Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert entered the world on the 12th of December 1821 within a hospital in Rouen. His father Achille-Cléophas Flaubert served as the senior surgeon at that very institution. The young boy grew up surrounded by medical instruments and the smell of antiseptic solutions. He began writing stories before he turned eight years old according to some accounts. This early start hinted at a life dedicated to words rather than medicine. He attended the Lycée Pierre-Corneille until 1840 when he moved to Paris. The city felt distasteful to him despite his attempts to make friends there. Victor Hugo was one of the few acquaintances he made during those brief years.
From 1846 to 1854 Flaubert maintained a relationship with the poet Louise Colet. Their correspondence survived to become a key record of his private thoughts. He never married or had children because he wished to transmit no aggravations to another soul. After leaving Paris he returned to Croisset near the Seine where he lived for the rest of his days. He traveled to Brittany with Maxime Du Camp in 1846. A long journey to the Middle East followed between 1849 and 1850. In Beirut he contracted syphilis which plagued him for decades. He spent five weeks in Istanbul during 1850 alone. His health declined steadily as he aged while living with venereal diseases most of his adult life.
Flaubert began work on Madame Bovary in 1850 after returning from Egypt. The novel took five years to write before it appeared serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856. Government officials brought an action against both the publisher and author regarding immorality charges. They were acquitted during the following year when the trial concluded. When the book finally appeared in physical form it met with warm reception despite the legal battle. He traveled to Carthage in 1858 to gather material for Salammbô next. That historical novel required four years of labor before completion in 1862. Sentimental Education took seven years to finish and was published in 1869 as his last complete novel.
He famously avoided the inexact or vaguely inapt expression throughout his career. Flaubert believed finding le mot juste served as the key means to achieve high quality. He worked in sullen solitude sometimes occupying a full week to complete just one page. Correct prose did not flow out of him easily but came through hard revision. He wished to forge a style that would be rhythmic as verse yet precise as science. An author must be like God present everywhere and visible nowhere according to his letters. Walter Pater called him the martyr of style because he published much less than peers. Balzac and Zola often achieved a pace of one novel per year while he struggled for perfection.
The government brought an action against the publisher and author on the charge of immorality regarding Madame Bovary. The trial occurred during 1857 after the serialization ended in 1856. Both parties were acquitted by the court which established literary realism in France. This verdict allowed future writers to explore day-to-day life without fear of prosecution. The scandal followed publication more closely than admiration at first. Critics did not understand immediately that this novel represented something new. Gradually the scrupulously truthful portraiture of life began to crowd out all other styles. The legal outcome protected the movement toward objective presentation of reality.
Flaubert devoted much time to Les Deux Cloportes which later became Bouvard et Pécuchet. He broke from this obsessive project only to write Three Tales between 1875 and 1877. These stories included Un Cœur simple and La Légende de Saint-Julien l'Hospitalier. After publication he spent his remaining years toiling on the unfinished satire. It was a grand work on the futility of human knowledge and mediocrity. Prussian soldiers occupied his house during the War of 1870 causing great distress. His mother died in 1872 leaving him in financial difficulty due to business failures. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at Croisset in 1880 at age 58. The unfinished version appeared posthumously in 1881 with mostly lukewarm reviews.
Franz Kafka found Flaubert to be his greatest literary influence according to Vladimir Nabokov. Kafka liked to draw terms from law and science giving them ironic precision. This method achieved a singular poetic effect that mirrored Flaubert's own approach. The exactitude with which he adapted expressions served all parts of his work. Members of various schools traced their origins to his novels especially realists and formalists. Jean-Paul Sartre published The Family Idiot in 1971 as a psychoanalytic portrait. Michel Foucault Roland Barthes Pierre Bourdieu and others admired or wrote about him extensively. A neural language model named after him emerged in December 2019 by CNRS researchers.
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Common questions
When was Gustave Flaubert born and where did he enter the world?
Gustave Flaubert entered the world on the 12th of December 1821 within a hospital in Rouen. His father Achille-Cléophas Flaubert served as the senior surgeon at that very institution.
What major legal event occurred regarding Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary?
Government officials brought an action against both the publisher and author regarding immorality charges after the book appeared serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856. They were acquitted during the following year when the trial concluded which established literary realism in France.
How long did it take Gustave Flaubert to write his historical novel Salammbô?
That historical novel required four years of labor before completion in 1862. He traveled to Carthage in 1858 to gather material for this work.
Why did Gustave Flaubert never marry or have children according to his own wishes?
He never married or had children because he wished to transmit no aggravations to another soul. This decision aligned with his belief that finding le mot juste served as the key means to achieve high quality.
When did Gustave Flaubert die and what was the cause of his death?
He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at Croisset in 1880 at age 58. His health declined steadily as he aged while living with venereal diseases most of his adult life.