mucha (1896)
from Wikipedia

I recently finished Gustave Flaubert’s novel Salammbô published in 1862. The only other Flaubert novel I’ve ever read is, inevitably, Madame Bovary. Salammbô is not at all like Madame Bovary.

Wikipedia describes it as largely an exercise in sensuous and violent exoticism which is about right. It is set in Carthage during the Mercenary Revolt triggered when Carthage failed to pay its mercenaries after the First Punic War.

Flaubert researched the period in great detail, using Polybius as his main source and the novel simply oozes fascinating detail. It almost makes one want to rush off and imbibe the history of this exotic city.

The main characters are Salammbô herself, a fictitious Carthaginian priestess, her father Hamilcar the Carthaginian general and father of Hannibal, plus two mercenary leaders Matho and Spendius.

While reading the book I had to look up what Dickens was publishing at the time - by way of a cultural comparison. It turned out to be the serialised version of Great Expectations completed in 1861, highlighting the vast gulf between Salammbô and Dickens' typically sentimental tale.

A single example of the exoticism in Salammbô will probably suffice. It concerns Hanno, a rich Carthaginian general suffering from an incurable and highly unpleasant skin disease :-

From time to time he would rub his limbs with his aloe-wood spatula, or perhaps he would break off to drink a ptisan made of the ashes of a weasel and asparagus boiled in vinegar from a silver cup handed to him by a slave; then he would wipe his lips with a scarlet napkin and resume:

For me, a key feature of this impressive work is its depiction of an ancient yet complex society with its tangled themes of casual violence, abject superstitions and sensuous decadence amid the most grotesque inequalities.

Crucifixion and torture are commonplace yet almost understandable in a society driven by a constant, nagging fear of bloody conquest where the victor takes all and the vanquished may count themselves lucky if merely killed quickly with a clean sword thrust.

Even dogs howl at their peril, with no RSPCA to look after their canine rights.

He awoke her before daylight. The dog was howling. The slave went up to it quietly, and struck off its head with a single blow of his dagger. Then he rubbed the horses' nostrils with blood to revive them.

At one point, the mercenaries' siege of Carthage, the situation becomes so dire that the citizens resort to sacrificing children, burning them alive within a huge hollow brass effigy of the Baal Moloch.

Then the faithful came into the passages, dragging their children, who clung to them; and they beat them in order to make them let go, and handed them over to the men in red.

The instrument-players sometimes stopped through exhaustion; then the cries of the mothers might be heard, and the frizzling of the fat as it fell upon the coals.

Far removed from the death of Little Nell isn't it?

In the end, Hamilcar is victorious. After a series of skirmishes, sieges and battles such as the grisly Battle of "The Saw", Matho ends up captured and tortured to death while Spendius is crucified. The mercenary army is destroyed, its remnants no longer of any account. For the Carthaginians, Moloch has been satisfied. 

For now.

When night had fallen yellow-haired dogs, those unclean beasts which followed the armies, came quite softly into the midst of the Barbarians. At first they licked the clots of blood on the still tepid stumps; and soon they began to devour the corpses, biting into the stomachs first of all.