Of course, even before Flaubert, people knew stupidity existed, but they understood it somewhat differently: it was considered a simple absence of knowledge, a defect correctable by education. In Flaubert's novels, stupidity is an inseparable dimension of human existence. It accompanies poor Emma throughout her days, to her bed of love and to her deathbed, over which two deadly agélastes, Homais and Bournisien, go on endlessly trading their inanities like a kind of funeral oration. But the most shocking, the most scandalous thing about Flaubert's vision of stupidity is this: Stupidity does not give way to science, technology, modernity, progress; on the contrary, it progresses right along with progress!. Milan Kundera
About This Quote

Flaubert's non-stop description of the stupidity of the inhabitants of La Chartreuse de Parme is at once hilarious and depressing. He puts the reader on the sharp end of his irony, which is that this stupidity is not only ubiquitous; it is also normal, inevitable, even necessary. To be stupid is to be human; to be stupid is to exist. And what's more, one may be even more stupid than the next person.

Source: The Art Of The Novel

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