FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE (1821-1880), French novelist, was born at Rouen on Dec. I2, 1821. His father was resident physician at the Rouen hospital; his mother belonged to an old Norman family. He was educated in his native city, and went up to Paris to study law in 184o. He took no great interest in his legal studies. From early childhood he had been writing, and he continued to write in Paris. The two great friends of his Rouen schooldays, Chevalier and Le Poittevin, were fellow-students in Paris, and in Pradier's studio he met Victor Hugo, Louise Colet, Maxime du Camp and other figures in Paris literary society. At this time he began to suffer from the attacks of a malady (not epilepsy, as is sometimes stated), which recurred throughout his life, and his father recalled him to Rouen in order to give him the necessary care. A journey with his family to Italy seems to have given him little pleasure. Change of scene was more fruitful in retrospect than at the time. When he was abroad Flaubert felt homesick for Normandy; in Normandy he dreamed of the East. His real life, as he told his friend Le Poittevin, was "dans l'idee et pas ailleurs." In 1846, after the deaths of his father and of his sister Caroline, to whom he had been devotedly attached, Flaubert settled with his mother at Croisset, near Rouen, in the pleasant house with grounds going down to the Seine, which is familiar from his corre spondence. It was his home for the rest of his life, and he rarely left it except for occasional visits to Paris. At this time began his only serious liaison, that with Louise Colet (q.v.), whom he visited from time to time, and with whom he carried on an almost daily correspondence, which has been published, unfortunately only in an incomplete form. The relation lasted until 1855. It had not been entirely peaceful, and the breach, when it came, was a violent one. Louise asked of him more than he was willing to give. He was absorbed in Madame Bovary, who was Louise's real sup planter. His friends throughout this period were Louis Bouilhet (q.v.), like himself a native of Rouen, with whom he regularly discussed his work, and Maxime du Camp. Du Camp did not like Louise, and the fact may unconsciously have influenced Flaubert in the final breach. With du Camp he travelled in Brittany in 1847, and in 1849 the two friends set out for the Mediterranean. During this tour in the Levant the history of Madame Bovary seems to have taken shape. He had already written an Education sentimentale—indeed two, between 1843 and 1845, and a Tentation de Saint Antoine in 1848-49, neither of which saw the light. Later on he was to take up these subjects again. He began his studies for the Tentation in 1846, and spent the months between May 1848 and Sept. 1849 in writing it. He read the completed ms. to Bouilhet and Du Camp. Bouilhet found it too diffuse, and de clared that Flaubert should write the story of Delamarre, a country doctor who had been driven to suicide by the infidelity of his wife. The Tentation was put aside, in deference to Bouilhet's opinion, and the way left clear for Madame Bovary. The actual writing of the book occupied more than four years, from the be ginning of 1852 to May 1856. Up to the time of his breach with Louise Colet the progress of the work is registered in his letters to her. He despatched the manuscript in May, and in October it began to appear in the Revue de Paris. It was to be the centre of discussion on the art of the novel for years to come; every critic finds a new aspect in Madame Bovary, and it has been and is made to illustrate the most diverse literary doctrines. For the moment attention was focussed on the subject and its treatment, not on the writer's art, for the Government brought a charge of immorality against author and publisher. Both were acquitted, and the novel appeared in book form in 1857. Meanwhile he re turned from time to time to the Tentation, but the scandal follow ing the publication of Madame Bovary made him decide to lay it aside.
Flaubert's mind was already at work on Salammbo. On its ap pearance in 1862 the critics fell foul of it, but the young genera tion read it with enthusiasm. The war of the mercenaries against Carthage was a great subject, greatly handled. From Carthage he turned again to contemporary life, and produced, after seven years' work, the final version of L'Education sentimentale (1869) . Criticism was on the whole unfavourable, though some good judges, among them Metternich, recognized the justness and the greatness of this picture of the generation of 184o to 185o.
