FLAUBERT'S LETTERS.* AFTER an interval of a year, the series
of Flaubert's letters is completed by the appearance of the fourth and final volume, containing the correspondence of his eleven last years. We are thus able to come to close quarters with the mind of this interesting, but at the same time very limited, man of genius, —an artist no doubt, but an artist without the humanity which consecrates art. Opening with the shy reception of the Education Sentirnentale, the period of the letters comprises the painful elaboration of the St. Antoine, the succes d' estinte of Le Candidat on the stage, the comparatively rapid production of the Trois Conies, and the hopeless pensum of Bouvard et Pecuchet, the unfinished epic of the baise of modern ideas. The lengthy correspondence is lightened by the continuation of the "old troubadour's" revelations of himself to his revered Georges Sand, and brightened by the proud protection and correction of his disciple, Guy de Maupassant, nephew of the dead friend of his youth. There is little pasture ground for the anecdote- monger amongst these pages, starred with the names of literary celebrities grouped in reserved admiration about him ; and the student of Flaubert and his influence, intent on the discovery of the secret of his talent and temperament, will find that the volume does little but accentuate its predecessors. There is the same wonted vigorous directness of style, stooping to energetic vulgarisms as a relief from the marble severity of his serious prose, the same acrid denunciations of modern fetidness, of the inundations of cretinism, the same aristocratic hatred of the universal stupidity,—literary, political, and moral. But there is also the same cordiality, rough tender- ness, brusque kindness and sincerity, undiminished, if not increased, in these last years of his.
With the approach of age, Flaubert, who understood Hugo and the Romanticists better than the Naturalists who acknow- ledged him as master, felt more and more out of touch with his time. Those he loved were dead, and few were they by whom he could hope to be understood. Art, in his eyes, was in a state of marasmus ; there was no place more for men of taste, and it was only left to " retire into solitude, like a rhino- ceros, and attend dissolution." He and the few survivors of a better age are " fossils," and it is useless to publish anything more, for hardly any one loves what he loves, or has common interests with him. No one cares for style. Even Ste. Beuve and Taine take everything into consideration except talent, or the intrinsical value of a book. His friend Bouilbet, for whom alone he wrote, his Socrates-like " a,ccoucheur," was dead. It was true the " gigantic" Tourgueneff still remained, and that the consolations of Georges Sand were not to fail till four years before his own farewell to the world. But Georges Sand and he were at opposite poles of art,—were enigmas to each other ; • her copiousness and serenity could only inspire him with admiration and envy. And Tourgueneff and Zola "do not admire at all the prose of Chateaubriand, and still less that
Corrospondme, Quatrionto S4rio (1859.80). Paris Oharpontier.
of Gautier. Phrases which transport me seem empty to them. Who is wrong ? and how please the public when your nearest friends are so far from your ideas ?" The hermit of Croisset must needs plunge deeper into his solitude, and toil at the works he knows will never be popular,—works he fears to commence, doubts of when begun, detests long before completion. But such sweet pains, such "lucid folly," was the only tolerable thing in life; to work is to forget one's wretched self, one's losses by death, and, above all, one's con- temporaries. His nervous malady and excessive sensibility detained him a willing prisoner in the wilderness of books from which he extracted gall, and not honey.
