Beware of books

The last sentence of chapter five of Madame Bovary is a succinct expression of the engine that propels the story. It deserves to be as famous as the first sentence of Anna Karenina - Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему - or Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ..." and so forth. Flaubert writes:

"Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres."

In Geoffrey Wall's translation for Penguin Classics it is: "And Emma sought to find out exactly what was meant in real life by the words fidelity, passion, and rapture, which had seemed so fine on the pages of books." "Fidelity" here seems like a mistake.

Lydia Davis' recent translation offers: "And Emma tried to find out just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "intoxication," which had seemed so beautiful to her in books."

Books can be perilous - we know this from Paolo and Francesco in Canto V of Dante's Inferno. It was their reading of the story of Lancelot which was their dangerous path, and when they reached the part where Lancelot kissed the smiling lips of the Queen, they kissed and their fate was sealed. At the end of the canto, Dante faints from pity at this story.

Quando leggemmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.

Everything is beautiful at the ballet, as Edward Kleban's lyrics in the A Chorus Line song go, and fidelity, passion and rapture are generally "si beaux dans les livers".

Emma and Francesca are each driven by the desire to know and to experience things of which they have read. There is almost something of wanting to apply the scientific method to the world of the emotions which leads us into the world of Freud.  But more simply there is simply the desire to fully live, to experience what there is to be experienced and not let life pass by shut off from the big experiences.