Literary Manuscripts

Original ink composition in magenta, brown, green, and blue hues, titled and signed “Moscou / LD” by Léon Deubel made on the verso of a leaf from his collection of poems titled La Lumière natale.

Magnificent multicoloured ink-blot drawing (klecksography) signed by the poète maudit Léon Deubel, inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations. This early Rorschach-like fold drawing was created using a technique dear to Victor Hugo.

Original ink drawing by Marie-Laure de Noailles, signed "Marie-Laure" within the artwork (appearing twice as a result of folding the paper while the ink was still wet). With an autograph postcard signed to Valentine Hugo, with 2 inscriptions and some parts of the photograph drawn over. 

A Rorschach-like Surrealist decalcomania by Marie-Laure de Noailles created for painter and photographer Valentine Hugo, the “Queen of Hearts” of the Surrealists.

Autograph letter signed by Albert Camus to his housekeeper or caretaker, "Chère Madame Quentin." One page on a single leaf written in black ink, on NRF letterhead, accompanied by its envelope bearing the autograph address of the recipient. Horizontal crease inherent to the folding of the letter for mailing.

Given that his own mother had been a housekeeper, the writer does not merely concern himself with domestic matters when addressing his employee. He also inquires after the wellbeing of his "Chère Madame Quentin" following her vacation: "I shall be in Paris on Monday or Tuesday at the latest (thus the 31st or the 1st). Could you ask Madame [...] (Pintres?), upon receipt of this letter, to stop forwarding my mail. I hope you were able to rest a little during the month of August and I send you my most faithful regards." (our own translation). 

Accompanied by a telegram once again to Mme "Quentin 86 Rue de Varennes," dated "5-59."

Autograph letters signed by Albert Camus are highly sought after today. This one bears witness to the considerate language the writer uses towards Madame Quentin, his housekeeper, a trade he knows intimately through his mother.

First edition, one of 12, 13, or 14 numbered copies on Whatman paper depending on the volume, the only deluxe paper copies. The first three volumes had no limited deluxe paper issue and are from an edition of 3,000 copies each. The Whatman copies are as follows:
- 12 copies for volumes seven, eight, nine, twelve, and thirteen,

- 13 copies for volumes four, five, six, ten, and eleven,

- 14 copies for the final four volumes.
Half dark brown morocco with bands, smooth spines, author, title, and volume numbers tooled in palladium, vellum-style boards, plain endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers preserved for every volume, top edges in palladium (uncut for the Whatman copies), bindings signed by René Kieffer (binder’s stamp and label on the first endpaper of each volume). Head of vol. 2 lightly rubbed.

Copy belonging to Charles Péguy’s collaborator André Bourgeois, administrator of the Cahiers de la quinzaine (literary magazine which published this novel). It exceptionally contains valuable bound-in manuscript notes by Romain Rolland and Péguy.

This exceedingly rare set in first edition is handsomely bound by the great René Kieffer. It contains every volume issued on deluxe paper - these being "deuxième exemplaire de souche", i.e. name copies of the administrator after Charles Péguy's copy and before the printer's.

Autograph Manuscript Poem in Russian, entitled “Ананасы в шампанском,” signed by Igor Severyanin, twelve lines in three quatrains on a single sheet, with minor punctuation variations from the text originally published under the title Ouverture (Увертюра), inaugurating his collection Pineapple with Champagne (1915), from which it took its name.

Autograph Manuscript of the Masterpiece by the whimsical poet Igor Severyanin, one of the most emblematic poems of Russian literature, embodying the “Ego-Futurism” movement founded by the poet at the end of 1911 - the very first Futurist movement established in Russia.

On the eve of the Revolution, this work, both inspired and violently criticised by Mayakovsky, stands at the crossroads of Dadaist provocation, Futurist dynamism, and the dandyism of a bourgeois class soon to disappear.

Autograph manuscript by Louis Pasteur. One page in black ink on a single leaf, with numerous erased words and crossed-out passages.

Unpublished note by Pasteur on his rabies vaccine.

Pasteur was under the scrutiny of countless of opponents, scientific as well as political, and bemoans the "attacks as violent as they were incomprehensible" he endured. The manuscript also announces the popular success of his vaccine, as subscriptions for his future Institute were in full swing.

Autograph manuscript signed of Victor Hugo’s “Ballade du fou,” sung by the jester Elespuru in his play Cromwell (IV, 1). Two pages on a folded leaf backed with green glazed paper.

Exceptional autograph manuscript of Victor Hugo’s most celebrated poetic song, performed by the jester Elespuru in his resounding drama Cromwell.

Both grotesque and exalted, this piece embodies the freedom of Romantic drama championed by Hugo in the play’s famous preface: as noted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this song “is the only passage in the play as equally famous as its preface”.

Unpublished, handwritten, signed letter from André Breton addressed to critic Charles Estienne; one page and a few lines in black ink on a paper from the à l'étoile scellée gallery.
Two transverse folds from having been sent, a small corner missing in the upper right margin.
Very beautiful letter giving an account of the death of one of André Breton's dearest friends and of his quarrel with Albert Camus.
Breton tells his friend about the death of the Surrealist Czech artist Jindřich Heisler: “Your letter spoke of those days where it seemed “that there was only just enough fire to live”: on Monday there was far from enough fire, when it reached me: one of my two or three best friends, Heisler, taken suddenly unwell on his way to mine on Saturday, had to be hospitalised urgently and I had just received the pneumatic from Bichat telling me of his death. The event, no less inconceivable than accomplished, left me distraught for a long time: there was no-one more exquisite than he, putting more warmth into everything he did, the most constant of which was to lighten and embellish those whom he loved.” The two poets were indeed very close: Heisler participated, alongside Breton, in the launch of Néon in 1948 and supported him during a period of depression, accompanying him with other friends to the Île de Sein. “The beginning of 1953 was overshadowed by the death of Jindřich Heisler (4 January). Loyal among the faithful, he “lived entirely for Surrealism” according to Breton, who pays tribute to his activity as a leader: “This is how he was between 1948 and 1950, the soul of Néon, and until his last moments the greatest bearer of projects that, as if by magic, his talent gave him the means to achieve.”” (Henri Béhar, André Breton)

Rare and sought-after first edition, first issue.

Includes the subscribers' list and the foreword, which were omitted when the remainder of this edition passed into the hands of another publisher, Dion-Lambert. It also retains the pagination error in volume two: page 164 instead of 364. With a letter from the author, bearing his autograph signature, written and dated 14 April 1839, in the hand of his secretary. One page written in black ink on a leaf. Slightly darkened at the upper edge, with occasional foxing, and the usual folds from postal handling.

Our copy is enriched with an exceptional, prophetic and macabre letter by François-René de Chateaubriand: "mais moi je suis mort, absolument mort et s'il me fallait écrire un mot dans un journal, j'aimerais mieux être enseveli à mille pieds sous terre." ["but I am dead, utterly dead, and if I were required to write a single word in a newspaper, I would rather be buried a thousand feet underground."]