How he envies the Olympian serenity of Goethe, and of Georges Sand when once freed from passion and revolt ! But he is conscious of the fatality of his temperament; he cannot change his nature and the destiny it imposes on him. His philosophy is a sombre one ; the natural state of man is evil, and progress a myth. He flattered himself he had no illusions, but the Franco-German war revealed to him that he had for. gotten too much the perversity of mankind. He had even cherished aspirations for the times when science and its re- presentatives, the " mandarins," the Renanist aristocrats of intellect, should rule the vile mob ; but here was an army of savants, children of Kant and Hegel, pillaging and extermi- nating like barbarians I Where was truth ? Surely not in any single creed or philosophy. Dogmatism is folly. The world is built up of antinomies, and "I see no means of establishing at present a new principle any more than of respecting the ancient ones." He re-echoes Littr6's " Ah, my friend,, man is an unstable compound, and the earth a very inferior sort of planet." For himself, he was an artist, and therefore an exile. Literature was, indeed, a vain and useless occupation, for oderuvt poetas ; but without the prac- tice of literature life was intolerable. " Literature has pre- served me from giving the rein to my virtues or vices." The one sole duty of an artist is to sacrifice all to art. As he writes to Mrs. Tennant : " There is just one rule for artists : Be as regular and orderly in your life as a business man, so that you may be violent and original in your works." He assures Guy de Maupassant's mother that her son. will be a genius,—that is, develop an original conception of life. As to his success, he continues : "What matter 1 The main thing in the world is to keep one's soul, in a lofty region far from the slimy depths of industrialism and democracy. The cult of art inspires pride, and one has never enough pride."
Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, master and pupil, were both alike martyrs of literature, but with a dif- ference. The younger was no nervous hermit, finding torture and solace in his cult of art ; and his contrasting facility and uncontested popularity led him to draw too heavily on his caps, ties for pleasure and work. Both were misanthropes, but the Met possessed "all tenderness," as he said, beneath his rough exterior, bad the " bump of admiration," and loved to love whom and what he admired. He protests to Georges Sand that she ought not to take him at his word when ,he assures her there is nothing but literature that interests him. He is the prey of the deepest melancholy when not enthusiastic—for he loves and desires enthusiasm. But enthusiasm is no lasting state for man, and the vulture of ennui was never far away from his heart. He warned the hapless Guy de Maupassant to shun the " vice of melancholy;" but it was the blind leading the blind. How best describe in epitome the character of his martyrdom P In this volume, a declaration of his own, and two opinions of others that he quotes with approval, will help us. " I endeavour to intoxicate myself with ink, as others do with alcohol,"—to forget the world and himself. He announces his intention to visit Switzerland for his health's sake, "obedient to the advice of Dr. Hardy, who calls me 'a hysterical woman,' a remark I consider profound." And, finally, "My poor Bouilhet used to tell me, There is no man more moral than rot/and no one who loves immorality more : a silly ex- pression or action delights you.' There is a certain amount of truth in that. Is it an effect of my pride P or does it result from a certain perversity ? " To paraphrase this last : he was an artist, a lover of the beautiful, who took his art so seriously that whatever was not artistic inspired him with instant and persistent disgust. He might desert Apollo for Venus for a moment in his youth, but he returned to his true cult in horror and repentance. A lover of the beautiful, and yet unable to tear himself from the fascinated contemplation of ugliness and evil. Vanitas vanitalum is his sole litany. The hero of L'Sdueation Sentimental° fritters away his life in inaction, because he finds nothing worth the doing, and learns that his aspirations, if realised, bring but additional sorrow ; his heroines, be they antique Salammbos or modern Mme. Bovarys, pursue the phantom of happiness only to find all is illusion and mirage. Like Carlyle, he hated a fool, and found few who were not fools ; but further, like Catullus, it was odi et amo with him,—he hated fools and folly, but could never desist from their study. 'The ancient world of ideas had passed like a nightmare before his " St. Antoine," and his " Bouvard et Focuchet" were to incarnate modern folly in all its branches. But it was not to be his thus to complete his vengeance on his contemporaries and their colossal Wise. And, as he cried, why did fatality require him to always select abominable subjects? At all events, he could mainly forget in his correspondence the theories that caused him so much trouble in the execution of his works,—namely, the necessary exact correlation of form and idea, and the necessary impersonality of the author. His letters, indeed, owe their charm and value entirely to the fact that he felt himself at liberty to reveal himself in them, without fear of infringing his theories,—nay, in sheer relief from them.
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