Gustave FLAUBERT - Long and beautiful autograph letter to Louise Colet. 1846.

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Gustave FLAUBERT - Long and beautiful autograph letter to Louise Colet. 1846.:
$9704.45

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Gustave FLAUBERT (1821.1880)

Autograph letter to Louise Colet.

Four pages in-4°. [Croisset. October 14, 1846].

Flaubert, Correspondance I, Pleiade, pp. 388-391.

"Since my father and sister died I don’t have any ambitions anymore."

I don't even know if a line of me will ever be printed. »

Stunning letter: friend "Max" (Du Camp), danger of self-interested compliments, Louise Colet’s drama in preparation, lack of literary ambition, work, mediocrity of criticism or jealous leprosy journalists…

Flaubert’s tumultuous affair with Louise Colet (1810-1876) is one of the most recognized in literary history, at the origin of a justly famous correspondence. " It was in Paris, in the sculptor Pradier’s studio, that the novelist met Louise in June 1846. born Revoil, over ten years his senior. Married in 1834 to flutist Hippolyte Colet, she had known previously several adventures, particularly with philosopher Victor Cousin, who was or believed to be the father of his daughter Henriette and who, for sixteen years, worked to serve her. A writer, she composed mainly poems whose collections were repeatedly crowned by the Académie française.

Their affair began on July 29, 1846, five and a half months before this letter. Returning to Croisset, Flaubert wrote to him often and at length. They’d meet sometimes in Mantes or Paris, but less frequently than she’d liked. A lover and interlocutor with whom he exchanged ideas and talked about literature, she inspired the Croisset Bear with some of his finest letters, writing "jumping and frolicking", as here.

Louise Colet had just met Maxime Du Camp (a meeting that she will restore in 1856, while romanticizing it, in " A Soldier's Story) : Flaubert tells him how a sure friend this brother of choice is.

« I am very comfortable that Max. you liked it. It’s a good, beautiful and natural one that I guessed from day one and clung to like a find. There are in between the two of us too many points of contact in mind and constitution pr that we missed. there are We have known us for four years. It’s like it’s been a century! so much we have lived together, and by various fortunes, in times of rain and sunshine. Love him like a brother I’d have in Paris. Trust him as I do and him more than myself for he’s better than me. There’s more heroism and delicacy in him – the gentleness of his manners only comes out of his heart’s. I am coarser, more common more wavy. I have the harshest smoke. -Don't believe what he can tell you about me in literary terms. Loving me as he loves me he’s probably biased. First I am a bit of his master. I pulled him out of the mire of the soap opera where he would now be buried pr the rest of his life, - if not smothered - and" I inspired her to love serious studies -It has made progress in gds over the past two years. He now has a nice talent - he will have a beautiful one rather - it’s mostly the feeling and taste that dominate in him. He softens, I know of nothing about him that I cannot read without tears in my eyes; and with all these good qualities he is modest as a child. »

Informed of the maneuvers of the literary milieu, the novelist warns Louise Colet about the self-interested compliments of her loved ones and their manipulations.

« About people who say good about me, be wary of the brave Toirac, he’s a clever one and maybe he doesn’t extend so much praise on me as pr see the effect they’re having on you.” It will have maybe no doubt suspected of the way you talked about me, that you felt qq thing and, following the old tactic, he’ll have tried apology in order to spy on whether it’s nice or indifferent to you.” – You have one of your acquaintances who must also have a furious idea of me. This is Malitourne. I must seem to him a giant of jokes and cheerfulness. We only met once, at Phidias, and with the Redhead of the Sailor. I’ve been so roguely kind there that suddenly [sure] he didn’t forget me.” "I was in a vein that day, I had verve." Here’s another one in whose mind I guess I’m going to be a facetious guy. I’ve been through so many things and found similarities to so many people! from those who said I’d made myself sick by women’s abuse, or solitary pleasures, to those who told me pr flatter me that I looked like the Duke of Orleans’. »

Then Gustave Flaubert evokes the drama his mistress is working on: drafted in 1845 under the title of Madeleine, the play wasn’t completed until 1847, but refused by the Comédie-Française in 1848. (It will be published in 1850 under the new title 'A family in 1793.)