Signed with the author’s faltering hand, this apparently unpublished letter was penned by his secretary: "Vous connaissez la main de [Hyacinthe] Pilorge que j'employe pour remplacer la mienne souffrante de la goutte" ["You will recognise the hand of [Hyacinthe] Pilorge, whom I employ to replace my own, suffering from gout,"] the author explains in the introduction to the letter.

Black half-morocco bindings, smooth spines with double gilt fillets and double blind-stamped compartments, black paper boards, slight superficial rubbing to some boards, marbled paper pastedowns and endpapers, sprinkled edges; contemporary bindings. Sparse foxing.

Autograph letter dated and signed by Alexis Léger, 26 lines in blue ink, written from Washington to his friend Emily Amram, describing the torments of his convalescence following a "stupid accident".

Folds inherent to mailing.

The poet thanks his friend for her floral attentions during his illness: "combien la présence de vos fleurs m'a aidé contre les mauvaises ombres pendant mes jours de réclusion !" and, much to his regret, must once again postpone the visit he had promised her: "une mauvaise grippe washingtonnienne, qui m'a surpris, déjà fatigué, peu après mon retour chez moi, achevé de me déprimer, et pour ne pas accabler encore l'affectueuse sollicitude de bons amis comme vous et Phil, je n'ai su, écœuré de moi-même, que me condamner au silence et à la solitude."

He intends to banish his dark thoughts by granting himself a stay by the sea in the South: "Je pars demain pour le sud et vais demander au voisinage de la mer la possibilité de me libérer, par la natation; des dernières traces de mon stupide accident."

First edition, printed in a small number of copies, of this offprint from issues 314 and 318 of the Revue africaine (1923 and 1924).

Half black shagreen binding, spine with five raised bands, gilt date at foot, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers, original wrappers and spine preserved, contemporary binding.

Illustrated with 4 plates, including a frontispiece portrait. Tailliart 592.

Rare copy of this meticulous monograph (later reissued under the Champion imprint), documenting the journey Daudet made to Algeria from 21 December 1861 to 25 February 1862, accompanied by his cousin Reynaud.

Drawing on a wealth of sources, the author succeeded in reconstructing the writer’s exact itinerary; the purpose of the work was to respond to Degoumois’s claims in L’Algérie d’Alphonse Daudet : Essai sur les sources et les procédés d’imitation d’A. Daudet (Geneva, 1922), in which he asserted that most of the Algerian descriptions found in Lettres de mon moulin, Tartarin de Tarascon and Contes du lundi were merely borrowed from Eugène Fromentin.

Our copy is enriched with an autograph letter signed by Jules Caillat, dated Paris, 7 June [1924?], most likely addressed to the publisher (bifolium of 4 pp. in-12), sent together with three original photographic plates (those used for the book’s illustrations) and a roll containing a proof of each.

Caillat also discusses the desired print run (350 copies, of which only 300 were available for sale) and the typographical changes required in the transition from periodical articles to book form.

Autograph letter signed from Georges Bataille to Denise Rollin, 40 lines in black ink, two pages on one leaf.

George Bataille and Denise Rollin's relationship lasted from the autumn of 1939 to the autumn of 1943 and left behind it a short but passionate correspondence. This letter dates from the early days of their connection, but already reveals Bataille's agonies: “Perhaps I was too happy with you for some months, even though suffering did not wait long to interrupt, at least for a time, a happiness that was almost a challenge.”
A passionate lover, Bataille moved from exultation to the deepest doubt and even offered his lover a potential way out of their relationship: “If you can't take it, me, any more, I beg you, don't deceive yourself any longer: tell me it's me, and not some foible I could have avoided and which is easily repairable.” He would rather be sac-
rificed on the altar of their love than have a relationship that was bland and flavorless: “Understand me when I tell you that I don't want everything to get bogged down, that I would really rather suffer than see a sort of shaky mediocrity as a future for you and me.”

Earlier in the letter, he turns to humor to tear him away from his worries: “I hardly dare make you laugh by telling
you that I've lost weight, so that my trousers occasionally fall down, because I've not yet gotten into the habit of tightening my belt to the new notch.” Then, he goes back to pleading: “I write to you like a blind man, because that is what you make me when you talk to me the way you do when you leave or when you phone, you make me fall into a darkness that is almost unbearable.” He then tries to get a grip on himself:
“there are moments I'm ashamed of doubting you and being afraid, or of stupidly losing my head.”
Finally, hemmed in by all his doubts as a lover, Bataille tried to find some respite in talking about the family that he had made up with Denise and her son Jean (alias Bepsy): “If you write me, tell me how Bepsy's doing, which is perhaps the only thing that you can tell me that doesn't touch something painful in me.”

In a 1961 interview, Bataille looked back on this time: "Le Coupable is the first book that gave me a kind of satisfaction, an anxious one at that, that no book had given me and that no book has given me since. It is perhaps the book in which I am the most myself, which resembles me the most... because I wrote it as if in a sort of quick and continuous explosion." The letters addressed by Bataille to Denise during this period contain the seeds of the feelings that explode in Le Coupable as in all of Bataille's work. His writing is an ebb and flow of love and suffering, between ecstasy and disappointment, calm and energy, mixing familiar and formal tones, compliments and reproaches. The letters are often impossible to date with precision as they all proceed from the same movement of ecstatic flagellation.

In 1943, Georges Bataille found a house in Vézelay where the couple settled with Laurence (Georges and Sylvia's daughter), and Denise's son Jean. It was there that Bataille completed his book Le Coupable as well as his love story since barely a month after their arrival, Diane Kotchoubey, a young woman of 23, moved in with them. Before the end of the year, Bataille left Denise Rollin for this new flame.

These previously unknown letters were kept by Bataille's best friend Maurice Blanchot who from 1944 became the new lover Denise Rollin, this woman with a "melancholic and taciturn" beauty who "embodied silence". The crumpled letters (one is even torn into five pieces) are as much the precious trace of Bataille's extraordinary passion as they are a valuable source from a little-known period of his intimate life which was until then only perceived through the eyes of his friends. Above all they are of an exceptional literary quality and reveal several sides to him: the man, the accursed, the worshipper and the profaner... all that, according to Michel Foucault, makes Georges Bataille "one of the most important writers of this century”.

A remarkable autograph poem of youth by André Breton dedicated to Guillaume Apollinaire entitled «Décembre». 20 verses in ink on vergé d'Arches paper, composed in December 1915. This manuscript was copied between March 1917 and the beginning of 1918.

