The metropolis of Rouen offers itself a unique manuscript by Gustave Flaubert
According to “France Info”, the metropolis of Rouen has just made a unique acquisition, that of the manuscript of Novemberan early work by Gustave Flaubert.
By ThePoint.fr
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Dhated by the author, it is nevertheless today considered a real treasure. After passing from one private collector to another pendant over a century, the manuscript of November, Written novel by Gustave Flaubert at the dawn of his twenty years, will return to his hometown, Rouen. The metropolis of Rouen has indeed just acquired it, on the occasion of an auction organized by the Drouot house, as explained journalists from France Info.
This small manuscript was written between 1840 and 1842 and consists of 96 double-sided pages, crossed out and annotated by the writer. The story was written intermittently and Flaubert recounts, in an autobiographical way, his discovery of sexuality. Writings that the author would have always refused to see published. The Norman qualifications from elsewhere November of “sentimental ratatouille”. The text has, however, indeed been published, thirty years after his death, in its Unpublished early works.
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“Unprecedented Flaubert”
The purchase of this manuscript is nevertheless excellent news for many enthusiasts of the writer, as explained by Yvan Leclerc, honorary professor at the University of Rouen and expert on the author, to our colleagues at France Info. “It is a manuscript of youth, written over the pen, in one go, but with many erasures, including erasures from proofreading. And these are going to be quite exciting, because what’s underneath has never been deciphered. We are going to have new Flaubert, ”he promises.
November Should be quickly exhibited in the former house of the writer, at the very place where the text was written more than 150 years ago, at the now Flaubert and History of Medicine Museum. It will be presented alongside the manuscripts of Mrs. Bovaire and Bouvard and Pécuchet. The public will thus be able to discover this novel next year “very different from what Flaubert wrote afterwards”, slips Yvan Leclerc. But before, many specialists had to look into this manuscript to try to decipher its last secrets.
