PublishedNew York Review Books, September 2023 |
ISBN9781681377162 |
FormatSoftcover, 640 pages |
Dimensions20.3cm × 12.7cm |
"If there is one article of faith that dominates the Credoof Gustave Flaubert's correspondence," Francis Steegmullerwrites in the introduction to this selection of Flaubert'sletters, "it is that the function of great art is not to provide'answers.'" The Letters of Gustave Flaubert is above all a record of the intransigent questions-personal, political,artistic-with which Flaubert struggled throughout his life.
Here we have Flaubert's youthful, sensual outpourings to his mistress, the poet Louise Colet, and, as he advances, still unknown, into his thirties, the wrestle to write Madame Bovary. We hear, too, of his life-changing trip to Egypt, as described to family and friends, and then there are lively exchanges with Baudelaire, with the influential critic Sainte-Beuve, and with Guy de Maupassant, his young prote_x0301_ge_x0301_. Flaubert's letters to George Sand reveal her as the great confidante of his later years.
Steegmuller's book, a classic in its own right, is botha splendid life of Flaubert in his own words and the arspoetica of the master who laid the foundations for modernwriters from James Joyce to Lydia Davis. Originally issued in two volumes, the book appears here for the first time under a single cover.
