![]() ![]() ![]() More from this author Psychoanalysis doesn't workīy the time he started Madame Bovary, when he was 29, Flaubert had been travelling through the East for two years. These letters, like his novel, would seesaw between the lyrical and the vulgar. Over the next ten years, their romance would consist of pregnancy scares and a rich trove - the ones that weren’t destroyed - of erotic, philosophical and literary letters. She was a catch: beautiful, 11 years older, a prize-winning poet, and the mistress of the famous philosopher and statesman, Victor Cousin. In the summer of 1846, the 24-year-old Flaubert, briefly staying in Paris, met Louise Colet. “The entire value of my book if there is any,” Flaubert wrote, “will consist in having been able to proceed straight on a hair suspended over the double abyss of lyricism and vulgarity.” This letter was addressed to a woman who played a pivotal role in his life. Madame Bovary was accused of obscenity, because it was too realistic for the time, but was later acquitted by a French court. But, in order to do this, he needed to dirty his smooth fingers. Flaubert hated the world, mediocre and imperfect as it is, and wanted to transfigure it through his beautiful art. ![]()
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