Salammbo

Salammbo
By Gustave Flaubert

Opined synopsis:

Carthage the alternative ancient history told in narrative novel fiction format by a 19th century classic author from France. In closing this book on the final page the knowing reader can draw distinct parallels of “world conflict” between the world of “then” which was merely confined to a flat world of classic western civilization and more narrowly the Mediterranean Sea of ancient times and those of the same place slow forwarded to WWII. Is time merely an illusion where place sees the same thing over and over? Mythical Salammbo is laced with the horrors of battle as was WWII. Those horrors encompass not just the soldiers, but the civilians as well. I am amazed at how little has evolved in the human spirit from ancient times to at least the 20th century. In the year 2011 I hold out hope with little to go on.

Amazingly enough the book is clearly Carthage centric yet takes a seemingly world view, to the extent that the reader becomes aware that other Mediterranean powers form allegiances to either the side of the Barbarians or the side of the Carthaginians with much the same rationale as you find in today’s world powers. The book does not elaborate, but the reader’s conscience is piqued to the notion that Western Civilization is not dominated by solely Rome or Greece, and perhaps there was a “Richelieu” notion of balance of power long before the 16th century France and even before the collapse of the Roman Empire. Keep in mind that while modern man feels the effects of the Roman civilization, this book makes it apparent that the Romans inherited the effects of civilization from the likes of their predecessors in the likes of Carthage. It sheds light on what some cal the Dark Ages. Flaubert, leaves only hints of these notions as his narrative is grossly lost in the horrors of a three year war.

There is also a foggy popular notion that religion is at the root of all war. The book’s main thrust from its title and prime subject, though not necessarily the leading actor, does not come out until the very last sentence. In that sentence you find not religion as the cause of war, but the spirit of man. It is only then that the reader pauses to think. Flaubert, primes the thought, but leaves the examination of its merits to the reader.

To the book itself:

Characters of prime concern are Salambo and Mathos, protagonists among the Carthiginians; a people who were forced by the harsh realities of war to offer their first born sons as a sacrifice to the Tanith, a mythical Carthaginian lunar goddess of the Phoenician pantheon. Salambo was a cherished daughter of the prime mover of Carthiginian wealth, Hamilcar Barca, the Suffet. Matho was the representative of the practical man filled with lust and contempt. He was one of the leaders of the bloody war waged on Carthrage by a people that were denied the physical comforts of a life that belonged to the Carthiginians. You could equate this to the Palestinians and the Jews in the book Son of Hamas. Within Matho’s curiosity for the power of the ziamph also lay the lustful love for Salammbo. In this vexing angst Flaubert speaks to the nature of man to want that which is not his.

As the story unfolds the Zaimph, the prize in the apparent real world, was the veil between the physical world and the truth found in the mythology of humanity. Its Owner Salammbo loses it to a thief Matho. In the story the zaimph represents the thin veil between good and evil within all of us as illustrated in character description of Carthiganians –v- Barbarians.

In the Course of Salammbo’s retrieval of the ziamph which gave mystical power to its owner, she actually saw the other side; Mathos as a genuine and fully justified existence. She made love to it, not strictly with Mathos in a physical state but the essence of his whole being, and saw in its eyes, the same passions of humanity as within herself. Yet she fought it, despised it, and allowed that angst to impede any prospect of love. Yet in the end, when she came eye to eye with that same passion it led to her own crossing into the mythology of our humanity.

Inspired reaction:

Unlike the author Richard Bach of one hundred years later, who examines in literary form what crossing the divide between the physical and eternal may be like, Flaubert does not. Was the collective conscience of the enlightened literary man of Western Civilization in the 19th century void of this? I only find evidence to the affirmative in this book and can wonder if Richard Bach had taken in Salammbo and used the unanswered question to write Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and One. Clearly Flaubert leaves the reader on the precipice of the divide, and begs the question; must one transcend his body to overcome the duality of man?

There is a commandment that demands effectively man to not covenant their neighbor’s belongings. Oddly enough that is what is implied with Matho and Salammbo where in their transcendence they could at last have each other, a social reality similar to that of Romeo and Juliet that was not to be in the physical world. The book begs the question; must humanity torture itself through the laws of scarcity found in the physical world and sanctity found in its interpretation to the extent that love can be blinded by something as simple as a ziamph? The reader is clearly compelled to transcend this thinking and search for insights to do this in the mortal-material world. West meets East………in a modern new world that begins with love, the unconditional acceptance of what is.