Gustave Flaubert
December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880
Gustave Flaubert [ɡystav flo'bɛ:r] was a French writer. He is considered one of the greatest and most influential prose writers of the 19th century and the supreme representative of literary realism. He is best known for his first novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his perfectionist style.
He was born in Rouen into a family of doctors, his father Achille Cléophas Flaubert was the head of surgery at the local hospital, his mother the daughter of a doctor. They had five children, but only Gustave and his older brother Achille survived to adulthood. Gustave had literary ambitions at a young age, and in 1834 he founded a handwritten magazine at the lycée in Rouen with his friend Ernest Chevalier, in which he published his first public text. During his adolescence, he wrote dramas and prose. In the summer of 1836, while staying in Trouville-sur-Mer, he met Elisa Schlesinger, the wife of a German music publisher, and fell passionately in love with her. Elise did not share his love, but they remained in touch for the next forty years. Flaubert later described his feelings for this woman, which influenced his entire love life, in his novel L'Éducation sentimentale (1869). In 1839 he was expelled from the lyceum for rudeness and disobedience, and he passed the school-leaving exam the following year.
From 1841 he studied law in Paris, where he became known as a writer with Victor Hugo. He also found his other lifelong friends here, including the writer Maxime Du Camp. Due to nervous seizures, epilepsy, he gave up further studies in 1844 at his father's request and went to his parents' new house in Croisset with the decision to devote himself exclusively to writing. Because he was financially secure, he could afford to work in the countryside and rework each work several times. In 1846, his father died, followed soon by his sister Karolina at the age of twenty-one. Flaubert became the guardian of his little niece. In 1848, he was struck by the death of his childhood friend Alfred le Poittevin.
He lived a solitary life, although he had love affairs with many women. He rejected marriage as a manifestation of bourgeoisie, as well as everyday problems. His health was cared for by his mother together with his nanny Julie, who entered the service of the Flauberts in 1825 and remained until the writer's death. He had a lifelong platonic love (his mentor Elise Schlesinger), she was 11 years older. In 1846 he met the poet Louise Colet. The intimate relationship between these personalities of different personalities lasted for almost ten years, with an interruption in the period 1848–1851. Until their separation (his last letter to Louise Colet was dated March 6, 1855), Flaubert maintained a rich correspondence with her, in which he developed his view of the writer"s work, the subtleties of the French language and his views on relations between men and women.
With his friend Du Camp, he visited Italy, Greece, Tunisia and travelled through the Middle East – Constantinople, Syria, Palestine, Upper Egypt, where he contracted syphilis.
From 1851 he worked on the novel Madame Bovary, which became the subject of prosecution after its publication in 1856, but eventually brought the author lasting fame. On the basis of torn excerpts from "lascivious descriptions" of the protagonist's love adventures, he was prosecuted for insulting public morality and the marital institution. At the trial in 1857, he was acquitted of all charges. Literary success also meant social advancement for Flaubert. He came to Paris more often, where he met many writers, such as the Goncourt brothers, Gautier, Baudelaire and George Sand. He became a regular guest at literary dinners in Parisian salons. A major literary event in 1862 was the publication of Flaubert's novel Salambo. In 1864, Flaubert was introduced to Emperor Napoleon III, and in 1866 he was made a Chevalier de l'Honneur. However, by decree of June 20, 1864, the Catholic Church included Flaubert"s novels Madame Bovary and Salambo on the Index of Forbidden Books. Despite his association with naturalists, he was himself a romantic by origin, but one who lost his illusions, turned to the realism of the possible, and at the same time longed for an objective scientific view in his work. He was capable of philosophical and psychological analysis – he excelled in it. He had admiration and friendship for Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev and the nephew of his prematurely deceased friend Guy de Maupassant, whom he practically introduced to literature with his advice and help.
In 1869, the novel Emotional Education was published, which was a failure with readers and critics alike. In the years that followed, many of his friends died, and in 1872 his mother died. In 1874 he completed and published the third version of La Tentation de saint Antoine (The Temptation) of Saint Antoine, immediately after the failure of his play The Candidate in March 1874. His literary work continued with a book of short stories, which was published in 1877 under the title Three Stories (Trois contes).
Flaubert did not know how to manage his property and therefore entrusted it to the management of his niece's husband, who eventually deprived him of almost all his money through risky investments. In 1879, he was forced to accept a state pension obtained from friends. Impoverished and lonely, Flaubert died of a stroke in Croisset in 1880, in the middle of work on the novel Bouvard and Pécuchet.
He is buried in the cemetery in his hometown of Rouen.