Flaubert and Turgenev: A Friendship in Letters

by Gustave Flaubert, Ivan Turgenev, Barbara Beaumont (Editor)

The complete correspondence between the two giants of nineteenth-century literature provide a twenty-year record of their views on the novel, art, and contemporary issues and on personal events and problems

Genres: Russia, French Literature, France, Biography

197 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1880

About the author

Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember the days before Email when people used to handwrite letters? I used to love writing letters. In fact, I still have many of the letters I have received over the years. Some day I will go back and reread them so I can reminisce and laugh at all of the bullshit my friends and I used to talk about. Some people I am still in touch with, but sadly, some I am not.

I don’t know if it is because of my past, but I have always loved reading selected letters by old, dead authors, and I adored reading the personal correspondence between Gustave Flaubert and Ivan Turgenev. Yeah, because I’m nosy, but also because it was pretty damn fascinating, moving, and funny. Those two guys had a total bromance going on! They met in Paris in 1863, and regularly wrote letters from then until Flaubert’s death in 1880. They also met in person several times as Turgenev often traveled back and forth between France and Russia.

Their literary circle included George Sand, Émile Zola, and Guy de Maupassant. How cool is that?! I love how they would yenta it up with George Sand one minute, and then trash-talk Zola (though he was their friend, they were sometimes critical of his writing) and/or Honoré de Balzac in another.

They bitched about their respective physical ailments. Poor Turgenev was a chronic sufferer of gout. At one point Flaubert broke his leg, and he signed his letter to Turgenev “Your old cripple.” That’s great, right?

They wrote about aging, discussed politics, art and literature, but most of all, they talked about their respective writing. How wonderful it was to read letters describing books about to be published that are still with us over one hundred years later. Turgenev was also instrumental in translating some of Flaubert’s shorter works into Russian and then subsequently having them published there.

I can’t resist adding a few quotes.

Flaubert on aging:

And I think about the past, about my childhood, my youth, all that which will never return. I indulge in boundless melancholy; and the next day, it starts all over again. When one’s thoughts no longer naturally turn to the future, one is an old man.

On marriage:

Stay always as you are, don’t get married, don’t have children, get as little emotionally involved as possible, give the least hold to the enemy.
I’ve seen what they call happiness at close quarters and I looked at its underside; to wish to possess it is a dangerous mania.

(Fuuuuck.)

Turgenev on the death of George Sand:

Such an absence of all low, petty or false sentiments – what a good fellow she was and what a fine woman! And now all of that is there, in the horrible relentless hole in the ground, silent, stupid – and it doesn’t even know what it is it’s devouring!

On critics:

The newspapers find me worn out and throw my own earlier works back in my face (like you with ‘Madame Bovary’).

One more. Turgenev was so charming:

Before me in a corner of the room there is an old Byzantine icon, all blackened, in a silver frame, nothing but a huge stiff and gloomy face – it troubles me rather – but I can’t have it taken down, my manservant would take me for a pagan, and here that’s no joking matter.

I think the saddest part of their whole friendship was that Turgenev read about Flaubert’s death in the newspaper before letters from friends had been able to reach him with the news.

[Петко Ристић · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine kurze, gleichwohl unterhaltsame Korrespondenz zwischen zwei großen Schriftstellern. Der größte Wert hierbei ist der historische Aspekt: wir erhalten Einblicke in Charaktere der damaligen Zeiten, in die damals herrschenden Bedürfnisse und Sorgen. Politische Themen werden genauso besprochen wie persönliche, dabei fällt erwartungsgemäß etwas Licht auf den charakterlichen Zustand beider Schriftsteller, welche zuweilen überraschen, aber auch aufklären.

Es gibt hierbei wenig zu erzählen, ein paar lustige Momente ausgenommen, wie etwa Flauberts Verzweiflung bezüglich seiner Zeitgenossen und Turgenjews finanzielle Sorgen auf Grund des Russisch-Türkischen Krieges. Dabei sehen wir auf beiderlei Seiten einen ausgeprägten Egoismus: Flaubert wünscht sich die totale Vernichtung der barbarischen Türkei damit nur endlich wieder Ruhe herrscht und Turgenjew, damit der Rubel sich wieder stabilisiert. Ein auffallender Gegensatz zu Dostojewski, der den Krieg befürwortete um die südslawischen Völker vom türkischen Joch zu befreien.

Solcherlei Kleinigkeiten sind von aufklärerischer Natur, aber auch nur für jene, die an all dem Interesse haben und entsprechend historische Vorkenntnisse besitzen. Ansonsten ist der Briefwechsel keine allzu wichtige Lektüre.

An einer Stelle musste ich über Flauberts Ausspruch lachen, als er bezüglich eines veröffentlichten Artikel's von Emile Zola, welches wohl für Aufregung gesorgt hat, folgendes an Turgenjew schrieb:
"Ich verstehe nicht, daß Zola's Artikel einen solchen Skandal heraufbeschworen hat! Denn im Grunde war seine Kritik milde. Aber man ist so feige und so scheinheilig, daß Aufrichtigkeit aus dem Rahmen fällt. Man soll das Mittelmaß bewundern."

Es war nie anders 😄

[Keely · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend this collection of letters to anyone that loves Ivan Turgenev or Gustave Flaubert. They're like a window into an artists soul. It almost felt like I was trespassing on a very personal relationship. Emile Zola and Tolstoy feature in a few letters which was a highlight.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Letters between two great novelists with fine realist sensibilities. Most are mundane yet charming.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is probably of great value to Flaubert and Turgenev scholars to have their complete correspondence edited and translated, but it doesn’t make for fascinating reading. The bulk of their exchange is boring and mundane. “Will you come to dinner Thursday? Can’t, my foot hurts.” And the like. Worse, while they are clearly have much affection and admiration for each other, they also come off, now and again, as conceited geezers, not without a good helping of snide for peers like Zola, Daudet, Goncourt (whom they also socialized with and publicly admired) and especially Dumas, whom they considered the worst trash. There are some interesting tidbits here and there, but I mostly enjoyed this for the glimpse it affords into the day to day life of famous 19th c. writers.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a fan of Turgenev I was interested enough in these letters to complete the book but between the two writers there is not much writing of substance here; over half of what is contained amounts to scheduling difficulties.

[Geoff Winston Leghorn Balme · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is mostly discussion of illness and missed meetings. There are few gems of political or artistic nature. If edited properly you’d have a few paragraphs. Not what I’d call enlightening reading.