La tentation de saint Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony) Book

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 Devil, and he spent most of the rest of his life writing and rewriting it; the final version came out nearly thirty years later, only a few years before his death.

It's a poetic dream, and it's one of the weirdest things I've ever read. It took me a while to get into it. At first, I think I was expecting it to make sense in an obvious way, which it doesn't. About halfway through, I found that just reading it, appreciating the sound and the images, was enjoyable. Flaubert succeeds in capturing the logic of a dream, and I also started believing in his picture of Anthony's mind. When you're a saint, you spend most of your time thinking about God and trying to get closer to Him. But you also think about many other things, and often you aren't sure what brings you closer to God, and what is just pride and lust in disguise.

It's natural to compare with T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, which could have been partially inspired by Flaubert's book. In Eliot's version, it's usually pretty clear when Thomas is being tempted. In Flaubert, it often isn't clear at all. Several times, he believed, and I believed too, that Jesus was speaking to him, and then it turned out to be the Devil in one of his many subtle forms. And these were really good temptations. Sex keeps coming up, and the sexy bits are very sexy. When the Devil starts pointing out all the mistakes and inconsistencies in Holy Writ, he doesn't pull his punches. You can feel Anthony's pain as he wonders how to reconcile this with his faith that the Bible is God's word. The Devil explains a host of enticing heresies, and they are so enticing that even commentators who have spent years thinking about this book aren't sure. There's a passage which explains the mystical nature of the Word, and one commentator calls it "deep poetic truth"; another says it's clever but not serious. I think that's absolutely right. Anthony is meant to be confused, and we're meant to be confused with him.

I do not myself believe in God, but I was moved by this portrayal of the religious world-view from the inside. Right now, religion is being cheapened by people who cynically use it to achieve their worldly ends. Gustave Flaubert, thank you for reminding me that there's more to it than the Christian Right, and for trying to show us the beauty and terror of God's true form. It's an impossible task, but I think you got as close as any mortal is likely to come.