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The Temptation of St. Anthony

Gustave Flaubert

Book Overview: 

An extraordinary work of the aesthetic imagination, cast in the form of a psycho-drama detailing the events of one night in the life of the aged hermit, later Saint, Anthony, in the course of which his claims to sainthood are severely tested by, among other things, Gods, Magicians, Science, Food, Monstres, Lust and Death. Beautifully translated by Lafcadio Hearn, justly celebrated for his eerie re-tellings of Japanese ghost stories and legends, it boasts equally extraordinary printworks (for those who follow the link to the Online Text) by renowned symbolist artist Odilon Redon.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .lows of pearls, jet and sapphires, is drawn tightly round her waist by a close-fitting corsage, set off with a variety of colours representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac. She wears high-heeled pattens, one of which is black and strewn with silver stars and a crescent, whilst the other is white and is covered with drops of gold, with a sun in their midst.

Her loose sleeves, garnished with emeralds and birds' plumes, exposes to view her little, rounded arms, adorned at the wrists with bracelets of ebony; and her hands, covered with rings, are terminated by nails so pointed that the ends of her fingers are almost like needles.

A chain of plate gold, passing under her chin, runs along her cheeks till it twists itself in spiral fashion around her head, over which blue powder is scattered; then, descending, it slips over her shoulders and is fastened above her bosom by a diamond scorpion, which stretches out its tongue between her breasts. From her ears ha. . . Read More

Community Reviews

Even after a century and a half The Temptation of Saint Antony continues to strike with its novelty and beauty…
It is in the Thebaïd, on the heights of a mountain, where a platform, shaped like a crescent, is surrounded by huge stones.
The Hermit’s cell occupies the background. It is built of mud and

This pandemoniac junk-shop of solitude

- Baudelaire

PRINCE AND FLAUBERT

Prince once said that if he’d begun his follow up album to Purple Rain with the kind of blazing guitar solo that concluded Purple Rain he would have had a huge hit but… he just didn’t want to do that. Too easy. So he made Around th

Brilliant and maddening...maddening and brilliant. I have not and will never read anything quite like it - a work of pure literary imagination, in the shape of a play, as St. Anthony suffers innumerable temptations that swirl across the text like visions from a nightmare. Flaubert worked on this for

Bodler je „Iskušenje Svetog Antonija” nazvao ulaskom u „tajnu odaju Floberovog uma”. Doduše, Bodler nije mogao da zna delo u celosti, već samo u vidu odlomaka objavljenih u časopisu, jer je Flober na „Iskušenju” radio 25 godina, te su mnogi, poput Bodlera, preminuli čekajući da esteta, poznat po tom

The temptation of Saint Anthony is Flaubert's entire life’s work. He had had the first idea of it in 1845, in Genoa, Italy, by watching a painting by Breughel, The Temptations of Saint Anthony. Besides, in the descriptions of the book, we find many of Breughel's paintings.
Since that time, he hasn’t

Ce livre aurait bien pu finir dans les flammes, si Flaubert avait suivi l’avis de ses amis après la lecture qu’il leur fit de son manuscrit. Fort heureusement pour nous, l’auteur n'en fit rien et, bien au contraire, retravailla son œuvre continument, si bien qu'elle devint, selon ses propres termes,

At age 24, Flaubert saw Bruegel's painting, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and decided he would turn it into a play. Like all his literary projects, he took it very seriously. He wanted to describe a third century hermit sitting on a mountain top in the Egyptian desert and being tempted by the Dev

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