This poem is presented in a chemise and case with paper boards decorated with abstract motifs, the spine of the chemise in green morocco, pastedowns and endpapers of beige suede, a sheet of flexible plexiglass protecting the poem, case lined with green morocco, piece of green paper with caption «poème autographe» to bottom of upper cover of case, the whole by Thomas Boichot.
Key poem of the author's pre-Dadaist period, it formed part of the set of 7 manuscript poems by Breton (known as coll. X. in the Œuvres complètes d'André Breton, volume I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1988, p. 1071). Thiese poems of his juvenilia are carefully copied out in black ink on watermarked vergé paper. The small collection was addressed to his circle of friends and writers, most notably including Valéry, Apollinaire, Théodore Fraenkel, and his brother in arms André Paris. They were later published in his first collection, Mont de piété, which appeared in June 1919, published by Au Sans Pareil, established not long before by his friend René Hilsum.
The precise dating of this set of autograph poems is made possible by the composition of the final poem in the set («André Derain»), written on 24 March 1917, which provides a definitive terminus post quem. An earlier version of the poem «Age», dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, appears in our collection under its original name, «Poème». Dated by the author 19 February 1916, the day of his 20th birthday, and composed 10 days previously (according to his letters), it was not retitled and reworked until its publication in July 1918 in Les Trois Roses. Judging by the similarities to things published before this last poem, the seven autograph poems were probably written during 1917 or at the beginning of 1918, while Breton was doing his residency in Val-de-Grâce and where, significantly, he made the acquaintance of Louis Aragon.
The poems that make up Mont de piété represent a rare and valuable insight into his youthful influences at the dawn of his joining the Dada movement and his discovery of automatic writing. Quite short and sometimes sibylline, one detects Symbolist highlights borrowed from Mallarmé, whom he rediscovered at poetry mornings in the théâtre Antoine and the Vieux-Colombier accompanied by his schoolfriend Théodore Fraenkel. During the first month of the War, Breton also dedicated himself to Rimbaud, plunging into Les Illuminations, the only work he carried with him in the confusion and haste that followed the outbreak of war. From his readings of Rimbaud were born the poems «Décembre», «Age», and «André Derain», while he borrowed Apollinaire's muse Marie Laurencin to whom he dedicated «L'an suave». The author's poetic inheritance was particularly marked by Paul Valéry, with whom he corresponded from 1914. Valéry played a considerable role in the writing of the poems of Mont de piété with the advice he gave the young poet. Admiring his disciple's audacity, who addressed each of these poems to him, he characterized the poem «Façon» (1916) thus: «The theme, language, scope, meter, everything is new, in the style, the manner of the future» (Letter of June 1916, Œuvres complètes d'André Breton, vol. I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1988, p. 1072).
These essential buds of Breton's youth were written between his seventeenth and twenty-third year. Taken by surprise in Lorient by the declaration of war, he became a military nurse, serving in several hospitals and on the front during the Meuse offensive. In Nantes, he met Jacques Vaché, who inspired him to undertake a project of collective writing, as well as encouraging him to have illustrated the future collection that was to become Mont de piété, a task eventually undertaken by André Derain. His intimacy with this «dandy revolting against art and war» who shared his admiration for Jarry and his contact with the mental patients of the Saint Dizier neurological and psychiatric centre, marked a decisive stage in the birth of Surrealism. Posted to the Val-de-Grâce from 1917, Breton found in Paris the necessary literary vibrancy for his poetic quest and began reciting Rimbaud in the company of Aragon. It was thanks to Apollinaire that he became friends with Soupault, the future co-author of Champs magnétiques, and Reverdy, founder of the review Nord-Sud, which went on to publish the poems of Mont de piété. The seven poems of the collection were printed in avant-garde reviews (Les Trois Roses, Solstices, Nord-Sud) between 1917 and the beginning of 1919.
Four of the seven poems were dedicated to friends and masters of the author: Léon-Paul Fargue, and above all Apollinaire, to whom Breton devoted a paper in L'éventail. Breton also paid homage to Marie Laurencin and André Derain, creators of «plastic works that are still completely new, exposed to an almost unanimous rejection and intolerance» that were dear to Breton throughout his life (XXe siècle, n°3, June 1952). With these dedications, he increased the number of complex allusions, dedicating to one a poem inspired by the other, as in for instance «Age», dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, which echoed Rimbaud and his poem «Aube» (Les Illuminations, 1895).

The correspondence and friendship between the two poets began with the dedication of this poem, which Breton wrote in 1915. Apollinaire immediately spotted, in these lines that Breton had entrusted to him «a striking talent» (letter of 21 December 1915). Still under the spell of Rimbaud and the late Symbolism of Valéry when he wrote this poem, Breton found in Apollinaire a new poetic direction and told him a year later: «I confessed without protest the attraction you held for me. The seduction was so overwhelming that I cannot, for the moment, write about it.» The fractured structure of «Décembre» is testimony to a change that was already proceeding in the young poets work, 21 at the time. Alexandrines were set beside verses of a few syllables that dismantled meter. «At 25, the hotel with its [plug of [mistletoe I dodge the unjust spawn, O [white [soil! Hello – Europe languishes in [next [year's flames The song of the fennel – and [there [you are! We stay silent.» Breton also sent the poem to Valéry on the 14th December, who remarked on his new technique: «As to the very singular verses with their bold breaks, their allure broken and illuminated by the flash of the soliloquies at the corner of the fire, I find them an interesting study of something else, a new test of yourself.» The poem is set on the 25th December, a strange Christmas peopled by «flowering missals», «Mages» and «mangy clocks». Breton inserted another subtle dedication to his model (the «plug of mistletoe»), playing on Apollinaire's surname (Gui), which figures in his poems and his letters. «Décembre» is also the first poem by Breton directly to mention the War, and finishes on a dark image. «Private, Over there, conscript of the earth and [the standard, to be! And my arms, their warm creepers [that held you fast? - I would have savaged the life of your [poor angel breast.» This mark of admiration from Breton was followed by a study devoted to the poet's work, shortly after the publication of «Décembre» in L'Éventail on the 15 February 1919. As well as his influence as a poet and an art critic, Apollinaire posthumously contributed significantly to the birth of the post-War avant-garde movements: for if Breton was to be the theoretician behind Surrealism, it was nonetheless Apollinaire who invented the word, not to mention introducing Breton and Soupault. An extremely rare and fascinating manuscript from the young André Breton, dedicated to Apollinaire, the first Surrealist and guide for the new generation of post-War poets.

Autograph letter signed by Charles Baudelaire, addressed to Antoine Arondel, written in black ink on a single sheet of blue paper.
Folds typical of mailing; minor losses expertly restored without affecting the text; a small tear on the signature discreetly repaired. This letter is transcribed in Correspondance I of Baudelaire (Pléiade, p. 277) and dated by Claude Pichois to May 1854.
In it, Baudelaire sends theatre tickets to his art dealer Antoine Arondel — a notorious and unscrupulous character who exploited the poet’s boundless taste for fine arts and encouraged his collecting obsession.

Ami, tu veux / Devenir poète / Ne fais surtout pas / L'imbécile / N'écris pas / Des chansons trop bêtes / Même si les gourdes / Aiment ça

First edition, of which no copies were issued on deluxe paper.

Illustrated, complete with the two folding maps at the end of the volume.

Inscribed by René Grousset: "A monsieur Benoist-Méchin en témoignage de profonde reconnaissance" and additionally signed by Geneviève Grousset.

