Gustave FLAUBERT writes at length to his lover Louise COLET.

Gustave Flaubert (1821.1880)

Autograph letter to Louise Colet.

Four pages in-4°. [Croisset. October 14, 1846].

Flaubert, Correspondence I , Pléiade, pp. 388-391.

“Since my father and my sister died I no longer have any ambition. I don't even know if anyone will ever print a line of me. »

Superb letter: the friend “Max” (Du Camp), the danger of self-serving compliments, the drama of Louise Colet in preparation, the absence of literary ambition, work, the mediocrity of criticism or “jealous leprosy” journalists…

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Flaubert's tumultuous affair with Louise Colet (1810-1876) is one of the most recognized in literary history, at the origin of a justly famous correspondence. It was in Paris, in the workshop of the sculptor Pradier, that the novelist met, in June 1846, Louise née Révoil, more than ten years his senior. Married in 1834 to the flautist Hippolyte Colet, she had previously experienced several adventures, in particular with the philosopher Victor Cousin, who was or believed to be the father of her daughter Henriette and who, for sixteen years, worked to serve her. A writer, she essentially composed poems, the collections of which were awarded several times by the French Academy.

Their affair began on July 29, 1846, five and a half months before this letter. Returning to Croisset, Flaubert wrote to him often and at length. They met sometimes in Mantes or Paris, but less frequently than she would have liked. Lover and interlocutor with whom he exchanged ideas and talked about literature, she inspired Croisset's bear to write some of his most beautiful letters, writing "jumps and frolics", as here.

Louise Colet had just met Maxime Du Camp (a meeting that she recreated in 1856, by fictionalizing it, in A Soldier's Story ): Flaubert told her what a reliable friend this chosen brother was.

« I'm very happy that Max. you liked. It's a good, beautiful and generous nature that I guessed from the first day and to which I clung like a discovery. There are too many points of contact between us in spirit and constitution for us to miss each other . We have known each other for four years. It's like a century ago! so much so that we have lived together, and through varying fortunes, through times of rain and sunshine. Love him like a brother I would have in Paris. Trust him as well as me and more in him than in myself because he is better than me. There is more heroism and more delicacy in him – the gentlemanliness of his manners only emerges from that of his heart. I am more crude, more common, more undulating. I have a more pungent aroma. – you shouldn't believe what he can tell you about me in terms of literature. Loving me as he loves me, he is undoubtedly partial. First of all, I am a bit like his master. I pulled him out of the mire of the soap opera where he would now be buried for the rest of his life - if not suffocated - and I inspired him with a love of serious studies - he has been doing GDS for two years. progress. He now has a nice talent – ​​he will have a nice one rather – it is above all the feeling and the taste which dominate in him. He touches you, I don't know one thing about him that I can't read without tears in my eyes; and with all these good qualities he is modest like a child.  »

Informed of the maneuvers of the literary world, the novelist warns Louise Colet about the interested compliments of those close to her and their manipulations.

“ About people who say good things about me, beware of the brave Toirac, he is a smart one and perhaps he is only so full of praise about me to see the effect they have. do on you. He will no doubt have suspected from the way you spoke about me that you felt something and, following the old tactic, he will have tried the apology in order to see if it was pleasant or indifferent to you. – You have an acquaintance of yours who must also have a furious idea of ​​me. It's Malitourne. I must seem to him a giant of jokes and cheerfulness. We only saw each other once, at Phidias, and with La Rousse de Marin. I was so viciously kind there that he certainly didn't forget me. That day I was in luck, I had verve. Here is another one in whose mind, I imagine, I come across as a facetious fellow. I've been around so many things and I've been found to have similarities with so many people! from those who said that I had made myself ill by the abuse of women, or solitary pleasures, to those who told me to flatter myself that I resembled the Duke of Orléans . »

Then Gustave Flaubert evokes the drama on which his mistress is working: sketched out in 1845 under the title Madeleine, the play will not be finished until 1847, but refused by the Comédie-Française in 1848. (It will be published in 1850 under the new title from A Family in 1793. )

