Symbolism of Flaubert’s Stuffed Parrot in Un coeur simple and Woolf's "cosmogony" in her Letters (original) (raw)

In “On Re-reading Novels,” Woolf takes Flaubert’s Un coeur simple as an example in order to show that “the ‘book itself’ is not form which you see, but emotion which you feel” (E VI, 427). She states that two intense sentences — “[a] sudden intensity of phrase” — in Flaubert’s tale, which function as “a flash of understanding” or “these moments of understanding”, not only suggest his two “different intention[s]” in this tale but also control the reader’s observations in their reading (E VI, 426). Woolf’s remarks on the suggestive and symbolic meanings of these two sentences in Flaubert’s tale is reminiscent of her own statement in a letter written on 25 August 1929 to Hugh Walpole: “but I have a cosmogony, nevertheless,—indeed all the more; and it is of the highest importance that I should be able to make you exist there, somehow, tangibly, visibly; recognisable to me, though not perhaps to yourself” (L IV, 84). As her letters, essays and diaries show, Woolf possesses an admiration for Flaubert’s writing. Accordingly, my paper aims to first clarify what Woolf means in the word, “cosmogony” in her letter, then examine the relation between this “cosmogony” and affection, as well as explore the similar symbolism of Félicité’s stuffed parrot and Woolf’s “cosmogony” or the device of symbolism that Woolf herself as a writer “inherits, bends to [her] purpose, models anew, or invents for [herself]” (E VI, 430) from this French writer, as she indicates in the conclusion of this essay. The discussion will focus on Woolf’s letters, in particular, some of her letters to Violet Dickinson, Jacques Raverat, Vita Sackville-West, as well as Ethel Smyth.