Lorsque Flaubert lisait Balzac

Abstract

Flaubert was a passionate reader and, for him, reading the classics (from Homer to Shakespeare) was not only a pleasant hobby but a way to learn how to write « perfectly ». However, he did not neglect the writers of the second half of the 19th century and in his correspondence he makes an inventory of his contemporary writers whom he presents and analyses (Stendhal, Hugo, Turgenev, the Goncourt brothers, Balzac, Paul de Knock, Champfleury, Michelet and many others). He has a deep appreciation for Balzac. He appreciates his observation capacity and his effort to turn the French novel into an artwork that will objectively reflect reality. Nevertheless, he reproaches Balzac the fact that he is not able to write, he cannot exceed his status as an observer, that he did not work his sentences, his words. Flaubert was both an admirer and an objective critic of Balzac whom he did not meet, but whom he would have very much liked to befriend.