« Let's cause drama. Yes I often think about the first performance, I torment myself about it! – Oh, how my heart will beat! I know myself, if he is applauded I will have difficulty containing myself. I prepare well for misfortune but not for happiness , and it will be one, if you triumph! ! Oh ! those stamping feet that I dreamed of in college, my elbow resting on my desk looking at the smoky lamp in our study! This noisy glory whose ghost evoked made me shudder, I will therefore have all this, me, and in you, that is to say in the sensitive part of myself. In the evening I will embrace this noble breast whose feeling will have stirred the crowd like a great wind on the water.  »

Confessing his lack of ambition, not without a certain bad faith, Flaubert provides valuable advice on writing and style:

“ Since my father and my sister died I no longer have any ambition. They took my vanity in their shroud and they keep it. I don't even know if anyone will ever print a line of me. I'm not like the fox who finds the fruit too green that he can't eat. But I'm not hungry anymore. Success doesn't tempt me. The one that tempts me is the one that I can give myself, my own approval, and I will perhaps end up doing without it, as I would have had to do without that of others. It is therefore towards you, on you that I defer all this. Work, meditate, above all meditate, condense your thoughts, you know that beautiful fragments do nothing. Unity, unity, everything is there. The whole is what is missing in everyone today, both old and young. A thousand beautiful places, not one work. Tighten your style, make it soft like silk and strong like chain mail. Sorry for this advice, but I would like to give you everything I want for myself. »

He must go to Rouen to spend the winter there with his mother.

« It always rains ; the weather is sad, and me? I'm working quite a bit at the moment. I have several things I want to finish that bore me and which I continue anyway, hoping to get something out of them later – Next spring I will start writing again. But I always go back. A subject to be treated is for me like a woman with whom one is in love – when she is about to give in to you we tremble and we are afraid, it is a voluptuous fear. We don't dare touch his desire.  »

He finds in Chateaubriand an illustration of his feelings:

« This evening I reread the Velléda episode of Martyrs . What a beautiful thing! What poetry! But if I had been Eudore and you had been the druidess I would have given in more quickly. I cannot help but feel a feeling of bourgeois indignation when I see men in books who resist women. We always think that it is the author who is talking about himself and we find that impertinent because perhaps it is false after all.  »

Then Flaubert shuts down the rumors and the criticism that is not only mediocre, but dangerous for the writers who try it: 

« You tell me about Albert Aubert, and Mr Gaschon de Molesnes. Despise all these funny people – Why worry about these blackbirds squawking? It's a waste of time to read reviews - I'm strong enough to maintain in a thesis that there hasn't been a good one since we started writing them - that it's of no use other than to annoying the authors and stupidizing the public – and finally that we criticize when we cannot make art just as we become snitches when we cannot be soldiers. 

I would like to know what poets of all times have had in common in their works with those who have analyzed them – Plautus would have laughed at Aristotle if he had known him, Cornelius struggled under him – Voltaire despite himself was shrunk by Boileau – we would have been spared a lot of bad things in modern drama without W. Schlegel; and when the translation of Hegel is finished God knows where we will go! and let's add journalists on top of that, who don't even have the knowledge to hide their jealous leprosy . »

He concludes in a comical manner, as if he were pulling himself together after an excess of fury:

“  I let myself be carried away by my hatred of criticism and critiques, so much so that these wretches took up all the space for me to kiss you – but in spite of them this is what I do. So, with their permission, a thousand kisses on your beautiful forehead and on your eyes so sweet and... "

After a first breakup in 1848, Flaubert got back together as soon as he returned from his trip to the Orient – ​​until 1855. “ You are indeed the only woman I have loved and had ,” the sentimental misogynist admitted to him.

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Flaubert, Correspondence I, Pléiade, pp. 388-391: the date at the top was indicated by Louise Colet who first wrote "July" before changing her mind to write "October", undoubtedly by some sort of automatism.

Provenance: J. Lambert collection.