Accompanied by a one-page autograph letter signed by René Grousset to Jacques Benoist-Méchin, in which he thanks him for his interventions on behalf of his son-in-law and daughter, whom he saved.

Signed letter hand-written by Charles Baudelaire, written in paper pencil, addressed to his mother. Dry-stamped headed paper from the Grand Hôtel Voltaire, Faubourg Saint-Germain. Madame Aupick's address in Honfleur (Calvados) in the author's hand, as well as several postage stamps dated 13 and 14 July 1858. Some highlighting, crossing out and corrections by the author. Signs of a wax seal with Charles Baudelaire's initials in pencil, likely written by the author. A small section of paper from the second leaf has been removed, without affecting the text.
This letter was published for the first time in the Revue de Paris on 15 September 1917.
Former collection Armand Godoy, n° 102.
Precious document, testimony of a decisive moment in the poet's life : the reconcilliation with now widowed Aupick, this sacred mother “qui hante le cœur et l'esprit de son fils,” “who haunts the heart and spirit of her son.”

Autograph letter signed by George Sand, addressed to her friend Stéphanie Bourjot, daughter of Étienne Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire. Four pages written in blue ink on a folded bifolium bearing George Sand’s monogram. Fold marks as usual.
 
This letter was partially published in Correspondance, vol. XIV, no. 7846.
A beautiful and partly unpublished letter in which George Sand discusses Marie Pape-Carpantier’s book and the education of her young maid, Marie Caillaud : « It is an excellent book, which I use to teach my young maid to read. She is extraordinarily intelligent, and this book opens her mind to all sorts of sound ideas. Educating this 18-year-old child—who, six months ago, was only two in terms of knowledge—has been a unique experience. She now seems her age, yet retains all the innocence of childhood. So every evening, we read Marie Carpentier’s little stories, and I enjoy them just as much as my pupil does. »
 
Marie Caillaud was only eleven years old when George Sand hired her to wash dishes and tend to the chicken coop, a task that earned her the nickname “Marie des poules.” But the writer soon recognized the young peasant girl’s intelligence, appointed her as housekeeper, and by 1856 included her in the performances of the Nohant theatre. Her education is first mentioned in early 1858, notably in a letter from George Sand to her friend Charles Duvernet: « During my winter evenings, I took on the education of little Marie, the one who acted with us. From a dish washer, I immediately raised her to the rank of housekeeper, a role for which her excellent mind makes her perfectly suited. The greatest obstacle was that she couldn't read. That obstacle no longer exists. In thirty half-hour lessons—fifteen hours in a month—she mastered all the difficulties of the language slowly but perfectly. This miracle is due to the admirable Laffore method, which I applied with the utmost gentleness to a perfectly lucid mind. » (16 February 1858)
 
Marie Caillaud would go on to become a notable actress at Nohant and move in the circles of George Sand’s illustrious guests: Delacroix, Gautier, Dumas, Prince Jérôme Bonaparte…
But Marie was not George Sand’s first pupil. All her life, Sand was deeply interested in pedagogy and taught not only her children and grandchildren, but also members of her household staff and local peasants.
 
This letter is a remarkable testament to her hands-on approach as a teacher, always seeking new and effective ways to impart knowledge : « What is lacking—or at least what I haven’t found—is a true reading method. I’ve devised one for my own use (never written down), based on Laffore’s and adapted to my own ideas. But what I haven’t found in primers for children or public school manuals is a well-crafted exercise book that teaches reading logically while also making sense of spelling. Does such a book exist? » Far from a casual activity, education was central to George Sand’s worldview. As Georges Lubin noted, her aim was not merely to teach literacy. Taught to write by her own mother at the age of five, Sand understood from an early age that the only path to equality lay through intellectual emancipation: « She understood very early on that the only road to equality was intellectual emancipation. The ignorance imposed upon women was the root of their servitude. The ignorance imposed upon the working classes underpinned class inequality. Education was the key to opening locked doors. » (« George Sand et l'éducation » in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 1976)

A beautiful and important testimony to George Sand’s tireless struggle for the emancipation of women through education.

First edition, one of 10 numbered copies on imperial japon, ours one of 3 hors commerce lettered copies, a deluxe issue following 6 on chine.

Bound in full sienna morocco, flat spine, gilt date at foot, moiré-effect endpapers and pastedowns, gilt fillet border on pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved (spine restored and backed), gilt edges, chemise edged in sienna morocco, slipcase in wood-effect board with white felt lining, contemporary binding signed by Roger Arnoult.

Our copy is enriched with a one-page signed autograph letter by Jean Cocteau, mounted on a guard, written from La Roche-Posay in Vienne, probably addressed to Pierre Benoit, in which he humorously evokes Charlie Chaplin, his fragile health, and his boredom: "... Me voilà dans ce film de Charlot : \"Charlot fait une cure\" - parmi les clowns et clowneries du mercurochrome... Le docteur H. arrive à éteindre mon fer de travail avec ses pelotes d'épingles aquatiques. Mon ventre gargouille. Si tu venais ce serait une très bonne cure. Que penses-tu de cette publicité pour La Roche : La Roche source d'ennuis."

A handsome copy, finely bound by Roger Arnoult, a graduate of the École Estienne, active until 1980, who collaborated with and worked for the foremost binders of his time such as René Aussourd, Anthoine-Legrain, Paul Bonet, Georges Cretté, Pierre-Lucien Martin...

"Tu me dis : Aime l'art, il vaut mieux que l'amour
[...]
Et moi. je te réponds : La langue du poête
Ne rend du sentiment que l'image incomplète" ["You tell me: Love art, it is better than love [...] And I answer you: The poet's language renders only an incomplete image of feeling"].

"Des maîtres les plus grands les œuvres les plus belles,
Auprès du beau vivant, compare, que sont-elles ?" ["The most beautiful works of the greatest masters, compared to living beauty, what are they?"]

Tu me dis : Aime l'art, il vaut mieux que l'amour ;
Tout sentiment s'altère et doit périr un jour !
Pour que le cœur devienne une immortelle chose,
Il faut qu'en poésie il se métamorphose,
Et que chaque pensée en sorte incessamment,
En parant sa beauté d'un divin vêtement.
Sentir, c'est aspirer!... c'est encor la souffrance ;
Mais créer, c'est jouir, ! c'est prouver sa puissance ;
C'est faire triompher de la mort, de l'oubli,
Toutes les passions dont l'âme a tressailli!
Et moi. je te réponds : La langue du poête
Ne rend du sentiment que l'image incomplète ;
Concevoir le désir, goûter la passion,
Nous fait dédaigner l'art et sa création ;
Formuler les pensers dont notre esprit s'enivre,
Ce n'est que simuler la vie : aimer, c'est vivre ; !
C'est incarner le rêve, et sentir les transports
Dont l'art ne peut donner que des emblèmes morts !
Des maîtres les plus grands les œuvres les plus belles,
Auprès du beau vivant, compare, que sont-elles?
Corrége et le Poussin, Titien et Raphaël,
Rubens, dont la palette est prise à l'arc-en-ciel,
Éblouissant nos yeux, ont groupé sur leurs toiles
Des visages divins et de beaux corps sans voiles !
Mais hier, quand soudain à nos regards charmés
Ces tableaux immortels se trouvaient animés,
Lorsqu'au lieu de la chair que la couleur imite,
Nous avons admiré cette chair qui palpite,
Où le sang, à travers l'épiderme soyeux,
Circule en répandant des reflets lumineux ;
Lorsque nous avons vu d'exquises créatures,
Dont les beaux torses nus, les bras aux lignes pures,
Le sein ferme et mouvant, le visage inspiré,
Faisaient vivre à nos yeux quelque groupe sacré,
Oh ! n'as-tu pas senti quelle impuissante envie
C'est de vouloir dans l'art inoculer la vie
Et ne t'es-tu pas dit, du réel t'enivrant :
La beauté seule est belle, et l'amour seul est grand !

