LOVE, HAPPINESS AND ART
87
vinced that his efforts were futile, he gave up. There was never any
question of his giving
in.
The whole correspondence reflects the various stages of this in–
teresting emotional relationship in great detail. The following fragments,
however, have with two exceptions been chosen rather to display some
of Flaubert's views on art. This is their first, sometimes precious, some–
times naive, expression, deriving particular charm from the fact that
Flaubert is still full of romantic rhetoric-of which, precisely during
this period, he began very painfully to rid himself in his literary work.
September 18, 1846'
"Poet of form!" That is the favorite term of abuse hurled by
utilitarians at genuine artists. For my part, until someone comes along
and separates for me the form and the substance of a given sentence,
I shall continue to maintain that those two terms are meaningless.
Every thought has a beautiful form, and vice versa. In the world of
Art, form exudes Beauty; just as in our world it exudes temptation
and love. Just as you cannot remove from a physical body the qual–
ities that constitute it-color, extension, solidity-without reducing
it to a hollow abstraction, without destroying it, so you cannot re–
move the form from the Idea, because the Idea exists only by virtue
of its form. Imagine an idea that has no form-such a thing is
impossible, just as is a form that does not express an idea. Such con–
cepts are stupidities on which literary criticism feeds. Good stylists
are reproached for neglecting the Idea, the moral goal; as though
the goal of the doctor were not to heal, the goal of the painter to
paint, the goal of the nightingale to sing, as though the goal of
Art were not, first and foremost, Beauty!
Sculptors who create real women, with breasts that can hold
milk and thighs that suggest fecundity, are accused of sensualism.
Whereas were they to carve wads of drapery and figures flat as
signboards they would be called idealists, spiritualists. "Yes, he does
1 Flaubert and Louise Colet met on July 29, 1846. They became lovers al–
most immediately, but instead of remaining with her in Paris Flaubert returned
to his home at
Crois~et,
outside Rouen, a nd plunged into reading for
La Tenta–
lion
de Saint Antoine.
During the next two years he wrote to Louise constantly,
but saw her only six times. She protested increasingly against this treatment,
and in 1848 they broke off relations.
All letters in this selection were written from Croisset.
