Flaubert's letters - Knowledge (XXG)

17: 389:...has always added up to Flaubert's best biography." Rosemary Lloyd analyses the elements of their appeal as being "partly wide sweep, partly the sense of seeing what Baudelaire called the strings and pulleys of the writer's workshop, and partly the immediacy of Flaubert's changeable, complex and challenging personality." She continues, "Reading Flaubert's correspondence brings startlingly alive a man of enormous complexity, of remarkable appetites and debilitating lethargies, a knotted network of prejudices, insights, blind spots, passions and ambitions." 317:

politics and current affairs which reveal an increasing disgust with society, especially bourgeois society, and with the age he lived in. They exude a sadness and a sense of having grown old before his time. As a whole, said the literary critic Eric Le Calvez, Flaubert's correspondence, "reveals his vision of life and of the relation between life and art: since the human condition is miserable, life can be legitimated only through an eternal pursuit of art."

326: 42:), the 19th-century French novelist, range in date from 1829, when he was 7 or 8 years old, to a day or two before his death in 1880. They are considered one of the finest bodies of letters in French literature, admired even by many who are critical of Flaubert's novels. His main correspondents include family members, business associates and fellow-writers such as 313:), Germany and the classical world; also his deep researches into history, philosophy and the sciences. Above all, they constantly state and restate Flaubert's belief in the duty of the writer to maintain his independence, and in his own need to reach literary beauty through a quasi-scientific objectivity. 636:

Includes about 100 letters not to be found in the 1922 Mckenzie translation. Barbara Bray translated George Sand's letters, and Francis Steegmuller Flaubert's. It has been called "a graceful and expressive translation in a scrupulous edition that has the effect of the best kind of biography – and a

405:

This four-volume edition was the first to try to collect Flaubert's letters. The unnamed editor was Flaubert's niece Caroline Commanville; she censored the letters freely, cutting out many passages which she thought indecent or which referred unflatteringly to living persons, especially to herself,

316:

But his letters also demonstrate an enjoyment of the simple pleasures of Flaubert's youth. Friendship, love, conversation, a delight in foreign travel, the pleasures of the table and of the bed are all in evidence. These do not disappear in his maturer years, but they are offset by discussions of

300:

Flaubert's personality was rigorously excluded from his novels, but in the letters, written at night after the day's literary work was done, he expresses much more spontaneously his own personal views. Their themes often arise from his life as a reader and writer. They discuss the subject-matter

607:

In two volumes. Jean Bruneau, editor of the then half-completed Pléiade edition, gave Steegmuller unfettered access to all his files, including the manuscripts of newly-discovered letters, with the result that some appeared in Steegmuller's English before they had been published in the original

301:

and structural difficulties of his novels, and explore the problems Flaubert faced in their composition, giving the reader a unique glimpse of his art in the making. They illustrate his extensive reading of the creative literatures of France, England (he loved

367:

This ambivalence is a thing of the past, and there is now widespread agreement that the Flaubert correspondence is one of the finest in French literature. Publication of them "has crowned his reputation as the exemplary artist".

372:

wrote that Flaubert was one of his own greatest literary creations, and that the letters might well be seen in the future as his greatest book, and the one in which "he has most fully distilled his personality and his wisdom".

477:

and other third-party documentation, together with explanatory and critical notes by the editor. Julian Barnes points out that in the third volume the appendices, notes and variants take up more pages than the letters

70:. They provide a valuable glimpse of his methods of work and his literary philosophy, as well as documenting his social life, political opinions, and increasing disgust with bourgeois society. 78:

4481 letters by Flaubert survive, a number which would have been considerably higher but for a series of burnings of his letters to his friends. Many of those addressed to

352:

said that in his letters "he lets himself go and unconsciously paints himself for us to the life; and this Gustave Flaubert is enormously more interesting than anything in

527:

There have also been many single-correspondent editions of Flaubert's letters to one or another of his friends and associates, and selections from the collected letters.

385:

this description "hints at their fluency, profligacy, range and sexual frankness; to which we should add power, control, wit, emotion and furious intelligence. The

1176: 1945: 2001: 727: 835: 2088: 1546: 1421: 765: 16: 90:

were destroyed in this way. From those that survive it appears that his principal correspondents were as follows. His family members:

2098: 348:

wrote that "For more than five years his correspondence took the place of the Bible at my bedside. It was my reservoir of energy".