First edition, one of 500 numbered copies on pure wove paper.

Bound in full sienna morocco, flat spine with a slight snag at head, date gilt at foot, moiré endpapers and pastedowns, single gilt fillet framing the pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved, gilt edges, chemise edged in sienna morocco, slipcase of wood-grained boards lined with white felt, contemporary binding signed by Roger Arnoult.

Our copy is enriched with a signed autograph letter, one page, by Jean Cocteau mounted on a tab, dated April 1959, probably addressed to Pierre Benoit: "Nôtre Pierre fantôme... c'est autour de votre souvenir qu'on se réunit. C'est une chaîne bien étonnante que celle de cette affreuse et délicieuse cabane. Pensez moi. Je pense à vous. Je vous aime et je me résigne à vous aimer en rêve."

A fine copy, handsomely bound by Roger Arnoult, a graduate of the École Estienne, active until 1980, who worked with and for the greatest binders of his time such as René Aussourd, Anthoine-Legrain, Paul Bonet, Georges Cretté, Pierre-Lucien Martin...

Autograph letter signed by Emile Zola addressed to Henry Fouquier, written in black ink on a bifolium. Usual folds from mailing.
This letter was transcribed in the complete correspondence of Emile Zola published by the CNRS and the Presses de l'Université de Montréal.

Original autograph manuscript by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, one page in black ink on a yellow paper sheet, numerous corrections, and rewritings.

Exceptional working manuscript of a passage from the original French version of Wind Sand and Stars [Terre des Hommes] from chapter VI "Dans le désert", a magnificent ode to the barren wilderness of deserts doomed to disappear due to the inevitable development of the industrial age. This section from the original French novel was removed for the English version translated by Galantière and remains unpublished in English. Moreover, the final two paragraphs of the manuscript are unpublished in the original French version. Saint-Exupéry recalls magnificent memories of liberating adversity and cherished "dissidence" he experienced in the heart of Mauritanian and Libyan deserts.
This heavily corrected state of the text is the true genesis of Saint-Exupéry's Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece: he reworked and rearranged here his memories published as articles (reportages) in Paris-Soir magazine in 1938. Some sentences ("What does it matter what you find at the pole if you walk in a state of enchantment") remaining in the published version are variants of one of his reportages, present in the manuscript among redacted and unpublished sentences obscured by pen strokes.

This manuscript indicates an early writing stage not mentioned in the “Notes et variantes” of the comprehensive Pléiade edition.
The passage is originally from his fifth article for Paris-Soir, entitled "La magie du désert c'est ça" ("This is the magic of the desert ") from November 14, 1938 published with some of the changes made in this manuscript and other later corrections at the end of the sixth chapter of Terre des Hommes. The central theme of the text, dissidence, is mentioned in the very first sentence of the manuscript and would later become the title of the passage indicated on the typed proofs. This leitmotiv is steeped in nostalgia, with vivid descriptions of fleeting moments of freedom during the writer's escapades in the desert: "The horizons [crossed out : places] towards which we ran one after the other faded away ['died out one after the other' in the published text], like those insects once trapped by lukewarm hands ['which lose their color once trapped in lukewarm hands ' idem]. But there was no illusion ['he who pursued them was not the victim of illusion' idem]. We were not mistaken, when we walked like this from miracle to miracle ['we were after these discoveries' idem]. Nor was the Sultan of the Thousand and One Nights, who ran one morning ['pursued a matter so subtle' idem] [sentence deleted], that his beautiful captives, one by one, died at dawn in his arms, having lost, scarcely touched, the gold of their wings"

It conveys an acute awareness of the end of an era, marked by the bankruptcy of Aéropostale and his grave plane accident in Guatemala. Saint-Exupéry takes refuge in the memory of the rebel-filled deserts of Mauritania whose charm wore off with the passing of time: "But there is no more dissidence. Cap Juby, Cisneros, Puerto Cansado, Dora, Smarra, there is no longer any [word struck out] mystery." It is followed by descriptions of the lands he and his fellow aviators flew over: "For the pure shell powder sand and the forbidden palm groves, gave us their most precious gift: they offered only an hour of fervor, and we were the ones who dwelled in it" The story is told in plural, honoring the memory of Guillaumet and Mermoz, his friends and famous aviators who fell from the sky. The manuscript also contains a prophetic remark on the deserts soon to be exploited for their resources: "We fed on the magic of the sands, others perhaps will dig their oil wells there, and benefit from their [deleted: this] goods." We can already see the businessman character in The Little Prince, an early manifestation of his opinion on the excesses of human progress.

These words on a thin sheet of yellow paper represent a crucial early stage of his masterpiece. Saint-Exupéry first assembled the work under its original title, Etoiles par grand vent, published in France as Terre des Hommes in February 1939. We know of another sheet of paper in this color with the same types of corrections, also not mentioned in the Pléiade edition of the complete works. It shows the more direct handwriting of a first draft - the sheet undoubtedly dating from the first combination of his journalistic reportages that would later become the novel. Virtually every sentence is modified (words crossed out, words or expressions rearranged in the sentence) not systematically appearing in the published version: "What we see here is a very subtle work of reworking texts that function in very different ways depending on the subject and are clearly oriented towards that recreation of Man to which the book invites us" (Saint-Exupéry. Œuvres complètes, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1994, vol. I, p. 1009)

A precious extract from Terre des Hommes unpublished in the English version Wind, Sand and Stars - Saint-Exupéry's great humanist adventure and novel which brought him international renown. This rare folio riddled with erasures, rewrites, and corrections bears witness to the various stages of his writing process.

Three original childhood photographs of Maurice Béjart, and his birth announcement 
[after 1927] | 12.2 x 17.2 cm| three photographs and a card
Three original photographs of Maurice Béjart as a child beside his mother, taken in Mougins.
We attach the birth announcement, dated 1 January 1927, printed with his name “Maurice Jean Berger.”
Provenance: Maurice Béjart's personal archives.

