"Your little book is very original and you show qualities of talent that will develop, if you look ahead."
"Obermann and his grandson the monk belong to the past. They are true and the timid Jean is well drawn. There is grandeur and truth in this exceptional type. But Constant d'Heurs is too passive to events. He should react against this powerless man and cure him or pity him more [...]"
Sententiously, she thus concludes her letter:
"Do not complain of thankless work and accept it as a good thing, three-quarters of life sacrificed to some duty makes the last quarter very strong and very alive. It is very good to be attached to poetry and thwarted in the possession of a beautiful dream. As soon as one can savor it without respite, it fades or becomes troubled. I speak to you from experience. One is never happier and more inspired than when one believes one does not have time to be so."
Very fine testimony to the leading role that George Sand played on the literary scene of the Second Empire.
First editions of both volumes. Rare gathering of these two works in uniform binding. Printed in 2 columns.
Contemporary full mottled brown sheep binding. Spine with raised bands, decorated. Brown sheep title label. Defects first volume: Headcap torn away, joints split at tail, 3 corners bumped, dampstain on upper cover. Second volume: Lack at head, upper joint split, tailcap torn away, lower joint split at tail, dampstains on lower cover, 2 corners bumped, strip of leather torn away on lower cover. Lacking marbled endpapers before half-title and at end. Both volumes very fresh overall. Blue stamp on title pages: Institution Pelletin or Felletin. Manuscript ex libris S. Petri Exdronensis.
Father Richard Simon, an Oratorian, is considered the founder of modern biblical exegesis. This recognition was even affirmed by the Church in 1993. In 1678, he published his Critique du vieux testament, which after being severely criticized by both Bossuet and Nicole, ended up on the Index in 1683. The publication of this work only exacerbated the tensions that Simon had ignited against himself among all religious congregations through his new reading of biblical texts; never partisan, he questioned the Bible with knowledge of sources as had never been done before.
In the first work, Simon discusses the origin and character of the different books that compose the New Testament. In the second work on versions of the New Testament, Simon examines the different translations and the manner in which the most difficult passages were rendered.
Autograph letter signed by Charles Baudelaire to Narcisse Ancelle, written in black ink on a sheet of blue paper.
Folds from mailing, three minute pinholes not affecting the text.
This letter was transcribed in the Complete Works volume 11 published in 1949 by L. Conard.
A moving letter from Brussels addressed to the celebrated family notary who became in 1844 Charles's legal guardian, charged with managing his annuity and his exponential debts. A complex relationship developed between the poet and his guardian, mingling necessity and mistrust, yet nonetheless bearing witness to genuine mutual respect between the two men.
This correspondence, devoid of the emotional quality of his letters to his mother or the circumlocutions in his exchanges with creditors, constitutes one of the most precious biographical sources on the poet. Indeed, Baudelaire's financial dependence constrained him to great transparency with his guardian, and each of his letters to Ancelle admirably summarizes his wanderings.
Thus, this letter evokes the terrible mire in which the poet found himself in Belgium and his constantly postponed return to Paris. When he writes, Baudelaire is still in Brussels at the Hôtel du Grand Miroir, "28 rue de la Montagne" (but one must not write the hotel's name, otherwise letters do not reach him directly), where he is dying of boredom, illness, and resentment toward a country in which he innocently believed he would find glory. This announcement of imminent departure for Paris, "Two or three days after your reply I will leave," echoes all the similar promises the poet has made for nearly a year to his correspondents. This one will be aborted, like all the others, for as he confesses to Ancelle a few months earlier, Paris fills him with "a dog's fear." It is only in August 1865 that he will make a final and brief stay in France before his fatal stroke.
His return, "I am eagerly awaited in Paris and in Honfleur," was nevertheless motivated by a compelling reason: to negotiate with a publisher, through Manet's intervention, the publication of his collection of reflections on his contemporaries which he had already titled My Heart Laid Bare (Mon cœur mis à nu) and whose manuscript is partly at his mother's house in Honfleur. Another failure—the work would not appear until 1897, thirty years after Baudelaire's death.
But it is undoubtedly the reference to the "two large paintings [he wishes to] send to Honfleur" that gives this letter all its significance. Baudelaire evokes his wish to repatriate paintings from his collection that he left with various lenders or restorers, of which he had already sent a list to Ancelle a few months earlier. Among these, which ones did he want to bring back to his mother? His father's portrait, the Boilly, the Manet, a Constantin Guys? There is no mention in other letters of this art shipment and of the "remainder" to which the paintings were to be joined. This desire to "send to Honfleur" his precious belongings nonetheless testifies to the weakened poet's wish to settle permanently in his mother's "jewel-house" in Honfleur, an island of serenity where Baudelaire dreamed of a peaceful retreat where all would once again be "order and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness." He would indeed return there, paralyzed and mute, but for a final year of agony after his syphilitic crisis. The Hôtel du Grand Miroir would remain his last true dwelling, as noted on Tuesday, April 3, 1866, in the register of admissions at the Saint-Jean Clinic: "Name and first names: Baudelaire Charles. Address: France and 28 rue de la Montagne. Profession: man of letters. Illness: apoplexy."
A fine letter to the man who was both Baudelaire's persecutor and protector. He accompanied the poet until his death, before becoming executor of the family estate.
First edition, rare, illustrated with 5 folding plates at the end.
Contemporary full marbled brown calf binding. Spine with raised bands, gilt tooling. Beige morocco title-piece. One corner trimmed, the others rubbed. A tiny 2 mm tear at head of spine. A small worm gallery in the lower margin from the title-page to p. 24, slight at the beginning, widening and then fading out. A good, rather clean copy.
Red stamp on half-title and title-page, with the arms: Bibliothèque Chapuys-Montlaville
First edition, one of 1550 numbered copies on roto blanc Aussèdat paper printed under sky blue covers.
Spine of the third volume and boards marginally sunned, a small tear at the foot of the spine of the first volume, otherwise a handsome set.
Our copy is enhanced with a visiting card by Charles De Gaulle mounted on a stub in the first volume on which he added these words: "Merci, bien sincèrement de la sympathie que vous m'avez témoignée. C.G." ["Thank you, very sincerely for the sympathy you have shown me. C.G."].
Also mounted on a stub below the card, we include the envelope stamped by the Presidency of the Republic and addressed to Claude Morgan, recipient of the visiting card (postmarked January 19, 1960).
