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12 - The theatre in the work of Flaubert

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Timothy Unwin
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Summary

Anyone who decides to look at the question of Flaubert's attitude to the theatre is likely to have at least two surprises. The first is to do with his childhood. Every reader of a biography of Flaubert is aware that, with his sister and some school friends, he had used his father's billiard-room to put on plays, but it is less well known that this was close to being an obsession. Flaubert wrote plays, he acted in them, he organised performances with costumes, playbills and tickets. Here is how at the age of seventeen he remembered this period of his young life:

Oh God, God, why did you make me be born with so much ambition? For what I have really is ambition. When I was ten years old, I was already dreaming of glory, and I started composing as soon as I knew how to hold a pen. I imagined for myself delightful pictures: I dreamt of a theatre full of light and gold, hands clapping, cries of acclamation, bouquets of flowers. People are calling 'the author! the author!': the author really is me, it is my name, me, me! People are looking for me in the corridors, in the dressing rooms; they crane their necks to catch a glimpse of me, the curtain rises, I step forward: what bliss! They look at you, they admire you, they envy you, they are proud to love you, to have seen you.

[Ô mon Dieu, mon Dieu, pourquoi donc m’avez-vous fait naître avec tant d’ambition? Car c’est bien de l’ambition ce que j’ai. Quand j’avais dix ans, je rêvais déj à la gloire et j’ai composé dès que j’ai su écrire. Je me suis peint tout exprès pour moi de ravissants tableaux: je songeais à une salle pleine de lumière et d’or, à des mains qui battent, à des cris, à des couronnes. On appelle ‘l’auteur! l’auteur!’: l’auteur c’est bien moi, c’est mon nom, moi, moi – ! On me cherche dans les corridors, dans les loges; on se penche pour me voir, la toile se lève, je m’avance: quel enivrement! On te regarde, on t’admire, on t’envie, on est fier de t’aimer, de t’avoir vu! (oj 732)]

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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