Étretat

Autograph letter signed by Guy de Maupassant, to the critic Vittorio Pica. 1 page ¼ in black ink on two pages of a bifolium with letterhead of his initials, "Sur le Bel-Ami / Antibes". Autograph envelope enclosed, bearing numerous stamps and postmarks.Discreet sepia ink offsetting on the first sheet, from another Maupassant letter.

 
Touching letter from Maupassant with failing eyesight, lamenting his inability to read the laudatory reviews by his correspondent Vittorio Pica. The latter published numerous studies in the Italian literary magazines Fantasio, Napoli Letteraria and La Tavola Rotonda on the writer's masterpieces, including Mademoiselle Fifi, Pot-Bouille, Une Vie, and Bel-Ami.

Autograph letter signed by Guy de Maupassant, to the critic Vittorio Pica. 10 lines in black ink on one page of a bifolium.
Horizontal fold and very light shadow over 2mm on the upper edge of the sheet.
Charming note from Maupassant from Etretat, thanking Vittorio Pica for a laudatory review, published in the Italian literary magazine Fantasio. Pica would devote several studies to Maupassant's masterworks in this magazine, including Mademoiselle Fifi, Pot-Bouille, Une Vie, and Bel-Ami.

"Monsieur et cher Confrère,
Zola me transmet votre aimable article du Fantasio. Il m'a fait le plus grand plaisir ; et je vous prie de recevoir, avec mes vifs remerciements, l'expression de mon confraternel dévouement et de toute ma sympathie".

An art critic of Neapolitan origin, Pica took an early interest in French naturalist and symbolist movements: "Curious about all avant-garde movements, he had first concerned himself with the naturalists - he maintained close relations with Maupassant, Huysmans and Zola -, then he became interested in the symbolists, particularly Mallarmé and Verlaine, to whom he devoted studies of admirable accuracy" (Petralia, Bibliographie de Rimbaud en Italie cit., p. 37). A contributor to the most prestigious national and international magazines of modernist tendency, he was one of the first founders of the Venice Biennale, of which he would be secretary general from 1920 to 1926.
Precious response from the writer with his distinctive signature, addressed to an admirer of his work.

Guy de Maupassant's autograph note to Countess Potocka, lines in black ink on one page. Published in Philippe Dahhan, Guy Maupassant and women: Essay , Bertout, 1996.
from Guy de Maupassant
addressed to the countess Potocka, rich worldly and intellectual aristocrat whose great beauty and fickle personality appear in filigree news and masterpieces novelistic of the author ( Mont-Oriol , Our Heart, Humble drama ).
Maupassant wrote to Emmanuela Pignatelli di Cergharia, wife of Count Nicholas Potocki, who occupied Avenue Friedland in Paris, a sumptuous hotel where she gathered a real court of sighers "died of love for her", nicknamed "Maccabees" by allusion to the seven brothers martyrs of the Bible. The composer Camille Saint-Saëns wrote him a mazurka, Guerlain created for her a perfume; his immortal charm was immortalized by the painter Léon Bonnat, and a young Marcel Proust will sign a chronicle of Le Figaro on his famous salon. She was the great conquest and muse of Maupassant, who never ceased to woo her until the end of her life.
The author gives to the countess
. Diagnosed with syphilis for about ten years, Maupassant was indeed particularly familiar with remedies and potions, frequent visitor of water towns and followed by many doctors before his internment at the clinic of Dr. Blanche, where he died of paralysis July 6, 1893. This humorous note addressed to Countess Potocka is one of the innumerable attempts at seduction made by Maupassant, an eternally upset lover: the writer offered him his manuscripts, wrote poems on fans, and went almost daily to his house. she during her stays in Paris. Their correspondence continued for many years, Maupassant having even created the "Anti-Soporific Anonymous Society for the perpetual recreation of Countess Potocka", for the sole purpose of distracting the countess and escaping his indifference: " Feeling therefore that my efforts often remain fruitless in the face of your willful indifference, I have sought in what way I could get rid of your boredom on every occasion. "(Letter of August, 1885, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York).