FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880).

Autograph MANUSCRIT, Cosmos Alexander Humboldt, [ca. 1860]; title and 20 pages on 11 leaves (29.5 x 22.2 cm), mounted on tabs in an in-4 volume, red half-maroquin set with gilt fillet, spine ribbed, untrimmed (modern binding). Notes from Humboldt for the documentation of La Tentation de Saint Antoine. These notes, abundant and developed, are written in brown ink on sheets of strong watermarked paper Canson frères. Alexandre von HUMBOLDT published his Cosmos. Essai d'une description physique du Monde in 1845; the first volume of the French translation appeared in 1847. Flaubert's notes cover the first two volumes (out of 3). Flaubert indicates the pagination at the end of each note; he has put in the margin some headings; thus, for volume I "Tableau de la Nature": Nature, Astronomical part, Chemical composition of aeroliths, Future changes in the sky, Celestial life, Interior of the earth, Chinese compass, Animal light of the sea, Earthquakes, Cause of vulcanism according to Plato, Fossils, Mediterranean-Caspian, Oceanic currents, Fogs reproducing the shallows, Marine life, Since Columbus man has been circulating on the earth, If the earth had no air; and, for Volume II "History of the idea of the Cosmos": the inventor of pruned trees, little love of the picturesque in the Ancients, invention of backstage, travel memory - desiderium, Parks of Persian kings - pruning of symbolic trees, Nicholas of Cusa, idea of a lost primitive truth, Amenemha III, Etna of Taygetos, India - Judea, Herodotus - Caspian, Alexander - India, First legends are travels Bacchus Abaris etc.., tala-tabaschir, Babylonian astronomical college, Red Sea channel, beautiful comparison, Lake Aral, Moon mirror of the earth, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Rufus of Ephesus, Emperor Augustus, word of a scholar, Abderrhaman I - botanical garden, America from the year 1000 - and even 876, intellectual fever of the physicists of M.A., Master of Petrarch and Boccaccio, promoters of Greek studies, Leo X, Anghiera, Pinzon - flight of the parrots, first trip around the world, what was driving the travels in the 16th century, Barros = fifth part of the world, Columbus, sea grass banks, comets in daylight, Copernicus & Columbus, death of Coppernicus, idea of Anaxagoras about the Moon, celestial concerts of Tycho Brahe, inventors of the telescope, color of the Moon, Saturn, formation of stars. Following, more developed notes referring to the notes of volume II: Gardens of Adonis ("the garden where Venus unites with Adonis, symbol of youth too soon withered, of fertile growth and destruction"), Ophir gold, Sugar, Elephants. This simple enumeration of Flaubert's marginal rubrics shows the diversity of his interests. Bound at the end is a leaf entitled "Questions académiques" (one and a half pages in-4, repairs), referring to Cicero in the Fournier edition. Provenance: Caroline Franklin-Grout-Flaubert (Flaubert's niece), Paris sale November 18-19, 1931, no. 123; Albert Kies (bookplate; Sotheby's Paris sale, June 19, 2013, no. 124.