Personal diary handwritten by Maurice Béjart, written in a 1969 diary celebrating the centenary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi.
52 handwritten leaves, written in red and blue pen in a spiral-bound notebook. This diary features amongst Béjart's very rare, privately owned manuscripts, the choreographer's archives being shared between his house in Brussels, the Béjart foundation in Lausanne and the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie.
The choreographer Maurice Béjart's diary written during the year 1969. An extremely rare collection of thoughts, questions and introspections from the point of view of Hinduism and Buddhist wisdom, which Béjart adopts following his first trip to India in 1967.
The diary is an emblematic testimony of the indo-hippie era of the 1960s, spiritual and artistic renaissance that inspired numerous ballets of the choreographer (Messe pour le temps présent, Bhakti, Les Vainqueurs).
A selection from this diary was published by Maurice Béjart in the second volume of his memoirs (La Vie de Qui ? Flammarion, 1996).
During the year 1969, Béjart wrote daily notes in a diary published in memory of Mahatma Gandhi. Fascinated by Hindu mysticism since his trip to India in 1967, he filled in this spiritual journal with numerous mantras and prayers (“Krishna guide my chariot, the light is at the end of the path. OM”; “Buddha is everywhere”; “Let God enter, but how to open the door”) and he calls upon the Hindu deities as well as the Bodhisattvas Mañju?r? et T?r? – soothing figures of the Buddhist pantheon. Béjart's “Indian period” was particularly rich in choreographic masterpieces, the progress of which can be followed in his diary (Baudelaire at the beginning of the year, the first performance of the Vainqueurs in Brussels and the Quatre fils Aymon in Avignon, as well as the filming and screening of his Indian ballet Bhakti). At the crossroads of New Age and the hippie movement, Béjart's “conversion” is symptomatic of an era that refuses progress and has a thirst for spirituality: “Calcutta is not India, but our western face. It is not religion or traditional thinking that is to blame, but capitalism. India, a rich country before colonisation.” The Beatle's visit to the guru Maharishi's ?shram and Ravi Shankar's concert at Woodstock in 1969 marks the beginning of a real western passion for Indian music and culture, which was decisive in Béjart's ballets at the time.
In Béjart's eyes, India presents itself as a place where art and ancestral traditions have not suffered the perversions of positivity. In his creations he seeks to express the spirit of a culture that intimately links the body and the spirit, and in which dance plays a major cosmic and spiritual role. Included in his ballets were Indian dance systems and Vedic songs that were discovered thanks to Alain Daniélou – in 1968 he opened the Messe pour temps présent with a long vînâ solo that lasted fifteen minutes: “Béjart is in his Hindu quarter-hour. And over there, Hindu quarter hours, can last for hours...” commented Jean Vilar, director of the Avignon festival. A wave of Indian fashion also passes through the costumes of the Ballet du XX^e siècle company: large silk trousers, tunics, jewellery and oriental eyes. In the diary, Béjart states that there is “no truth without yoga,” an art discovered from an Indian master that can be found in many of his ballets in the form of dance exercises on the barre. He also decides to make Bhakti “an act of Faith” by filming himself the ballet choreographer, and during the summer he prepares the Vainqueurs, an unusual meeting between Wagner and traditional Indian ragas.
Beyond the prolific artist, we also discover the choreographer's troubled personality in the diary, in the grips of doubt and melancholy: “vague state of physical weightlessness and moral emptiness. Lethargy or laziness. Weakness. Dizziness. Drowsiness. Unconsciousness.” Despite successes, Béjart will try to calm his fragile state by meditation and the teachings of Indian prophets and brahmins, which can be found throughout the pages of this diary (Ramana Maharshi, Swami Ramdas, the Dalai-Lama, Apollonius of Tyana).
His sometimes thwarted romances with his favourite dancer Jorge Donn monopolise him and plunge him into anxiety – on the eve of the Vainqueurs premiere, he writes, “Before dress rehearsal. Chaos. [Jorge] Donn disappeared. Tara absent. Me lost.” Torn between enjoyment and self-control, he tours at a frantic pace with his company Ballet du XXe siècle, first to the Netherlands, then to Milan, Turin and Venice in Italy: “I leave Venice completely enslaved to laziness, to sex and to ease, and yet a strange well-being of the brute who drank and fucked.” However, these happy moments did not go so far as to satisfy Béjart, for whom “Joy has a dead aftertaste” despite the “life of work and discipline” that he establishes during this richly creative year. At the end of his life, Béjart will look back with humour on his Indian escapades and the resolutely sombre tone of his diary: “I can't stop myself laughing at this idiot who cries and who moans, even though he created a great number of ballets [...] When I think that at the end of this diary in 1969 I was firmly considering retirement!”
An extremely rare document retracing the meeting of the East and the West in Maurice Béjart's personal life and choreographic work. This diary embodies an era of counter-culture and cultural syncretism that had long-lasting effects on avant-garde European ballet.

Autograph manuscript signed by the painter and writer Jacques-Émile Blanche, entitled « Serge de Diaghileff ». Five leaves written in black ink, with numerous corrections in blue. Autograph foliation in black ink, later foliation in blue pencil. Leaf 4, originally in two parts, was joined with a strip of adhesive affixed to the verso.

Crossed-out passages and corrections.

A very fine funeral oration by Jacques-Émile Blanche for his friend Serge Diaghilev, director of the celebrated Ballets Russes.
The painter and writer Jacques-Émile Blanche pays tribute to the genius of Serge Diaghilev, shortly after his death in Venice in 1929. Chosen as a « godfather » to the Ballets Russes, the painter followed closely the choreographer’s work as a regenerator of the performing arts and applauded Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps. He also produced numerous portraits of the Ballets Russes dancers, which he presented at the Venice Biennale in 1912.
At the beginning of the century, Diaghilev’s company, the « Ballets Russes », had dazzled audiences across Europe with a rich and vigorous art which, moving from one new form to another, remained at the avant-garde for twenty years. The painter recalls his first encounter with Diaghilev, a figure of undeniable charm: « j'éprouvai qu'on ne pouvait lui résister. Son autorité, ses caprices d'enfant gâté, on les subissait, tant son intelligence éclatait dans ses paroles d'adolescent. Il ressemblait, alors, assuraient ses compatriotes, au Tzar Alexandre Ier ». He evokes the impresario’s troubled existence and his dazzling triumphs with the Ballets Russes: « Eh quoi ! vingt ans d'expériences, vingt ans d'incomparables spectacles - et la perfection d'une technique de plus en plus déconcertante, ne nous conseilla-t-il pas d'accorder crédit illimité à notre cher ami, le plus artiste des hommes - et somme toute, le plus sûr de soi-même, malgré l'extravagance, le paradoxe de la vie qu'il menait et qu'il imposait à sa troupe ? ».
Blanche highlights Diaghilev’s taste for French culture, which he shared with his friends and collaborators. This passion, inherited from Russian aristocratic circles, made him « Le plus parisien des cosmopolites, croyant au prestige de Paris comme un boulevardier du second Empire ». We also learn of Diaghilev’s unrealized plan to travel to Moscow and stage ballets in the young USSR, then regarded as a land of political and artistic avant-garde. The letter closes with a moving evocation of Venice, where Diaghilev passed away on 19 August 1929:
« voici qu'un funèbre cortège de gondoles accompagne sur la lagune torride [...] les restes de notre cher camarade. Il est bien - puisqu'il devait nous quitter - qu'il fermât les yeux sur la cité du Sang, de la volupté et de la Mort ».

