Flaubert in Egypt Book

“Women of Algiers” is one of my favorite paintings, but there is no denying that it depicts harem as nothing more than a bordello. Same with Flaubert: for him, Egypt is nothing more than a bordello. The dude never married, and he loved visiting prostitutes. Here are his words:

“I love prostitution, and for itself, too, quite apart from its carnal aspects. My heart begins to pound every time I see one of those women in low-cut dresses walking under the lamplight in the rain […]. The idea of prostitution is a meeting place of so many elements – lust, bitterness, complete absence of human contact [? color me confused], muscular frenzy, the clink of gold – that to peer into it deeply makes one reel. One learns so many things in a brothel, and feels such sadness, and dreams so longingly of love!…”

Fair enough. In Egypt, he screws people left and right, boys, girls, whoever is available. (Not sure about camels, but he mentions them so many times that I got suspicious.) He pays for it not only in gold, but in venereal diseases too, later on – which makes me wonder what happened to the people he slept with, before and after. It’s a quite frightful thought. You look at all those highly civilized folks from European countries – engineers, archaeologists, writers, photographers, reporters, intellectuals of all sorts, what have you – well-to-do white men, most of them – and see walking and talking biological hazard, whose levels of restraint, responsibility and compassion are nearing zero.

Such was the culture, such were the times, they were conditioned from the cradle to this sort of entitlement, yeah, I know, that’s right – they were. Still, in every era, every place, there were people of privilege, as well as common people, who thought differently and saw behind the importance of their own WANT. Sadly, Flaubert is not one of them.

“I buy the hair of two women, together with their hair-ornaments. The women being shorn weep, but their husbands, who do the shearing, make ten piastres per head. As we are about to leave, a man comes up and offers us another head of hair, which Max buys. This must have been distressing to the poor women, who seem to prize their hair greatly.”

You don’t say?…

He doesn’t give a crap about the ubiquitous slavery, either. Mentality of the times, white man’s burden, romanticism, or perhaps putting too big a strain on the conventional, not-too-brilliant intelligence?

“All these faces are calm, nothing irritated in their expression – brutes take these things [that’s slavery] as a matter of course.”

A very curious, quaint little book.