« Causes of Drama. Yes I often think of the 1st performance, I’m tormented by it! – Oh, how my heart will beat! I know myself, if it’s applauded I’ll have a hard time restraining myself. I prepare well for misfortune but not happiness, and it will be one, if you triumph!! Oh! those stomping I dreamed of in college, elbow leaning against my desk looking at the smoking lamp in our studio! This noisy glory whose ghost evoked made me tremble, so I’ll have all this, me, and in you, that is, in the sensitive part of myself. In the evening I will kiss this noble heart this noble chest that we whose feeling will have burns stirred the crowd like a gd wind made on the water. »

Confessing his lack of ambition, not without some bad faith, Flaubert lavishes valuable writing and style advice:"

« Since my father and sister died I don’t have any ambitions anymore.” They have taken my vanity in their shroud and are keeping it. I don't even know if a line of me will ever be printed. I am not like the fox that finds too green the fruit it cannot eat. But me, I am no longer hungry. Success does not tempt me. The one that tempts me is the one I can give myself, my own approval, and I may end up doing without it, as I should have done without others’. So it is to you, to you that I carry all this. Work, meditate, meditate mostly, condense your thinking, you know beautiful fragments do nothing. The unit, the unit, it’s all there. The whole, that’s what everyone’s missing from today, gds and little ones alike. A thousand beautiful places, not a work. Tighten your style, make it a fabric soft as silk and strong as a knit coat. Sorry for these tips, but I would like to give you everything I want for me. »

He has to travel to Rouen to spend the winter with his mother.

« It's always raining; the weather is sad, and me? I am working quite a bit right now. I’ve got several things I want to finish that bore me and keep going anyway hoping instead to get qq thing out of it - Next spring I will start writing again. But I always step back. One topic to deal with is pr me as a woman you are in love with - when she goes to give in to you you you tremble and are afraid, it is a voluptuous dread. One dare not touch his desire. »

He finds in Chateaubriand an illustration of his feelings:

« I reread tonight the episode of "Velléda des Martyrs. What a beautiful thing! What poetry! But if I’d been Eudore and you’d been the druidess I would have given in faster. I can’t defend myself from a sense of bourgeois indignation when I see in books men resisting women.” It’s always thought it’s the author talking about him and it’s found impertinent because it may be wrong after all. »

Then Flaubert twists his neck at rumors and criticism not only mediocre, but dangerous for writers trying:

« You tell me about Albert Aubert, and Mr Gaschon de Molesnes. Despise all these funny ones - What’s the point of worrying about these blackbirds font* chatter? It’s a waste of time reading reviews – I’m making a strong argument in a thesis that there hasn’t been a good one since we’ve done it – that it’s useless to annoy authors and stupid the audience – and finally that we criticize when you can’t make art just as we’re snitching when you can’t be a soldier.

I’d like to know what poets of all times had in common in their works with those who analyzed them – Plautus would have laughed at Aristotle if he had known him, Cornelius was struggling under him – Voltaire in spite of himself was shrunk by Boileau – many bad guys would have been spared us in modern drama without W. Schlegel; and when Hegel’s translation is finished God knows where we’ll go! and add journalists on that who don’t even have the science to hide their jealous leprosy. »

It concludes funny, as if it’s pulling itself together after an excess of fury:

« I let myself go of my hatred of criticism and criticism, so these wretches have taken up all the room for me to kiss you - but despite them that’s what I’m doing.” So then, with their permission, thousand gds kisses on your beautiful forehead and on your eyes so sweet and... »

After an initial breakup in 1848, Flaubert resumed upon his return from the journey to the East - until 1855. « You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved and had "sentimental misogynist confessed to her.

Flaubert, Correspondance I, Pleiades, pp. 388-391: The top date was indicated by Louise Colet who first wrote "July" before revising herself to "October", presumably by an automatic manner.

Provenance: J. Lambert Collection.

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