A remarkable panegyric to the creator and impresario Serge de Diaghilev by Jacques-Émile Blanche, his loyal friend and portraitist of the Ballets Russes.

Fine autograph letter signed by Colette to her friend Bolette Natanson. Two pages written in ink on blue paper. Horizontal folds inherent to the mailing of the letter.
As ever protective and maternal with her friend, Colette compliments her: "Comme tu es gentille, - comme tu es Bolette". Nineteen years her senior, she praises the youth of "[her] child": "Tu es ma 'provision d'hiver', la jeunesse dont j'aurai besoin, plus tard, bien plus encore qu'à présent. Soigne-toi bien ma jeunesse en grange".
Having grown up from early childhood in artistic circles—she was the daughter of Alexandre and the niece of Thadée Natanson, the founders of the celebrated Revue Blanche—Bolette Natanson (1892-1936) formed friendships with Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, Georges Auric, Jean Hugo, and Colette.
Passionate about dressmaking, she left Paris for the United States with Misia Sert, a close friend of Coco Chanel, and was employed at Goodman. With her husband Jean-Charles Moreux, they opened in 1929 the gallery Les Cadres on boulevard Saint-Honoré and moved in the company of numerous artists and intellectuals. Their success was immediate and they multiplied commissions: the fireplace for Winnaretta de Polignac, the decoration of the Château de Maulny, the arrangement of Baron de Rothschild’s townhouse, the creation of frames for the industrialist Bernard Reichenbach, and finally the design of the shopfront for Colette’s beauty institute in 1932. Bolette Natanson also framed the works of her distinguished painter friends: Bonnard, Braque, Picasso, Vuillard, Man Ray, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and others. Despite this dazzling ascent, she took her own life in December 1936, a few months after the death of her father.

Original black and white photograph showing Pierre Daninos with a slight smile.

A handsome ensemble. We enclose the handwritten envelope in which the photograph was sent.

Inscribed, dated and signed by Pierre Daninos in blue felt-tip pen, addressed to the prominent autograph collector Claude Armand.

Also included is a ten-line autograph letter, dated and signed, in which Pierre Daninos thanks Claude Armand and shares the title of his forthcoming book, the result of his journey around the world: "Les touristocrates".

Long autograph letter by Stendhal, addressed to his sister Pauline, written in fine handwriting with black ink.
Address of Stendhal's father, where his sister resides, in Grenoble, with the stamp "n°51 Grande Armée." Red wax seal bearing Stendhal's coat of arms.
Several original folds, inherent to postal delivery. A paper loss due to the unsealing of the letter has been skillfully restored.
A very beautiful letter, filled with romantic passion, blending childhood nostalgia with sentimental tales, and foreshadowing The Red and the Black.

Autograph letter from George Sand to Gustave Flaubert dated December 21, 1867, 8 pages on two lined leaves. Published in Sand's Correspondance, XX, pp. 642-645.
From one of the finest literary correspondences of the century, this letter written on Christmas Eve 1867 is a sublime testament to the frank friendship between George Sand, the “old troubadour”, and Gustave Flaubert, christened “cul de plomb” [leaden ass] after declining his invitation to Nohant to complete L'Éducation sentimentale.

Despite their seventeen year-age gap, opposing temperaments and divergent outlooks on life, the reader is gripped by the tenderness and astonishing verve of George Sand's long confession to Flaubert. At the height of her literary fame and enjoying her theater in Nohant, Sand talks at length about politics, their separation, their conception of the writer's work, and life itself.

In this “stream-of-consciousness” letter, Sand naturally and freely sets down on paper eight pages of conversations with Flaubert who made only too rare and brief appearances in Nohant: “But how I chat with you! Do you find all this amusing? I'd like a letter to replace one of our suppers, which I too miss, and which would be so good here with you, if you weren't a cul de plomb [leaden ass] who won't let yourself be dragged along, to life for life's sake”, whereas Flaubert's motto, then busy writing L'Éducation sentimentale, was rather art for art's sake. In the end of 1867, Sand grieved the death of an “almost brother”, François Rollinat, which Sand appeased with letters to Flaubert and lively evenings at Nohant: “This is how I've been living for the last 15 days since I stopped working [...] Ah'! [...] Ah! when you're on vacation, work, logic and reason seem like strange swings.” Sand was quick to criticize him for working tirelessly in his robe, “the enemy of freedom”, while she was running up and down mountains and valleys, from Cannes to Normandy, even to Flaubert's own home, which she had visited in September. On this occasion, Sand had happily reread Salammbô, where she picked up a few lines for her latest novel, Mademoiselle Merquem.

Their literary and virile friendship, similar to Rollinat's, defied the old guard of literati who declared the existence of a “sincere affair” between man and woman utterly impossible. Sand, who has been described in turn as a lesbian, a nymphomaniac, and made famous for her resounding and varied love affairs, began a long and intense correspondence with Flaubert, for whom she was a mother and an old friend. She called herself in their letters “old troubadour” or “old horse” and no longer even considered herself a woman, but a quasi-man, recalling her youthful cross-dressing and formidable contempt for gender norms. To Flaubert had compared the female writers as Amazons denying their femininity: “To better shoot with the bow, they crushed their nipples”, Sand replied in this letter: “I don't share your idea that you have to do away with the breast to shoot with the bow. I have a completely opposite belief for my own use, which I think is good for many others, probably for the majority”. A warrior, yes, but a peaceful warrior, Sand willingly adopted the customs of a world of misogynistic intellectuals, while remaining true to herself: “I believe that the artist should live in one's nature as much as possible. To the man who loves struggle, war; to the man who loves women, love; to the old man who, like me, loves nature, travel and flowers, rocks, great landscapes, children too, family, everything that moves, everything that fights moral anemia,” she then adds. A fine evocation of her “green period”, this passage marks the time of Sand's country novels, when, mellowed by the years, she gave herself over entirely to contemplation to write François le Champi, La Mare au diable and La Petite Fadette. But her love of nature didn't stop her from conquering language over men, even though at 63 she was still “scandalizing the inscandalizable”, according to the Goncourt brothers.

Faithful to her socialist ideals, she openly criticizes Adolphe Thiers in the letter: “Étroniforme [shithead] is the sublime word that classifies this species of merdoïde [shitty] vegetation [...] Yes, you'll do well to dissect this balloon-like soul and this cobweb-like talent!” As the leader of the liberal opposition to Napoleon III, Thiers had just delivered a speech in defense of the Papal States, turning his back on Garibaldi, future father of unified Italy. Everyone in Sand's home of Nohant had had a good laugh at Flaubert's logorrhea, sent three days earlier: “Let us roar against Monsieur Thiers! Can one see a more triumphant imbecile, a more abject scoundrel, a more etroniform [shit-like] bourgeois!” he wrote. Sand echoed his sentiments: “Maurice [Sand] finds your letter so beautiful [...] He won't forget étroniforme, which charms him, étronoïde, étronifère”. Against this backdrop of intense political debates, Sand also warned Flaubert, who risked jeopardizing his novel by including his criticism of Thiers in L'Éducation sentimentale: “Unfortunately when your book arrives, [Thiers] may be over and not very dangerous, for such men leave nothing behind. But perhaps he will also be in power. You can expect anything. Then the lesson will be a good one.”

