Lot n° 55
Estimation :
50000 - 60000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 52 720EUR
FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880).
Autograph manuscript, Pyrenees & Corsica (22 August - 1 November 1840); 276 pages small in-4 (21.5 x 17.5 cm) in autograph folder; modern half black morocco slipcase.
Precious complete manuscript of Flaubert's first travelogue at the age of nineteen.
A little less than three weeks after his baccalauréat ès lettres, passed as an independent candidate, on August 3, 1840, Gustave Flaubert, aged 19, left on a trip to the Pyrenees and Corsica in the company of Professor Jules
Cloquet, a friend of his father, "a serious and learned companion. During this journey, which lasted more than two months, he wrote a story divided into three main sections on his return to Rouen: Bordeaux, Marseille and Corsica.
The itinerary can be reconstructed as follows. Rouen, Paris, Longjumeau, Montlhéry, Blois, Poitou ("land of oxen"), Bordeaux (visited at length, including the library where he touched "with as much veneration as a relic" the corrected copy of Montaigne), Dax, Bayonne, Biarritz (where he threw himself into the raging sea to help drowning people), Behobie, Fontarabia ("I have seen Spain, I am proud and happy of it"), la Madalena, Irun, Pau, Lourdes, Argelès, Eaux-Chaudes, Saint-Savin, Cauterets (the Pont d'Espagne and the lake of Gaube), cirque of Gavarnie, Bagnères-de-Luchon (September 15), Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, port of Vénasque, Toulouse, canal du Midi and Saint-Ferréol, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Nîmes, the Pont du Gard, Arles, Marseille, Toulon from where he embarks (October 4) for Corsica; Ajaccio, Sagone, Vico, Guagno, Ajaccio, Bocognano, Vizzavona, Ghisoni, Isolaccio, Corte, Piedicroce, Bastia, where he embarked for France; Toulon, Marseille...
Flaubert, fascinated by Antiquity and medieval history, describes the monuments he visits, but also the villages and picturesque sites; he relates with verve the various adventures of the journey and the encounters, evokes with emotion and enthusiasm his discovery of the Mediterranean and its colours, and is also interested in the customs and habits of the inhabitants of the regions crossed, with in particular a whole development on the Corsican bandits... But one will notice above all a very personal tone, where the expression of the self and the impressions felt prevails over the simple relation. A future writer is being born, as the very beginning of the story shows: "There are people who, on the eve of their departure, have everything prepared in their pocket: inkwell filled, erudition plastered on, emotions indicated in advance.
Happy and childish natures who play with themselves and tickle themselves to make themselves laugh, as Rabelais says. There are others, on the contrary, who refuse everything that comes to them from the outside, who turn their backs, who pull back the visor of their cap and their mind so as not to see anything. I believe that it is difficult to keep here, as elsewhere, the exquisite middle ground advocated by wisdom - a geometric and ideal point placed at the centre of space, of the infinity of human stupidity. - I will nevertheless try to reach it and to give myself spirit, good sense & taste, moreover, I will have no literary pretensions and I will not try to make style - if it happens that it is to my mind like a metaphor that one uses for lack of knowing how to express oneself by the literal sense, I will thus abstain from any declamation and I will only allow myself six times per page the word picturesque and a dozen times that of admirable.
Travellers say the first to all the piles of stones and the second to all the milestones, I will be allowed to stereotype it in all my sentences, which, to reassure you, are very long. This is a preamble that I allowed myself and that could have been called the step to indicate the emotions that I had while getting into the car, which means that I had none. I would kill myself if I thought I was doing anything serious here. I simply want to throw some of the dust from my clothes onto the paper with my pen. I want my sentences to smell like the leather of my travelling shoes and that they have neither tops of feet nor braces, nor ointment that runs in greasy periods, nor cosmetics that keep them stiff in arduous expressions, but that everything be simple, frank and good, free and uncluttered, like the turn of the women here, with their fists on their hips and their cheerful eyes, with a fine nose if possible, and above all, that there be no corset, but that the waist be well made. This commitment made, I am bound myself and I am forced to have the style of an honest man. / The countryside of
Paris is sad, the eye goes far and wide without encountering any greenery, large wheels pulling stones from quarries, a thin horse flanked by a small donkey pulling buckets of manure, pavement, the clatter of mirrors and that indefinable emptiness of spirit that takes hold of you at the moments of departure, this is all I have seen, this is all I have seen.
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