Gustave Flaubert is one of the most prominent figures in French literature of the 19th century. He was called a master of the "exact word", a recluse of the "ivory tower", a "martyr and fanatic of style". He was admired, he was quoted, they learned from him, he was accused of immorality, he was taken to court and yet justified, because no one could doubt Flaubert's talent as a writer and his devotion to the art of the word.

Unlike contemporary writers, Gustave Flaubert never used the laurels that fame gives. He lived as a recluse on his estate in Croisset, avoiding bohemian evenings and public performances, he did not chase circulation, did not bother publishers, and therefore did not make a fortune on his masterpieces. Like a fanatic in love, he had no idea how to commercialize literature, believing that art should not bring money. The source of inspiration for him was work - everyday painstaking work, that's all.

Many resort to dubious sources of inspiration - alcohol, drug intoxication, women, whom they call muses. Flaubert called all this the tricks of charlatans and excuses of lazy people. “I lead a harsh life, devoid of any external joy, and the only support for me is the constant inner rage ... I love my work with a frantic and perverted love, like an ascetic sackcloth scratching his body.”

Gustave was the third child in the family of a Rouen doctor named Flaubert. The boy was born on December 12, 1821. The scenery of his childhood was a meager bourgeois apartment and his father's operating room. In the surgical procedures performed by Father Flaubert, little Gustave found some special poetics. He was not afraid of the sight of blood, on the contrary, he liked to peep through a crack or a cloudy hospital glass at the progress of the operation. From childhood, the younger Flaubert had a passion for all kinds of anomalies, deformities, deviations, diseases. This shaped his future literary style - meticulous attention to detail and naturalism. Well, Flaubert made a masterful metaphor of illnesses, transferring them from the physical to the spiritual plane. Since then, the writer began to depict the moral ailments of mankind.

At the age of 12, Flaubert was sent to the Royal College of Rouen. Gustave went to receive higher education in Paris. Unlike most young provincials, Flaubert was not impressed by the capital. He did not like the rhythm of the big city, the bustle of the streets, the depravity and idleness of the youth. He does not indulge in unbridled fun, attending only a few bohemian circles. To jurisprudence, which the young man chose as a future profession, he almost immediately lost interest.

The best moments of study

The main achievement of his studies was friendship. So, at college, Flaubert met Buje, the future poet, and at the university - with the writer, journalist Du Can. Gustave carried friendship with these people throughout his life.

In the third year, Flaubert had an epileptic attack, the doctors diagnosed a severe nervous disease and forbade the patient to moral and mental stress. The university had to and Paris had to leave. Flaubert did not grieve for either. With a light heart, he left the hated capital for the family estate, which was located in the town of Croisset. Here he lived almost without a break until his death, only a few times leaving the family nest to travel to the East.

Madame Bovary: the birth of a masterpiece

When Gustave was diagnosed with epilepsy, Flaubert's father died. He left his son a substantial fortune. Gustave no longer needed to worry about tomorrow, and therefore he lived quietly in Croisset, doing his favorite thing - literature.

Flaubert wrote from a young age. The first attempts at writing were an imitation of the romantics fashionable at that time. However, demanding of himself, Flaubert did not publish a single line. He did not want to blush in front of the public for discordant attempts at writing, his literary debut should be perfect.

In 1851, Flaubert set to work on Madame Bovary. For five years, he painstakingly writes out line after line. Sometimes the writer sits for days on one page, making endless edits, and finally, in 1856, "Madame Bovary" appears on the shelves of bookstores. The work created a huge public outcry. Flaubert was criticized, accused of immorality, even a lawsuit was initiated against him, but no one could doubt the literary skill of the author. Gustave Flaubert immediately became the most famous French writer.

The author called Emma Bovary his alter ego (we note that the work does not contain a positive hero as such, characteristic of the romantic tradition). The main similarity between Flaubert and his Bovary was the passion to dream of an ideal fake life. Faced with reality, Flaubert realized that sweet dreams kill like slow-acting poison. Anyone who is unable to part with them is doomed to death.

"Salambo", "Education of the Senses", "Buvard and Pécuchet"

Flaubert's second novel came out five years later in 1862. "Salambo" is the result of the writer's journey through Africa and the East. The historical background of the work was the uprising of mercenaries in ancient Carthage. The events described date back to the 3rd century BC. e. As a true perfectionist, Flaubert painstakingly studies numerous sources about Carthage. As a result, critics accused the author of being too attentive to historical details, due to which the work lost its spirituality, and the images lost their psychologism and artistic depth. The public, however, was delighted with the second novel by the author of Madame Bovary, whose fame had already thundered far beyond the borders of France. "Salambo" successfully survived the second publication, and French ladies began to appear more and more in public in fashionable Punic-style dresses.

