The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters

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Gustave Flaubert. The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters

INTRODUCTION

XI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

XLIX. TO GEORGE SAND

LV. TO GEORGE SAND

LVIII. TO GEORGE SAND

LXVI. TO GEORGE SAND

LXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND

LXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

XCI. TO GEORGE SAND

XCII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

CXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

CXXI. TO GEORGE SAND

CXXII. TO GEORGE SAND

CXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND

CXXXV. TO GEORGE SAND

CLXV. TO GEORGE SAND

CLXXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND

CXCIX. TO GEORGE SAND

CCI. TO GEORGE SAND

CCX. TO GEORGE SAND

CCXII. TO GEORGE SAND

CCXIV. TO GEORGE SAND

CCXVI. TO GEORGE SAND

CCXXV. TO GEORGE SAND

CCXXX. TO GEORGE SAND

CCXXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND

CCXLIII. TO GEORGE SAND

CCLVII. TO GEORGE SAND

CCLXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

CCXCIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Отрывок из книги

The correspondence of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert, if approached merely as a chapter in the biographies of these heroes of nineteenth century letters, is sufficiently rewarding. In a relationship extending over twelve years, including the trying period of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, these extraordinary personalities disclose the aspects of their diverse natures which are best worth the remembrance of posterity. However her passionate and erratic youth may have captivated our grandfathers, George Sand in the mellow autumn of her life is for us at her most attractive phase. The storms and anguish and hazardous adventures that attended the defiant unfolding of her spirit are over. In her final retreat at Nohant, surrounded by her affectionate children and grandchildren, diligently writing, botanizing, bathing in her little river, visited by her friends and undistracted by the fiery lovers of the old time, she shows an unguessed wealth of maternal virtue, swift, comprehending sympathy, fortitude, sunny resignation, and a goodness of heart that has ripened into wisdom. For Flaubert, too, though he was seventeen years her junior, the flamboyance of youth was long since past; in 1862, when the correspondence begins, he was firmly settled, a shy, proud, grumpy toiling hermit of forty, in his family seat at Croisset, beginning his seven years' labor at L'Education Sentimentale, master of his art, hardening in his convictions, and conscious of increasing estrangement from the spirit of his age. He, with his craving for sympathy, and she, with her inexhaustible supply of it, meet; he pours out his bitterness, she her consolation; and so with equal candor of self-revelation they beautifully draw out and strengthen each the other's characteristics, and help one another grow old.

But there is more in these letters than a satisfaction for the biographical appetite, which, indeed, finds ITS account rather in the earlier chapters of the correspondents' history. What impresses us here is the banquet spread for the reflective and critical faculties in this intercourse of natural antagonists. As M. Faguet observes in a striking paragraph of his study of Flaubert:

.....

In short I pass my life in wearing away my heart and brain, that is the real TRUTH about your friend.

You ask him if he sometimes thinks of his "old troubadour of the clock," most certainly! and he mourns for him. Our nocturnal talks were very precious (there were moments when I restrained myself in order not to KISS you like a big child).

.....