Their shared socialist and anti-clericalist opinions did not prevent them from holding widely divergent views on the essence of the novel and the work of the writer: “the artist is an instrument which everything must play before it plays others. But all this is perhaps not applicable to a mind of your kind, which has acquired a great deal and only has to digest". Flaubert's detachment, his open cynicism for his characters, like a Madame Bovary harshly judged by the narrator, differed sharply from Sand's emotional and personal relationship to writing. Flaubert's almost schizophrenic attitude readily confused her and made her fear for her sanity: “I would insist on only one point, and that is that physical being is necessary to moral being, and that I fear for you one day or another a deterioration of health that would force you to suspend your work and let it cool down.” Flaubert never betrays or reveals himself through his novels, unlike Sand, who throws herself body and soul into her writing: “I believe that art needs a palette always overflowing with soft or violent tones, depending on the subject of the painting”.

While Flaubert, hard-working and full of literary anxieties, was secluded in Croisset, Sand enjoyed her freedom at Nohant, a place of family bliss but also of egalitarian living, where she “[had] fun to the point of exhaustion”. She willingly swapped tête-à-tête sessions with the inkwell for her little theater in Nohant: “These plays last until 2 a.m. and we're crazy when we get out. We eat until 5 am. There are performances twice a week, and the rest of the time, we do stuff, and the play (which) goes on with the same characters, going through the most unheard-of adventures. The audience consists of 8 or 10 young people, my three grand-nephews and the sons of my old friends. They're passionate to the point of screaming”. Persevering, she once again urged her “leaden ass” Flaubert to come out of his voluntary confinement: “I'm sure you'd have a wonderful time too, for there's a splendid verve and carelessness in these improvisations, and the characters sculpted by Maurice seem to be alive, with a burlesque life, at once real and impossible; it's like a dream.” Two years later, Flaubert would make a sensational entrance at Nohant, and Sand would leave “aching” after days of partying. During his memorable stay at Sand's he read his Saint-Antoine aloud in its entirety and danced the cachucha dressed as a woman!

Exceptional pages of George Sand in spiritual communion with her illustrious colleague; Flaubert was one of the few to whom she spoke so freely, crudely, but tenderly, sealing in words her deep friendship with the “great artist [...] among the few who are men” (letter to Armand Barbès, 12 October 1867).

Our letter is housed in a half-black morocco folder, with marbled paper boards, facing pastedown in black lambskin felt, Plexiglas protecting the letter, black morocco-lined slipcase, marbled paper boards, signed P. Goy & C. Vilaine.

Typescript of L'Intelligence en guerre with autograph manuscript additions


1945 | 22.3 x 27.9 cm | (24) f. | 24 handwritten sheets hold with a pin & 340 leaves of typescript

340 page typescript of the work L'Intelligence en guerre by the resistant writer-journalist Louis Parrot, accompanied by manuscript notes concerning the title, half-title, preface and first bibliography pages (4 pages in total) and the index of names quoted at the end of the volume (6 pages in total). Several folds and rust marks from the metal fasteners.
The typescript includes handwrittencorrections and changes, in particular
25 fully handwritten pages, and additions in the margin on several tens of pages, featuring fully in the version published in 1945 by La Jeune Parque publishers.

Autograph letter signed by Robert de Montesquiou, three pages on three leaves with the letterhead of the Hôtel-Restaurant Garnier-Perroncel in Paris. Usual fold marks, with a small tear in the margins of all three leaves, not affecting the text.

The dandy Robert de Montesquiou prepares to host a gathering at his château of Courtanvaux, once the residence of famous knight D’Artagnan.

Autograph letter signed by Paul Verlaine to Anatole Baju, one page in ink on a watermarked leaf. Two small discreet adhesive reinforcements to verso. Published in Correspondance Verlaine, vol. III, CDLIII, p. 26–27.

An important letter by Verlaine, the most Decadent of poets, to the editor-in-chief of the journal Le Décadent, which published many of his poems. The poet announces the forthcoming release of a collection entitled Amis, a provocative allusion to the scandalous sapphic poems he had privately printed in 1867 under the title Amies.

Autograph letter signed and dated April 16, 1912, by Henri Bergson, addressed to M. Masson de Saint-Félix. Includes the original autograph envelope, bearing an inscription by the recipient: "Lettre de M. Bergson / Membre de l'Institut / mon professeur de philosophie au Lycée de Clermont Fd".

Touching letter of condolence from Henri Bergson to a former student from his philosophy class in Clermont-Ferrand, where he taught for five years — from 1883 to 1888 — at the Lycée Blaise-Pascal and the Faculty of Letters.

"Mon cher ami,

La nouvelle du grand deuil qui vous frappe me touche profondément. Laissez-moi vous envoyer l'expression de ma très vive sympathie. Depuis plus de 2 mois j'avais préparé une lettre pour vous, en réponse à celle que vous m'aviez adressée ; j'attendais pour vous l'envoyer d'avoir un de mes travaux que je désirais y joindre et dont l'édition est épuisée vous le recevrez bientôt. Je n'ai pas besoin de vous dire combien j'ai été heureux d'apprendre que vous ne perdez pas de vue la philosophie. Hélas quelle philosophie, si consolante soit-elle, vous consolera tout à fait des tristesses de la vie ? Cordialement à vous / H. Bergson"

["My dear friend,

The news of the great sorrow that has befallen you has deeply moved me. Allow me to extend to you the expression of my heartfelt sympathy. For over two months I had prepared a letter in response to the one you sent me; I was waiting to send it until I could enclose one of my works, which I wished to share with you, but whose edition is currently out of print — you will receive it soon. I need not tell you how glad I was to learn that you have not lost sight of philosophy. Alas, what philosophy, however comforting it may be, could truly console you for the sorrows of life? / Cordially yours / H. Bergson"]

Autograph card signed and dated 18 February 1909 by Henri Bergson, to Mr. Masson de Saint-Félix.

Two years after the publication of L'Evolution créatrice, Bergson expresses his gratitude to a former student from his philosophy class in Clermont-Ferrand, where he taught for five years — from 1883 to 1888 — at the Lycée Blaise-Pascal and the Faculty of Arts.

"Thank you, my dear friend, for your kind note. I hardly need to tell you how fondly I remember your time in my class at Clermont. I do not know whether I shall be able to visit Lozère any time soon, as you kindly encourage me to do; but if you happen to be in Paris, it would give me great pleasure to have a talk with you. / Very cordially / H. Bergson"