Gustave Flaubert Quotes
I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.
Flaubert, Gustave. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857. Edited and translated by Francis Steegmuller, Harvard University Press, 1980, p. 153.
While the racial incidents of Jena became a national cause célèbre, the quotation is memorable because it illustrated the huge de facto power that even a small town district attorney has. Though most do not abuse it, some do, and few Das threaten the way that Walters did. The reality is that simply by determining the charge, the DA is capable of incredible consequences on people’s lives. In the Jena situation, Walters had charged Black juveniles with “Attempted Second Degree Murder” for engaging in a fight with white juveniles. The penalty was from 50 to 100 years without any possibility of parole. A white student who had assaulted a Black was only charged with “Battery” a minor crime. Jena became the location of national civil rights protests.
Gustave Flaubert was an influential French novelist who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer {Guy de Maupassant} was a protégé of Flaubert.