The third novel, "Education of the Senses", published in 1869, was greeted coolly, interest in it was revived only after the death of the writer. But the last work "Bouvard and Pécuchet" Flaubert called his favorite. Alas, the author failed to complete the work. The novel, which dissects human stupidity, was published after the writer's death in 1881.

When, after the successful publication of Madame Bovary, Flaubert woke up famous, he was not intoxicated by the frenzied fame. At first, the author defended his literary brainchild in court, and after the acquittal, he said goodbye to the enthusiastic public and locked himself in his mother's house in Croisset.

At the same time, Flaubert breaks off relations with the fashionable French poetess Louise Colet (nee Revoile). Her poems were very popular in the best Parisian salons. As the wife of a professor at the conservatory, Hippolyte Cole, she had affairs with celebrities without a twinge of conscience. Her attention was not spared by the popular writers of Chateaubriand, Béranger, Sainte-Beuve, who gladly wrote their authoritative reviews on the first pages of her poetry collections.

Roman Flaubert and Colet was passionate, impulsive, vicious. The lovers quarreled and parted in order to reconcile and get back together. Breaking with his illusions, Flaubert mercilessly debunks the romanticized image of Colet, created by his sentimental imagination. “Oh, better love art than me,” writes Flaubert in his farewell letter, “I love the idea…”

After breaking up with Colet, Flaubert finds an outlet in communication with the widow Maupassant and her young son Guy. The venerable writer became a teacher for the boy, an inspirer, escorted into the world of great literature. The student did not deceive the expectations of his great teacher, climbing to the same level with him. Unfortunately, Flaubert did not live to see the triumph of Maupassant as a writer, did not share the joy of the success of the short story "Dumpling", which he personally approved for publication, did not hold the fresh volumes of "Dear Friend" and "Life" in his hands.

In the last years of his life, Flaubert was ill a lot and was in extremely tight financial circumstances (the inheritance began to come to an end, and the writer's novels were not commercially successful). Gustave Flaubert died at the age of 59 from a stroke at his home in Croisset.

FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE(Flaubert, Gustav) (1821-1880), French writer, who is often called the creator of the modern novel. Born December 12, 1821 in Rouen, where his father was the chief physician of one of the local hospitals. From 1823 to 1840 Flaubert studied at the Royal College of Rouen, where he did not achieve much success, but showed an interest in history and a great love of literature. He read not only the romantics fashionable at that time, but also Cervantes and Shakespeare. At school, he met the future poet L. Buie (1822–1869), who became his true friend for life.

In 1840 Flaubert was sent to Paris to study law. After studying for three years, he failed to pass the exams, but made friends with the writer and journalist M.Du Kang (1822-1894), who became his travel companion. In 1843, Flaubert was diagnosed with a nervous disease similar to epilepsy, and he was prescribed a sedentary lifestyle. After the death of his father in 1846, he returned to the Croisset estate near Rouen, took care of his mother and was mainly engaged in literature. Fortunately, he had a fortune that saved him from the need to earn a living with a pen or in other ways. In the same way, he was able to fulfill his dream of travel and devote many years to writing a single novel. He perfected his style with the utmost attention, being distracted only by professional conversations with the Goncourt brothers, I. Taine, E. Zola, G. Maupassant and I. S. Turgenev. Even his illustrious love story is associated with the poetess Louise Colet, and in their extensive correspondence, literary problems were the main theme.

Flaubert was brought up on the works of F. Chateaubriand and V. Hugo and gravitated toward the romantic way of depicting. All his life he sought to suppress the lyric-romantic beginning in himself for the sake of the most objective image of everyday reality. Early in writing, he soon became aware of the conflict between his goal and the inclinations of his nature. The first of his published novels is Madame Bovary (Madame Bovary, 1857.

Great work of literature Madame Bovary marked a turning point in the development of the modern novel. Flaubert worked through every sentence in search of the famous "mot juste". His interest in the form of the novel, successfully realized in a unique structure Madame Bovary, had a strong influence on subsequent writers who set as their goal the creation of new forms and techniques - G. James, J. Conrad, J. Joyce, M. Proust and many others.

main theme Madame Bovary there was an age-old conflict between illusion and reality, between fictional and real life. To reveal this theme, Flaubert did not use the heroic impulses of a noble personality, but the pitiful dreams of an ordinary bourgeois woman. Flaubert gave his narrow-minded characters an exalted universal meaning. Madame Bovary was first published in the Revue de Paris magazine in 1856, however, despite the fact that the alarmed M. Du Kang and M. Pisha made serious corrections and reductions, the author and editors of the magazine were sued for insulting public morality. After a sensational trial - one of the most famous literary battles in the legal field - Flaubert was acquitted, and in 1857 the novel was published as a separate book without any cuts.

