Explore "The Life-Work of Flaubert, from the Russian of Merejowski" by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The letters of Flaubert, published in two volumes, offer rich material for the study, from a living example, of the question of the antagonism which exists between the artistic and moral personality.
"Art is higher than life"; such is the formula which stands as the corner-stone of the whole, not only of Flaubert's aesthetic view, but also of his philosophical view of life. As a young man of thirty he writes to one of his school friends: "If I did not introduce into the plot of my poems a French queen of the fifteenth century, I should feel an utter disgust of life, and long ere this a bullet would have freed me from this humiliating folly." Within a year's time he is, with half serious rhetoric and youthful enthusiasm, encouraging the same young friend to proceed with his own work. "Let us ever devote ourselves to our art, which, being more powerful than all nations, crowns, or rulers, holds, in virtue of its glorious diadem, eternal sway over the whole universe." When over forty years of age, and on the verge of the tomb, Flaubert repeats with even greater emphasis and audacity the same device: "L'homme n'est rien; l'oeuvre est tout." -- "Man is nothing; work is everything."