Word: flaubert
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
INTIMATE NOTEBOOK 1840-1841 by Gustave Flaubert. 68 pages. Doubleday...
...parents of 17-year-old Gustave Flaubert had sneaked a look at their son's private journal, they might never have urged him to study for the law. Fortunately for Flaubert, and for his future readers, he defied his parents and chose to keep on writing...
...journal that traces the origins of that choice has long since disappeared. But in 1960, a grandniece of Flaubert's produced a copy that she had transcribed years before. This first English translation by Flaubert Scholar Francis Steegmuller makes it clear once more that even in his callow teens Flaubert was headed for literary greatness...
Despairing Challenge. "I remember that before I was ten I had already begun to write," the young Flaubert reminds himself. "I dreamed of the splendors of genius, a lighted hall, applause, wreaths-if you knew what my vanity is-what a savage vulture, how it eats my heart." He agonizes over "the poverty of languages, which have scarcely one word for a hundred thoughts." And he asks: "Do you ever utter a sentence just as you think it? Will you write a novel as you have conceived...
...sure, many aspiring young writers hurl such despairing challenges at themselves, brood majestically over the paradoxes of life and mistake old mysteries for freshly discovered insights:"The history of the world is a farce," announces Flaubert. "I believe that humanity has but one objective: to suffer...