Gustave FLAUBERT (1821-1880). L.A.S. "ton G", [Trouville] Sa - Lot 87

Gustave FLAUBERT (1821-1880). L.A.S. "ton G", [Trouville] Saturday evening, midnight [August 27, 1853], to Louise Colet; 2 pages in-4 (slight trace of rust). Beautiful letter from Trouville to Louise Colet. Flaubert went to bed at 3 a.m., but for Louise, he spares "neither time nor paper". The sea was very rough: "tonight's tide will still be hard. How beautiful the sea is". After asking Louise about her business and her stories, and talking about her brother who has given up on buying a château, he rejoices at the effect of his last letter: "You have at last understood & approved even what at first had wounded you. Nature made a mistake in making you a woman. You're on the side of men. You must always remember this, when something offends you & see within yourself if the feminine element doesn't prevail. Poetry obliges us to always look at ourselves as if we were on a throne, and never to think that we are part of the crowd & that we are included. [...] So leave your sex behind, like your country, your religion & your province. We must be souls as much as possible & it is through this detachment that the immense sympathy of things & beings will reach us more abundantly. France was formed the day the provinces died, & humanitarian sentiment is beginning to be born on the ruins of homelands. There will come a time when something broader & higher will replace it. - Man will then love nothingness itself, so much will he feel part of it. [...] The neighing of donkeys and cows was beautiful in the Middle Ages. But what was humility will become intelligence. In this, science moves forward. Why shouldn't poetry move even faster? - We must always carry it beyond ourselves. & when I talk down to women, you protest in your heart against this insolence. You think it's unfair. Of course, if I counted you in! - Come on! Farewell, good luck, work well. [...] A thousand kisses on the heart"... He adds that they will review together in Mantes the plan for L'Acropole (a poem by Louise Colet). Correspondance (Pléiade), t.II, p.420. Attached is a L.A.S. from Louise Colet, about the publication of one of her poems in Le Pays, before the publication of the poetry volume (2p. and a quarter in-8 with crowned AL numeral)...