FLAUBERT (Gustave). Autograph letter signed to Théophile Gautier, dated Thursday…
Description

FLAUBERT (Gustave).

Autograph letter signed to Théophile Gautier, dated Thursday, January 27 [1859], 3 pages and a half in-8 (209 x 133 mm) in brown ink on blue laid paper, in a modern black half-maroquin folder. Superb letter about Salammbô. In this long friendly letter, Flaubert evokes Gautier's stay in Russia (from September 15, 1858 to March 27, 1859), gets angry against the Parisian literary world, and evokes the writing of Salammbô, in which he is totally immersed. Flaubert has learned from the guy Feydeau that Gautier is in Russia and will return at the end of February: Alleluia! For I miss your person incredibly. [...] I often think of your wonderful face lost in the middle of the snow. I see you on a sled, all hooded with furs lowering your head and arms crossed [...] Have you made glasses? I mean that you owe us a lyrical collection entitled the Hyperboreans or the White Bear. Parisian impressions: Men wear leg of lamb handles. This love of the leg of lamb sleeve seems to me an obscene clue, a curious symbolism as Father Michelet would say. There follows a diatribe on Michelet's Love: He speaks only of that, dreams only of ovaries, nursing, lochia and constant unions. It is the apotheosis of marriage, the idealization of the conjugal vesse, the delirium of the Pot au feu! Then he describes in detail the writing of Salammbô: for three months, I have been living here completely alone, immersed in Carthage & in the related books. I get up at noon and go to bed at three in the morning. I don't hear a sound. I don't see a cat. I lead a wild and extravagant existence. Since life is intolerable, shouldn't it be escamotated [sic]? I do not know what my Salammbô will be. It is very difficult. I'm doing me a pain of dog. But I guarantee you, O Master, that the intentions are virtuous. It doesn't have an idea, it doesn't prove anything. My characters, instead of speaking, scream from one end to the other. It is colored by blood, there are brothels of men, anthropophagies, elephants and torments. But it could be that all this was deeply stupid and perfectly boring. When will it be over? God knows! He continues to enjoy the contempt of honest people, and is impatient to see Gautier again: I can't wait to be at the end of next month - alone with you, elbows on the table, in my humble little room on the boulevard. Flaubert met Théophile Gautier in October 1849 at a dinner with Maxime Du Camp and Louis Bouilhet on the eve of his departure for Egypt. A long and strong friendship will result from it. They would meet at Madame Sabatier's, Princess Mathilde's or Jeanne de Tourbey's. Former collections Sacha Guitry (1975, n° 207) and colonel Daniel Sickles (I, 1989, n° 64) Exhibition Flaubert, Bibliothèque nationale, 1980, n° 274. - Flaubert, Correspondance, Pléiade, t. III, p. 10-11. Trace of folds, a few stains, two small restorations with adhesive at the folds.

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FLAUBERT (Gustave).

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