FLAUBERT (Gustave). Autograph manuscript entitled...

FLAUBERT (Gustave). Autograph manuscript entitled "Noura". 5 pp. 1/2 on 2 bifeuillets in-folio of watermarked laid paper " BFK Rives " and " D & C Blauw ", mounted on tabs and held by a silk ribbon in a garnet-red chagrin portfolio, triple gilt fillet on the boards of which the first one with gilt title, garnet-red moire lining and endpapers; portfolio a bit stained with rubbed head and neck.
ORIENTAL FABLE COLLECTED DURING HIS TRIP TO THE ORIENT. With its grammatical breaks, its ellipses, its foreign turns of phrase, its hesitations on proper names, this partial text has all the outward appearance of a translation by a French-speaking foreign speaker, taken under dictation and then probably copied. In a letter from Cairo to his mother on January 5, 1850, Gustave Flaubert wrote: "[...] In the evening an Arab storyteller comes to read us tales, and there is an effendi [scholar] whom we pay to do translations for us." Jean Bruneau has identified the present text with one of these translations. This text by Noura, which has long remained unpublished, was published in 2021 by Stephanie Dord-Crousle, Caroline Dorion-Peyronnet and Yvan Leclerc in Pages d'Orient.
" ... The king who is called Farequet had his eyes on Suleyme & Suleyme cast his eyes on Noura. Nurah is sitting opposite Suleyme. When Farequet saw Nurah, Mohammed (Abu Ammed) became angry and said: "How can he take her? Now he became jealous of the princess. He said: I am your servant, I am your servant. In the name of God I always have my face thrown at you. If I don't, with the dagger I can kill you. Noura had her arms tied behind her shoulders. She said to him: "I see that you are not one of my men. If you were one of my men you would have avenged me. When he came against her feet, she pushed him to the ground with her foot on his stomach. He rolled to five lengths of himself. Then she broke her bonds, threw herself on him faster than thunder. Abu Ammed could not get up, then she bound his arms vigorously, spat in his face. He opened his mouth & said: "You spat in my face. Your spit is delicious, it is sweet like musk..."
"By its title, Noura ("nour" means "light" in Arabic), the story is centered on a female character, as would later be the case with the first two published novels, Madame Bovary and Salammbo [...] The story is akin to both the genres of epic and legend. As in that of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, the action takes place in an imaginary Orient with an uncertain geography [...], and at an indeterminate time, extensive to that of the Crusades. It is indeed about a war between Christians and Muslims. The Christian King Farequet faces a tough warrior, the Princess Suleyma or Suleyme (a name probably coined from Suleyman, Soliman), who commands the Muslims. At the beginning of the story, Princess Suleyma is a prisoner of the Christians, and Princess Noura is a prisoner of the Muslims. The story of the battles is coupled with a love rivalry between the King and the evil spy Abu Ammed, who covets Princess Noura. THE ESSENTIAL, IN THE EYES OF THE AUTHOR [...] IS UNDOUBTEDLY [...] IN THE INVENTION OF A LANGUAGE. As he wrote to his correspondent, Flaubert seeks in his oriental readings "color, poetry, what is sonorous, what is warm, what is beautiful": he experiments here, against the background of an imaginary Orient, a new, imagined, primitive and noble language, the one that Flaubert approaches while reading the Koran, or when he imagines the words of the characters of Salammbo" (Yvan Leclerc).
The present manuscript was included in lot n� 2 of the catalog of the sale after the death of Caroline Franklin Grout, Manuscripts, books, furniture, objects of art of Gustave Flaubert (Antibes, 28-30 April 1931).
Provenance: the academic Jean Bruneau, specialist of Gustave Flaubert.