Flaubert's second novel Salambo (Salammbo, 1862), was the result of a trip to Africa in 1858, as well as serious historical and archaeological studies. Obviously, the author's desire to renounce the ordinary, creating an epic canvas on the themes of hoary antiquity. The action takes place in Carthage after the 1st Punic War, when mercenaries led by Mato rebelled against the Carthaginians led by Hamilcar.

In the third novel Sense education (L "education sentimentale, 1859; Russian 1870 translation titled Sentimental upbringing), Flaubert writes the history of his generation, confused by romanticism and the generous promises of theorists of a humane social order, but forced to descend to earth after the catastrophe of 1848 and the collapse of idealism. Sense education is an unflattering portrait of a lost generation.

Started long before Madame Bovary and, on the advice of Bouillet and Du Camp, put aside Temptation of Saint Anthony (La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1874) owes its origin to a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, which Flaubert saw in Genoa in 1845. The idea of ​​flaunting the temptations besieging the saint occupied Flaubert for the rest of his life, and its embodiment in the novel-dialogue is an attempt to show all conceivable sins, heresies, religion and philosophy.

Three stories (Trois Contes, 1877) include plots of two types - deliberately ordinary and flowery-historical. A short and powerful story about the life of a village maid ( simple heart – Un Coeur simple) all consists of a chain of losses that left her at the end of her life only with a stuffed parrot, to which she becomes attached to such an extent that she unconsciously begins to relate to him as to the Holy Spirit. AT Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitable (La Legende de Saint-Jullien l "Hospitalier) a medieval righteous man, repenting of the sins of his youth, is subjected to the last supreme test: a leper turns to him with a request for a kiss. Having fulfilled his desire, Julian finds himself face to face with Jesus, who raised him to heaven. Herodias (Herodias) tells of Salome demanding the head of John the Baptist.

Flaubert gave the last eight years of his life to his beloved brainchild - the novel Bouvard and Pécuchet (Bouvard et Pecuchet, 1881; Russian translation 1881), which was left unfinished. In the story of two small servants who decide to devote their leisure and small income to the study of all branches of human knowledge, the madness and inescapable stupidity of the human race is the main target. Flaubert classifies all examples of this kind with grim pleasure, forcing his heroes to dedicate their lives to creating an anthology of the absurdities they have discovered.

One of the greatest creations of Flaubert, which continues to arouse close interest, was his Letters (Correspondence, publ. 1887–1893). In casual communication with friends, he pours out his thoughts on paper, not caring about style, and thus providing a unique opportunity to see the artist analyzing his work in the process of daily creation and formulating his ideas about the nature of literature. Along with a vivid self-portrait of Flaubert himself, the correspondence contains insightful observations about the people and customs of the era of the Second Empire.

In the last years of Flaubert's life, misfortunes followed: the death of his friend Bouillet in 1869, the occupation of the estate by the advancing enemy army during the Franco-Prussian War, and finally, serious financial difficulties. He did not experience commercial success when publishing his books, which for a long time caused rejection by critics. Flaubert died at Croisset on May 8, 1880.

Gustave Flaubert (fr. Gustave Flaubert). Born December 12, 1821 in Rouen - died May 8, 1880 in Croisset. French realist prose writer, considered one of the greatest European writers of the 19th century. He worked a lot on the style of his works, putting forward the theory of the "exact word" (le mot juste). He is best known as the author of Madame Bovary (1856).

Gustave Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821 in the city of Rouen into a petty bourgeois family. His father was a surgeon in the hospital of Rouen, and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. He was the youngest child in the family. In addition to Gustave, the family had two children: an older sister and brother. Two other children did not survive. The writer spent his childhood bleakly in the doctor's dark apartment.

The writer studied at the Royal College and Lyceum in Rouen, starting in 1832. There he met Ernest Chevalier, with whom he founded Art et Progress in 1834. In this edition, he first printed his first public text.

In 1836 he met Eliza Schlesinger, who had a profound influence on the writer. He carried his silent passion through his whole life and displayed it in the novel "Education of the Senses".

The youth of the writer is associated with the provincial cities of France, which he repeatedly described in his work. In 1840 Flaubert entered the faculty of law in Paris. There he led a bohemian life, met many famous people, wrote a lot. He dropped out of school in 1843 after his first epileptic stroke. In 1844, the writer settled on the banks of the Seine, not far from Rouen. Flaubert's lifestyle was characterized by isolation, the desire for self-isolation. He tried to devote time and energy to literary creativity.

