Flaubert wanted to write a novel <br />About nothing. It was to have no subject <br />And be sustained upon the style alone, <br />Like the Holy Ghost cruising above <br />The abyss, or like the little animals <br />In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch <br />That breaks, but do not fall <br />Till they look down. He never wrote that novel, <br />And neither did he write another one <br />That would have been called La Spirale, <br />Wherein the hero's fortunes were to rise <br />In dreams, while his walking life disintegrated. <br /> <br />Even so, for these two books <br />We thank the master. They can be read, <br />With difficulty, in the spirit alone, <br />Are not so wholly lost as certain works <br />Burned at Alexandria, flooded at Florence, <br />And are never taught at universities. <br />Moreover, they are not deformed by style, <br />That fire that eats what it illuminates.<br /><br />Howard Nemerov<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/style/
