FLAUBERT Gustave (1821-1880)

L.A.S. "Gve Flaubert" addressed to Ernest FEYDEAU. [Croisset] Sunday, August 5 [1860]; 2 pages in-8 on blue paper (small tear at center fold of second leaf affecting three letters Honteusem "ent"). Beautiful letter, in crude terms, on the progress of Salammbô. "I was beginning to find time long! and I wondered if you had not remained stuck at the bottom of the anus of an oriental mome when your epistle came. You neglect your penmanship too much; I found it hard to read you. Don't get angry, and trim your feathers. You seem to me, my good man, to be taking it easy. Go on, enjoy yourself, get all kinds of bumps. - Stay there as long as you can. You'll miss the red leather boots and the hairless cunts. But while you're there, get as far away as you can. Go to Tuggurt. - From Constantine it is very easy. If on the way you discover some joke suitable for inclusion in Salammbô, tell your friend about it. [...] We shall not see much of each other this winter. I shall go "to modern Athens" in November, for Bouilhet's play. - Then I'll come back here - alone - to cut out as many pages as I can. For I would like 1861 to see the end of my bloody novel. I am finishing chapter VIII - (I will have six more!) My battle of Macar is over, provisionally at least. For I am not satisfied with it. It must be taken up again. It can be better." Then he evokes the fall of "the play by the academician Ponsard" [Ce qui plaît aux femmes], "shamefully fallen, fallen as one used to fall in the past - flat - classically. It is one more elegance. But as the public hissed a lot, I wonder if it is not an Honour? and I suspect that his play is better than the previous ones". He reads the Heterogenia of his friend Dr. Pouchet: "It dazzles me! What a quantity of splendid nonsense there is in nature. [...] What kind of book are you dreaming of? Is it a novel? a journey? or a treatise? or the Essays? What becomes of Sylvie in the midst of all this? You don't tell me! [...] We often talk about your Lordship - and besides, every time I go to pee I contemplate your truculent portrait above my bedside table, - & I say a little hello to you. No! my old man! do not believe that Beautiful subjects make good books. I am afraid, after the making of Salammbô, that I am more than ever convinced of this truth. Rumine la, while for you, there is still time... REFERENCE Correspondence (Pléiade), t. III, p. 100