GUISTAVE FLAUBERT AS LITERARY CRITIC

The article analyzes the uniqueness of the literary-critical position of Gustave Flaubert, a writer who did not leave large theoretical texts about literature, did not write manifestos or critical articles, but constantly reflects on writing in his correspondence. Through the epistolary reflection of Flaubert about literature, one can clarify his aesthetic position, understand the peculiarities of his relationship to the form and style of narration. The writer’s position was not stable and unambiguous: starting with attempts to create notes in the spirit of “romantic writing”, he comes to rejection of the open manifestation of sympathies and antipathies in art, advocating impersonal creativity, understanding the morality of art as what is contained in its beauty. Nevertheless, Flaubert’s thoughts should not be equated with the idea of “art for art”, he understood this idea in his own way and tried in every possible way to preserve a personal, unlike others attitude to literary creativity in general, and to individual writers and works.