Written by Abdul Rahman Habib Monday, January 1, 2024 07:00 AM
has not been Gustave Flaubert Not only a great novelist, one of the inventors of the modern novel, he was a great letter writer, writing letters that are, among other things, a wonderful exploration of the art of the novel.
Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830- “1880 is the book in which Francis Stegmüller collects the writer’s correspondence, adding to it a biographical bridge and quick comments.
If there is one article of faith that dominates the doctrine of Gustave Flaubert’s correspondence, it is that art is not about providing “answers.” The Letters of Gustave Flaubert are therefore primarily a record of the personal, political, and artistic questions with which Flaubert struggled throughout his life.
The letters show Flaubert’s youthful, sensual outpourings to his lover, the poet Louise Colet, and his questions about his aging, still unknown, in his thirties, struggling to write Madame Bovary.
According to what the letters show, when Gustave Flaubert was looking at his early works, he felt a lack of certainty, so he mentioned in his letters in conclusive evidence of the questions that formed the focus of his life and his feeling of doubt about his works: “How can I congratulate myself on the insight that I did not achieve?”
Flaubert’s correspondence with family and friends describes his life-changing trip to Egypt, exchanges with Baudelaire, the influential critic Sainte-Beuve, and Guy de Maupassant, his young student, as well as letters sent back and forth between him and a great confidant of his later life, Georges Sand.
“Recognized as a classic in its own right, Stegmüller’s book is a fascinating life story of Flaubert in his own words. Originally published in two volumes, it appears here for the first time under a single cover.”
