Gustave Flaubert - 1846, 2nd of 2 Letters
Famous Love Letters
An influential French novelist, Gustave Flaubert was famous for his novel Madame Bovary. Flaubert became an established figure in the Parisian social and literary worldAn advocate of naturalism like Emile Zola, he was a great influence to Guy de Maupassant. Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen, near Paris on December 12 and lived until he was 58.
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Below is another letter to Flaubert lovely wife, Louise Colet.
August 21, 1853
Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me.
I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a storm cloud.
On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank.
Read Gustave Flaubert's 1st letter written in 1846
