On this date in 1821, novelist Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen, France. Destined by his family for medicine, Flaubert preferred the world of literature. He traveled widely for nearly two years and ascended to the top of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. After trying his hand at poetry, Flaubert became a novelist. His classic, Madame Bovary, which took him five years to write, was published in 1857. Its realistic portrayal of adultery offended religious sensibilities. Flaubert was criminally prosecuted but escaped conviction.
His friends and correspondents included many leading skeptical literati of his day, including Zola, George Sand and Turgenev. Flaubert wrote four other novels, including Salammbo (1862) and The Temptation of Saint Antoine (1874), which reveals some of his skepticism, a book of short stories and a play. He is widely quoted as saying, “It is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt.”
He was a pantheist and devotee of Spinoza. He never married and suffered from epilepsy and veneral diseases, dying of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 58 in 1880.
