Читать книгу Essential Novelists - Gustave Flaubert - August Nemo, John Dos Passos, Ellen Glasgow - Страница 3

Author

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT began his literary career at school, his first published work appearing in a little review, Le Colibri, in 1837. In November 1841 Flaubert was enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Law in Paris. At age 22, however, he was recognized to be suffering from a nervous disease that was taken to be epilepsy, although the essential symptoms were absent. This made him give up the study of law, with the result that henceforth he could devote all his time to literature.

Madame Bovary cost the author five years of hard work. Du Camp, who had founded the periodical Revue de Paris, urged him to make haste, but he would not. The novel, with the subtitle Moeurs de province (“Provincial Customs”), eventually appeared in installments in the Revue from October 1 to December 15, 1856. The French government then brought the author to trial on the ground of his novel’s alleged immorality, and he narrowly escaped conviction.

To refresh himself after his long application to the dull world of the bourgeoisie in Madame Bovary, Flaubert immediately began work on Salammbô, a novel about ancient Carthage, in which he set his sombre story of Hamilcar’s daughter Salammbô, an entirely fictitious character, against the authentic historical background of the revolt of the mercenaries against Carthage in 240–237 BC.

Flaubert died suddenly of an apoplectic stroke. He left on his table an unfinished page and notes for the second volume of his novel. Bouvard and Pécuchet, tired of experimenting, were to go back to the work of transcribing and copying that they had done as clerks.