FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880). - Lot 63

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  3. FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880). - Lot 63
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Lot n° 63
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FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880). - Lot 63
FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880). L.A.S. "G.", Saturday [4 September 1852], to Louise COLET; 8 pages in-4, envelope. A very long and beautiful letter about Madame Bovary, in which Flaubert evokes his loving embrace with Louise, and wonders about the world and the future of art, and relives memories of a previous life. "We are not, as it seems, in a good material situation. There is sympathy (sympathy means suffering together) without wanting to compare my worries to yours, I have my little dose. - I am so annoyed with my surroundings that I have not worked on them this afternoon. - It's my mother who cries - who gets bitter about everything, etc.! (what a great invention the family is). - She comes to my office to talk to me about her domestic sorrows - I can't throw her out, but I really want to. - I have reserved for myself a very small circle in life. - But once you enter it, I become furious-red. I had put up with everything from Du Camp. When he wanted to invade her I extended the claw - Today she claims that her servants insult her (which is not) - I have to mend everything - I have to engage them to go and apologize when they are not wrong - I am full of all this at times. - I will also be disturbed (but I will make sure that I am not disturbed) by a cousin who is coming here to spend two months. What can one live in an ivory tower! And to think that the bottom of all this is that unfortunate money - that blessed metal, money, master of the world. If I had a little more, I'd be relieved of many things. But, year after year, my stock market decreases and the future in this respect is not cheerful. - I will always have enough to live on, but not as I want. If my good man of a father had invested his fortune differently, I could be, if not rich, at least at ease"... Louis BOUILHET " is going to seriously work on his drama. His intention is always to leave Rouen this winter. He can't take any more lessons (he's becoming a backslider and there's enough of that) and doesn't want to give any more - But how will he live there?"... Then Flaubert comments on the last issue of the Revue de Paris... "Since we left each other I have done 8 pages of my 2nd part. The topographical description of a village. I am now going to enter a long scene of an inn which worries me a lot - How I would like to be in five or six months from now! I would be even with the worst, that is to say the emptiest, of the places where it is necessary most to strike on the thought to make it return - Your letter of this morning, also saddens me - Poor dear woman, how I love you - Why did you hurt yourself of a sentence which was on the contrary the expression of the most solid love that a human being can carry to another? O woman! woman, be less so, be so only in bed. - Doesn't your body inflame me when I'm in it? - Have you not seen me contemplating you, all gaping and passing my hands with delight on your skin. - Your image, in memory, agitates me. And if I do not dream you more often, it is because one does not dream what one desires. - Smell the air in the woods this week and look at the leaves themselves. To understand nature, we must be calm - like her. Let's not complain about anything. - To complain about anything that distresses or irritates us is to complain about the very constitution of life and existence. We are made to paint it - and nothing more. - Let us be religious - Me, all that arrives to me of unfortunate, in big or in small, makes that I tighten more and more to my eternal concern. I cling to it with both hands & I close both eyes - By dint of calling for Grace it comes. - God has mercy on the simple. - And the sun always shines on the vigorous hearts that stand above the mountains. I turn to a kind of aesthetic mysticism (if the two words can go together) and I wish it were stronger. - When no encouragement comes to you from outside the others, when the outside world disgusts you, makes you weak and corrupts you, honest and delicate people are forced to look for a cleaner place to live in. - If society continues as it is going, I believe we will see mystics again, as there have been in all the dark ages. The time is not far off when universal longings, beliefs in the end of the world, the expectation of a Messiah will return. But the theological basis is missing, where will be now the support of this missed enthusiasm that ignores itself? Some will look for it in the flesh, others in the old religions, others in art and humanity like the Jewish tribe in the desert will worship all kinds of idols. - We, the people, have come a little too early. In twenty-five years the point of intersection will be superb. - In the hands of a master, then, prose (prose especially younger form) will be able
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