In 1846 his father died, and after some time his sister. His father left him a solid inheritance on which he could live comfortably.

Flaubert returned to Paris in 1848 to take part in the Revolution. From 1848 to 1852 he traveled to the East. He visited Egypt and Jerusalem, through Constantinople and Italy. He wrote down his impressions and used them in his works.

Since 1855, in Paris, Flaubert has been visiting many writers, including the Goncourt brothers, Baudelaire, and also meets with.

In July 1869 he was greatly shocked by the death of his friend Louis Boulay. There is evidence that Flaubert had love affairs with his mother, which is why they had friendly relations.

During the occupation of France by Prussia, Flaubert hid in Rouen with his mother and niece. His mother died in 1872 and at that time the writer had already started having problems with money. There are health problems as well. He sells his property, leaves an apartment in Paris. He publishes his works one after another.

The last years of the writer's life were overshadowed by financial problems, health problems and the betrayal of friends.

Gustave Flaubert died on May 8, 1880 as a result of a stroke. Many writers attended the funeral, including Alphonse Daudet, Edmond Goncourt and others.

Flaubert's writings:

"Memoirs of a Madman" / fr. Memoires d "un fou, 1838
"November" / fr. Novembre, 1842
"Education of the senses", 1843-1845
"Madam Bovary. Provincial manners” / fr. Madame Bovary, 1857
"Salambo" / fr. Salammbô, 1862
"Education of the senses" / fr. L "Education sentimentale, 1869
"The Temptation of Saint Anthony" / fr. La Tentation de Saint Antoine, 1874
"Three stories" / fr. Trois contes, 1877
Bouvard and Pécuchet, 1881

Film adaptations of Flaubert:

Madame Bovary (dir. Jean Renoir), France, 1933
Madame Bovary (dir. Vincente Minnelli), 1949
Education of the Senses (dir. Marcel Cravenne), France, 1973
Save and Save (dir. A. Sokurov), USSR, 1989
Madame Bovary (dir. Claude Chabrol), France, 1991
Lady Maya (Maya Memsaab), (dir. Ketan Mehta), 1992, (based on the novel "Madame Bovary")
Madame Bovary (dir. Tim Fievell), 2000
Night after night / All nights (Toutes les nuits), (dir. Eugene Green), (based on), 2001
Simple soul (Un coeur simple), (dir. Marion Lane), 2008
Madame Bovary (dir. Sophie Barthez), 2014

Years of life: from 12/12/1821 to 05/08/1880

Famous French novelist, head of the realist school in France.

Flaubert was born in Rouen, in the North Normandy region of France. He was the second son of Flaubert, his father a famous surgeon, and mother of Anne Justine Caroline Flaubert. Began writing at an early age, before the age of eight, according to some sources.

Flaubert studied in his hometown at the Royal College of Rouen (1823-1840) and did not leave it until 1840, when he left to study law in Paris. After studying for three years, he failed to pass the exams, but made friends with the writer and journalist M.Du Kang, who became his travel companion. By the end of 1840, Flaubert was traveling in the Pyrenees and Corsica.

In 1843, Flaubert was diagnosed with a nervous disease similar to epilepsy, and he was prescribed a sedentary lifestyle. The illness led to the fact that Flaubert did not complete the course, but went on a trip. In 1845 he traveled to Italy. Together with his friend, Flaubert traveled through Brittany in 1846.

After the death of his father in 1846, he returned to the Croisset estate near Rouen, took care of his mother and was mainly engaged in literature. Flaubert lived until the end of his days in his father's house on the banks of the Seine.

In September 1849, Flaubert completed the first version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony. In the same year he traveled to Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Greece.

In 1850, after returning, the writer began work on the novel Madame Bovary. The novel, which took five years to write, was published in the Ruve de Paris (Journal of Paris) in 1856. The government initiated proceedings against the publisher and against the author on charges of immorality, but both were acquitted. The novel Madame Bovary, which appeared in book form, was received very warmly.

Beginning in 1850, Flaubert lived in Croisset, making occasional visits to Paris and England, where he had mistresses. He visited Carthage in 1858 in search of prototypes and examples for his novel Salambo. The novel was completed in 1862, after a year of work.

Based on childhood events, Flaubert's next work, An Education in the Senses, took seven years of hard work. The Education of the Senses, the last completed novel, was published in 1869.

Fulfilling his civic duty, during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, Flaubert served in the army with the rank of lieutenant and was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. 1870 was a difficult year. Parisian soldiers occupied Flaubert's house during the War in 1870, and in 1872 his mother died. After the death of his mother, the writer had financial difficulties.