1889: 1556: 1099: 1065: 903: 469:

In five volumes, the first four edited by Jean Bruneau, and the fifth, which was published after Bruneau's death, co-edited with

1485: 1089: 893: 1938: 1858: 1811: 1783: 1734: 1671: 1495: 1431: 1211: 845: 741: 1417: 378: 243: 55: 1388: 664: 2065: 152: 473:. This edition boasts an extremely thorough critical apparatus, with letters written to Flaubert, excerpts from the 2044: 1055: 804: 1931: 1592: 501:

Two volumes were published, taking the edition up to 1861, but the editor's death brought the project to a halt.

2093: 1349: 523:

A freely available Web-based edition comprising 4481 letters, 134 of which have not previously been published.

1458: 1322: 594:

Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour. A Narrative Drawn from Gustave Flaubert's Travel Notes and Letters

2017: 2009: 179: 1993: 1621: 1014: 1682: 446:

In nine volumes, containing 1992 letters. Most of the notes were taken from René Descharmes' edition.

164: 377:, an inveterate enemy of Flaubert's novels, considered the letters a perfect example of pre-Freudian 267: 188: 43: 2036: 573: 482: 302: 158: 470: 2057: 1969: 200: 123: 1884:. Translated by Elliott, Nicholas. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1885: 1854: 1807: 1779: 1730: 1667: 1552: 1491: 1427: 1207: 1146: 1095: 1061: 899: 841: 737: 237: 204: 137: 116: 83: 51: 47: 1954: 1454: 1010: 474: 450: 374: 341: 330: 261: 231: 213: 30: 21: 1704:"Correspondance de Gustave Flaubert: Bibliographie des éditions et des études (1884–2013)" 438: 310: 255: 35: 340:

For many years after the first publication of the letters critical opinion was divided.

1917: 1752: 538: 506: 1617: 415: 334: 222: 87: 79: 1912: 2082: 1977: 1875: 1139: 549: 382: 357: 345: 287: 281: 67: 63: 1134: 631: 369: 349: 170: 131: 1703: 588:, Steegmuller "edited them with discretion after translating them with authority". 360:

found Flaubert's epistolary style "even worse" than that of his novels, while for

1879: 1848: 1829: 1801: 1773: 1724: 1985: 1172: 840:. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press. p. 222. 564: 361: 249: 59: 1772:

Lloyd, Rosemary (2004). "Flaubert's Correspondence". In Unwin, Timothy (ed.).

1051: 584: 325: 306: 149:

Maxime Du Camp, journalist, photographer and travelling companion of Flaubert

610: 410:. She also corrected his punctuation and sometimes "improved" his phrasing. 272: 620:

Flaubert and Turgenev, a Friendship in Letters. The Complete Correspondence

1723:

Le Calvez, Eric J (2001). "Correspondance". In Porter, Laurence M (ed.).

407: 127: 406:

and very often failing to notify the reader of these cuts by the use of

614:

later said, "was a major event in the English-speaking literary world".

422:

A five-volume edition which has been described as "seriously flawed".

1389:"The Hermit of Croisset: Flaubert's Fiercely Enduring Perfectionism" 234:, painter, writer and sometime lover of Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte 1923: 1204:

Flaubert the Master: A Critical and Biographical Study (1856-1880)

324: 15: 1551:. Surry Hills, NSW: Accessible Publishing Systems. p. 248. 1927: 1853:. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1918:

A digital edition of Flaubert's letters in the original French

1487:

The Reader's Adviser: A Layman's Guide to Literature. Volume 2

605:. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 364:

the Flaubert of the letters was "impossible as a companion".

344:

thought them "the expression of a first-rate intellect", and

1057:

Pink Triangle and Yellow Star, and Other Essays (1976–1982)

709: 707: 554:. Translated by Mckenzie, Aimée L. London: Duckworth. 1922. 993: 991: 989: 952: 950: 948: 946: 143:

Louis Bouilhet, poet and friend of Flaubert from childhood

1751: