FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880)

Lot 115
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FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880)
L.A.S. "Gve Flaubert", [Croisset] Dimanche 5 août [1860], to Ernest FEYDEAU; 2 pages in-8 on blue paper (small tear at the central fold of the stemsheet without loss of text). Beautiful letter, in crude terms, on the progress of Salammbô. "I was beginning to find the time long! and I wondered if you had not remained stuck at the bottom of the anus of an oriental kid when your epistle came. You neglect calligraphy too much; I had trouble reading you. Don't get angry, and trim your feathers. You seem to me, my good man, to be passing it off as sweet. Go on, enjoy it, don't bother with the bumps of all kinds. - & stay there as long as you can. You'll regret the red morocco boots and the hairless assholes. But since you're there, go as far as you can. Go to Tuggurt. - from Constantine it's very easy. If along the way you discover some facetiousness suitable to be inserted in Salammbô, let your friend know. [...] We won't see each other much this winter. I'll be going to "modern Athens" in November, for Bouilhet's play. - Then I'll come back here - alone - to cut as many pages as I can. Because I would like 1861 to be the end of my damn novel. I finish chapter VIII - (I'll have six more!) My Battle of the Macar is over, provisionally at least. For I am not satisfied with it. It must be taken up again. It can be better". Then he evokes the fall of "the play of the academician Ponsard" [What pleases women], "fallen shamefully, fallen as one fell in the past - flat - classically. It's one more elegance. But as the audience has been whistling it a lot, I wonder if it's not a Honour? and I suspect his play to be worth more than the previous ones". He reads the Hétérogenie of his friend Dr Pouchet: "It dazzles me! What a lot of splendid candlesticks there are in nature. [...] What kind of book are you dreaming of? Is it a novel? a journey? or a treatise? or Essays? What happens to Sylvie in the middle of all this? You don't tell me! [...] We often talk about your Lordship - and besides, every time I go to pee I look at your truculent portraiture above my bedside table, - & I say a little hello. No! Don't believe that Beautiful Subjects make good books. I'm afraid, after the making of Salammbô, to be more convinced of this truth than ever. Ruminate it, while for you, there's still time"... Correspondence (Pléiade), t. III, p. 100
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