Kashmiri Bhatta

Online Chat

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (UK: /ˈfloʊbɛər/ FLOH-bair, US: /floʊˈbɛər/ floh-BAIR,[1][2] French: [ɡystav flobɛʁ]; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality".[3] He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. On the occasion of Flaubert's 198th birthday (12 December 2019), a group of researchers at CNRS published a neural language model under his name.

Flaubert was born in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. He was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot; 1793–1872) and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen. He began writing at an early age, as early as eight according to some sources.

He was educated at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen,[8] and did not leave until 1840, when he went to Paris to study law. In Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo. Toward the end of 1840, he travelled in the Pyrenees and Corsica.[9] In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris and abandoned the study of law.

From 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet; his letters to her have survived.[9] After leaving Paris, he returned to Croisset, near the Seine, close to Rouen, and lived there for the rest of his life. He did however make occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress.

Politically, Flaubert described himself as a "romantic and liberal old dunce" (vieille ganache romantique et libérale), an "enraged liberal" (libéral enragé), a hater of all despotism, and someone who celebrated every protest of the individual against power and monopolies.

With his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp, he travelled in Brittany in 1846. In 1849–50 he went on a long journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt. In Beirut he contracted syphilis. He spent five weeks in Istanbul in 1850. He visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô.

Flaubert never married and never had children. His reason for not having children is revealed in a letter he sent to Colet, dated 11 December 1852. In it he revealed that he was opposed to childbirth, saying he would "transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence".

Flaubert was very open about his sexual activities with prostitutes in his writings on his travels. He suspected that a chancre on his penis was from a Maronite or a Turkish girl. He also engaged in intercourse with male prostitutes in Beirut and Egypt; in one of his letters, he describes a "pockmarked young rascal wearing a white turban".

According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Louise Colet was his only serious romantic relationship.

Flaubert was a diligent worker and often complained in his letters to friends about the strenuous nature of his work. He was close to his niece, Caroline Commanville, and had a close friendship and correspondence with George Sand. He occasionally visited Parisian acquaintances, including Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev, and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.

The 1870s were a difficult time for Flaubert. Prussian soldiers occupied his house during the War of 1870, and his mother died in 1872. After her death, he fell into financial difficulty due to business failures on the part of his niece's husband. Flaubert lived with venereal diseases most of his life. His health declined and he died at Croisset of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1880 at the age of 58. He was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A monument to him by Henri Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen.

As a devoted Spinozist, Flaubert was significantly influenced by Spinoza's thought. He was also a pantheist.

Courtesy-wikipedia
- Gustave Flaubert

Online Chat

© 2021 - All Rights Reserved