Flaubert wrote a very unsuccessful drama, The Candidate, and also published a revised version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, part of which was published in 1857. He devoted most of his time to a new project, "Two Woodlice", which later became known as "Buvard et Pécuchet", and broke away from it only to write "Three Tales" in 1877. This book included three stories: "A Simple Soul", "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitable" and "Herodias". After the publication of these stories, he devoted the rest of his life to the unfinished work "Buvard et Pécuchet", which was published posthumously in 1881.

Flaubert suffered from sexually transmitted diseases most of his life. His health deteriorated and he died at Croisset of a stroke in 1880 at the age of 58. Flaubert was buried in the family plot, in the cemetery in Rouen.

Flaubert read The Temptation of Saint Anthony aloud to his friends for four days, not allowing them to stop themselves and express any opinion. At the end of the reading, they told him to throw the manuscript into the fire, suggesting that he focus on everyday life rather than fantasy objects.

Flaubert liked to write letters that are collected in various publications.

Flaubert was a tireless worker and often, in letters to friends, complained about his busy schedule. He was close to his niece, Caroline Commonville, and was friends and corresponded with George Sand. Occasionally he visited Parisian acquaintances, including Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, Edmond and Julia Goncot.

The writer has never been married. From 1846 to 1854 he had a relationship with the poetess Louise Colette, which can be said to be his only serious relationship. Gradually losing interest in each other, Gustave and Louise broke up.

French writer often referred to as the creator of the modern novel. Born December 12, 1821 in Rouen, where his father was the chief physician of one of the local hospitals. From 1823 to 1840 Flaubert studied at the Royal College of Rouen, where he did not achieve much success, but showed an interest in history and a great love of literature. He read not only the romantics fashionable at that time, but also Cervantes and Shakespeare. At school, he met the future poet L. Buie (1822-1869), who became his true friend for life.

In 1840 Flaubert was sent to Paris to study law. After studying for three years, he failed to pass the exams, but made friends with the writer and journalist M. Du Cane (1822-1894), who became his travel companion. In 1843, Flaubert was diagnosed with a nervous disease similar to epilepsy, and he was prescribed a sedentary lifestyle.
After the death of his father in 1846, he returned to the estate of Croisset near Rouen, took care of his mother and was mainly engaged in literature. Fortunately, he had a fortune that saved him from the need to earn a living with a pen or in other ways. In the same way, he was able to fulfill his dream of travel and devote many years to writing a single novel. He perfected his style with the utmost attention, being distracted only by professional conversations with the Goncourt brothers, I. Taine, E. Zola, G. Maupassant and I. S. Turgenev. Even his illustrious love story is associated with the poetess Louise Colet, and in their extensive correspondence, literary problems were the main theme.

Flaubert was brought up on the works of F. Chateaubriand and V. Hugo and gravitated toward the romantic way of depicting. All his life he sought to suppress the lyric-romantic beginning in himself for the sake of the most objective image of everyday reality. Early in writing, he soon became aware of the conflict between his goal and the inclinations of his nature. The first of his published novels is Madame Bovary (1857).

A great work of literature, Madame Bovary marked a turning point in the development of the modern novel. Flaubert worked through each sentence in search of the famous "right word". His interest in the form of the novel, successfully realized in the unique structure of Madame Bovary, had a strong influence on subsequent writers who set as their goal the creation of new forms and techniques - G. James, J. Conrad, J. Joyce, M. Proust and many others.

In 1862 Flaubert's historical novel "Salambo" appeared, in 1869 - the novel of morals "Education of the Senses", in 1874 - "The Temptation of St. Anthony", in 1877 - "Three Tales"; then Flaubert began to work hard on his long-conceived favorite work, the novel Bouvard and Pécuchet, but did not have time to finish it; of the proposed two volumes, Flaubert wrote only one, and that does not have the completeness of Flaubert's other works. The end of Flaubert's life was sad: he suffered from a severe nervous illness, was gloomy and irritable, broke off relations with his best friend, Maxime Ducan; his mother died, his financial situation worsened, since he ceded a significant part of his fortune to poor relatives. Flaubert did not experience complete loneliness in his old age, thanks to the tender cares of his niece, Mme Commanville, as well as friendship with George Sand; Guy de Maupassant, the son of one of his childhood friends, also gave him great consolation; Flaubert took care of the development of his young talent and was for him a strict and attentive teacher. Illness and heavy literary work exhausted Flaubert's strength early; he died of apoplexy. In 1890, a monument was erected to him in Rouen, the work of the famous sculptor Chapu.