He was characterized by morbidity and pessimism, which may have been partly due to his illness, and by a violent hatred and contempt for middle-class society, derived ultimately from his childhood in bourgeois Rouen. As a result, he usually preferred a solitary life at Le Croisset to other pursuits.įlaubert has often been considered a misanthropic recluse.
As with so many other things, Flaubert found to his dismay that Louise in the flesh was not the same as Louise in his imagination. She and Flaubert saw each other only very rarely, however, and their liaison existed mainly in their letters.
The other was Louise Colet, a poet, who was his mistress between 18. The first involved Elisa Schlessinger, a married, older woman whom he met at Trouville when he was fifteen and who for many years was the object of his platonic and idealized affection. He was respected and admired by all of them.įlaubert had few close friends, but there were two unusual relationships with women in his life. As the years passed, he became acquainted with most of the important literary figures of the period, including Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Turgenev, the de Goncourts, and de Maupassant. He gladly took this opportunity to give up law and most of his time was now spent at Le Croisset, where he lived quietly and devoted himself to writing and his studies.įlaubert made a trip to the Near East in 1849-50, where he traveled widely in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Greece, and in 1857, he visited the site of ancient Carthage in North Africa. For reasons of health he retired to the family's new home in Le Croisset, a suburb of Rouen. In 1844, Flaubert became the victim of a serious nervous illness, which cannot be identified precisely, but which was probably related to epilepsy. His talent for writing was stimulated by these experiences. In the capital he made new friends and moved in literary circles. He attended a secondary school in Rouen, and in 1841 was sent, against his will, to study law in Paris. Gustave was a sensitive and quiet boy he read a lot, and since the family lived in a house on the hospital grounds, he early gained a knowledge of scientific techniques and ideas. He was the fourth child of a distinguished doctor who was the head of the hospital in that city. Gustave Flaubert was born December 12, 1821, in Rouen, France, and died May 8, 1880.
0 kommentar(er)
