Reviews for Flight into Egypt

The average rating for Flight into Egypt based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-07-23 00:00:00 Jeffrey Pomfret Francis Steegmuller (translator and editor), probably doesn't take enough credit for this book - and Flaubert probably too much. In 1949/50 Gustave Flaubert (at the time 27) and Maxime Du Camp (a little younger, I think) made their grand tour of Egypt, before heading on to Beirut, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece and Italy. Flaubert kept a diary, which he embelished a number of years later, filling on some detail. He also writes letters, mostly to his mother, but also to a friend, Louis Bouilhet. From these, and from Du Camp's book 'Le Nil, Egypte et Nubie' and his 'Notes de voyage', Steegmuller pulls together a narrative and a commentary for this trip. Flaubert is a strange fellow. At times despondent, offering few words per day, other times expounding about a place or a person. In his diary, and in letters to his friend, he is (hilariously) crass and talks of his times with the many prostitutes he engages, even a baths attendant boy (when in Rome...). I found it a very entertaining read. It offers a number of factors of interest / amusement: It has historical context. In 1849/50 many of the Egyptian sites were more readily accessible to tourists, but also more inaccessible as they had not be excavated properly - for example Abu Simbel, which during their visit, is under many metres of sand, buried up to the chin. Some of the descriptions were great for comparison to my travels there (about 1995). Flaubert also offers a few pearls of wisdom - When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow. A thirdly, his ridiculous and hilarious writing: This is indeed a funny country. Yesterday, for example, we were in a cafe which is one of the best in Cairo, and there were, at the same time as ourselves, inside, a donkey shitting, and a gentleman who was pissing in a corner. No one finds that odd; no one says anything. and ....A week ago I saw a monkey in the street jump on a donkey and try to jack him off - the donkey brayed and kicked, the monkey's owner shouted, the monkey itself squealed - apart from two or three children who laughed and me who found it very funny, no one paid any attention. When I described this to M. Belin, the secretary at the consulate, he told me of seeing an ostrich trying to violate a donkey. Max himself jacked off the other day in a deserted section among some ruins and said it was very good. Enough lubricities. Hilarious. Albeit still somewhat disjointed. Probably 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-18 00:00:00 Eron Allen “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.