«chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d’un poète.»1
– Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part III, Chap. 6
1 Every lawyer carries inside him the debris of a poet.
Debris
«chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d’un poète.»9 Comments »
eric wrote @
It comes from a passage where Bovary’s lover, Léon Dupuis, decides to leave her:
“So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every lawyer bears within him the debris of a poet.”
For me, it captures the soul-crushing nature of the process of becoming a lawyer — not so much that lawyers are frustrated (but still aspiring) poets, but that their poetic affinities have been demolished and are carried only as dead weight.
This is, perhaps, a grim view for someone about to embark on a career training young people to be lawyers. I have all sorts of thoughts on that score, which I hope to discuss here over time.
eric wrote @
P.S. There is evidently a French-Canadian poet named Léon Guy Dupuis. I don’t know whether the name is merely a coincidence or a referential nom de plume.
Tony wrote @
Thank you for the explanation, Eric.
I can’t myself see anything more poetic-affinity-crushing about legal training than there is about learning to be an accountant or joining the Marines, but clearly your inside knowledge has led youn to think otherwise.
eric wrote @
Well, I’m sure you’re right. Though my suspicion is that most people who become accountants or join the Marines never had any poetic affinity to begin with.
5-7-5 « Debris wrote @
[...] Just the thing for helping me piece back together the debris of my own inner poet. [...]
140 syllables of Debris « Debris wrote @
[...] syllables of Debris Posted on December 19, 2007 by eric Like every lawyer, I carry inside me the debris of a poet. Tony, host of the always-edifying Other Men’s [...]
Dan wrote @
Yes, Leon is a notary/lawyer, but I don’t think Flaubert is singling out that profession in particular. According to Nabokov (in his essay on Madame Bovary contained in the collection “Essays on Literature”),Flaubert uses the word “bourgeois” in the sense of a middling person, someone who works for a living and works to put away some money to carve out his insignificant niche in the civilized world. Flaubert is, then, not looking down on lawyers in particular, though I’m sure he had little love for them, but on everyone with no ambition, no drive to experience the world beyond the pre-set conditions of existence.
That said, I’m thinking about applying to law school now and this line has been running through my head for a month and a half and is particularly appropriate for anyone looking into a legal profession.
I do, however, think that one can hold on to passion, a desire to experience life, and a desire to interact meaningfully and uniquely with the world and the people in it, while maneuvering through something like law school. Or at least I hope so!
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What does this mean? That every lawyer is a poet manqué? If so, it makes no sense.