La Première Tentation de Saint-Antoine

Published by Louis Bertrand, this edition presents the 1856 version of La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, together with fragments from the 1849 manuscript, a notice on the manuscripts, and a critical apparatus.

The history of this work spans the whole of Flaubert’s literary life. His first encounter with the subject dates to 1845, when, on a journey through Italy, he discovered a Tentation de Saint Antoine attributed to Breughel in the gallery of the Palazzo Balbi-Senarega in Genoa. The painting made a lasting impression on him, and he later explained that he had not ceased “thinking of it” ever since.

He wrote a first full version between 1848 and 1849, which he read aloud to Louis Bouilhet and Maxime Du Camp. Their verdict has become famous: they told him to “throw it in the fire and never speak of it again.” The blow was severe, and Flaubert set the book aside, turning instead to Madame Bovary. After completing that novel, he took up Saint-Antoine again in 1856; fragments appeared in L’Artiste in December 1856, then in January and February 1857, precisely when the Madame Bovary trial placed him under legal threat. Fearing renewed censorship, Flaubert once more abandoned publication, returning to the work only fifteen years later, by which time it had been profoundly reworked in both form and spirit.

La Tentation, in its first form, was finally published in 1874 and met with incomprehension: writing to George Sand on 1 May 1874, Flaubert complained of the accumulated attacks on the book, and above all of the personal animosity he believed he detected behind certain reviews. This definitive 1908 edition, completed with all the original and previously unpublished fragments, restores the Saint-Antoine that preceded the great 1874 revision, and constitutes a fuller and more lyrical work.

Spine restored, otherwise a good copy with generous margins throughout.