Up to this time the sequestered and laborious life of Flaubert had been comparatively happy, but misfortunes began to gather around him. He felt the anguish of the war of 18 7o so keenly that the break-up of his health has been attributed to it ; he began to suffer more from his distressing nervous malady. His best friends were taken from him by death or by fatal misunderstand ing; in 1872 he lost his mother, and his circumstances were re duced. He was very tenderly guarded by his niece; he enjoyed a rare intimacy of friendship with George Sand, with whom he carried on a correspondence which is supremely interesting both from the human and the artistic point of view; and occasionally he saw his Parisian acquaintances, Zola, A. Daudet, Turgeniev, the Goncourts ; but the later years of Flaubert's life were desolate and melancholy. He continued to work with the same intensity. La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, of which fragments had been pub lished as early as 1857, was at length completed and sent to press in 1874. His drama Le Candidat, which was produced in that year, was a failure. In 1877 Flaubert published, in one volume, entitled Trois Contes, "Un Coeur Simple," "La Legende de Saint Julien-l'Hospitalier" and "Herodias." Those who were dismayed by the solidity of L'Education sentimentale, appreciated these short and perfect pieces. They place him among the great masters of the short story, and all later writers in this genre, from Mau passant onwards, stand in debt to Flaubert. He spent the re mainder of his life in the toil of building up a vast satire on the futility of human knowledge and the omnipresence of mediocrity, which he left a fragment. This is Bouvard et Pecuchet (post humously printed, 1881), which he himself believed to be his masterpiece. This is not the general view, but this gigantic attack on optimism has its enthusiasts; Remy de Gourmont agreed with Flaubert. Flaubert had rapidly and prematurely aged since and he was quite an old man when he died of apoplexy on May 8, 1880. He died at Croisset, but was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A beautiful monument to him by Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen in 189o.
Flaubert had the build of a guardsman, with a magnificent vik ing head, but his health was uncertain from childhood, and he was neurotic to the last degree. His hatred of the "bourgeois" began in his childhood, and developed into a kind of monomania. He despised their habits, their lack of intelligence, their contempt for beauty, with a passionate scorn which has been compared to that of an ascetic monk. His laborious methods of work have become a legend. He would spend a week in the completion of one page, never satisfied till he had found the best turn of a phrase, the final adjective. That he was one of the greatest French writers of his century is now recognized. Less perhaps than any other writer, not of France, but of modern Europe, Flaubert yields ad mission to the inexact, the abstract, the vaguely inapt expression. He never allowed a cliché to pass him, never indulgently or wearily went on, leaving behind him a phrase which "almost" expressed his meaning. He hated the lax felicities of improvisation as a disloyalty to his art. The absolute exactitude with which he adapts his expression to his purpose is seen in all parts of his work, but particularly in the portraits he draws of the figures in his principal romances.
The degree and manner in which, since his death, the fame of Flaubert has extended, form an interesting chapter of literary history. The publication of Madame Bovary in 1857 had been followed by more scandal than admiration; it was not under stood at first that this novel was the beginning of a new thing, the scrupulously truthful portraiture of life. Gradually this aspect of his genius was accepted, and began to crowd out all others. At the time of his death he was famous as a realist, pure and simple. Under this aspect Flaubert exercised an extraordinary influence over E. de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet and Zola. But even since the decline of the realistic school other facets of his genius have caught the light. It has been perceived that he was not merely realistic, but real; that his clairvoyance was almost boundless; that the significance of his character is the significance only attained by the great masters. It was not for nothing that he studied increasingly Don Quixote. Flaubert was a dreamer and a symbolist as well as a realist. The creator of Saint Antoine and Herodias exercised as important an influence on the symbolists as the creator of Madame Bovary on the realists. The dualism which he describes in his own character of the two Flauberts, the one loving lyricism and "eagle flights," the other digging for facts and desiring to present with equal precision and detail the smallest as well as the greatest of the things he describes, is apparent in his works. This is one of the reasons why the work of Flaubert is of inexhaustible interest to thinkers and writers of all tern peraments.
His Oeuvres completes (8 vols., 1885) were printed from the original mss., and included, besides the works mentioned already, the two plays Le Candidat and Le Château des Coeurs. Earlier editions of his works are practically superseded by the Conard edition of 1910 (18 vols.), which includes Madame Bovary, Salammbo, Notes de Voyages, Trois Contes, Correspondance, the three texts of La Tentation de Saint Antoine (1849, 1856 and 1874), and two versions of L'Education sen timentale (1845 and 188o) . A complete edition was also published by Charpentier in 1914 (13 vols.) .