Lettre autographe signée « c'est l'invasion hollando-belge venue pour l'exposition [...] Je cours à la recherche de chambres d'hôtels pour ces barbares aux toisons jaunes »

Autograph letter signed by Joris-Karl Huysmans addressed to Léon Cladel, 40 lines written in black ink on 4 pages on a folded sheet, envelope included.
A 2cm tear without loss inherent to the fold of the sheet.
In this caustic letter, entirely imbued with Huysmanian poetic writing, the author regrets that Dutch-Belgian visitors to the Universal Exhibition keep him away from the Sèvres landscapes where Léon Cladel lives.
« Je sors de chez Leconte de Lisle, il a reçu votre livre couleur de sang » ["I have just left Leconte de Lisle's, he received your blood-colored book"]. The importance of Léon Cladel's work and personality, esteemed friend of the great writers of the time, is perceptible from these opening lines. The « livre couleur de sang » ["blood-colored book"], witness to Huysmans' poetic force which shines through even in his private correspondence, refers to l'Homme-de-la-Croix-aux-Bœufs published by Edouard Dentu in 1878, a novel which was moreover reread by Flaubert, also intimate with Cladel. « Je vous serre la main de tout cœur mon puissant orfèvre et vous invite, pour notre bonheur à tous, à forger encore de belles œuvres. » ["I shake your hand wholeheartedly my powerful goldsmith and invite you, for all our happiness, to forge more beautiful works."] Émile Zola would take up this eloquent analogy in Cladel's funeral oration: « [...] de ces belles œuvres impeccables qu'il lançait, ouvragées comme des joyaux de haut prix » ["[...] those beautiful impeccable works he launched, wrought like precious jewels"].
This same year 1878 sees the Universal Exhibition settle in Paris, an event which Huysmans seems compelled to attend: « c'est l'invasion hollando-belge venue pour l'exposition qui me tient et m'empêche » ["it is the Dutch-Belgian invasion come for the exhibition that holds me and prevents me"]. The author's position regarding Belgium and Holland is ambiguous: Dutch through his father, Huysmans makes numerous family and artistic visits to these countries and he is recognized there for his critical writings on painting. The author nevertheless prefigures here the disdain that would be found in À rebours a few years later: « Je cours à la recherche de chambres d'hôtels pour ces barbares aux toisons jaunes et, le soir, quand j'ai une minute de libre, je les fais déambuler au travers de la capitale. Ils ouvrent des yeux comme des assiettes et jargonnent des exclamations admiratives. » ["I run in search of hotel rooms for these barbarians with yellow fleeces and, in the evening, when I have a free minute, I make them wander through the capital. They open eyes like plates and jabber admiring exclamations."].
Suffocated by the city and its society, « Tout ça, ça peut être drôle, mais ça m'obsède singulièrement. J'espère que ça va enfin cesser et que je vais reconquérir un peu de cette pauvre liberté dont je suis si maigrement loti, même en temps ordinaire » ["All that can be amusing, but it obsesses me singularly. I hope it will finally cease and that I will reconquer a bit of that poor freedom of which I am so meagerly provided, even in ordinary times"], Huysmans aspires to find nature again, a desire which expresses itself through an elegiac exclamation: « Ah les coteaux de Sèvres ! Pardon ! » ["Ah the hills of Sèvres! Forgive me!"]
A piquant letter from which emerge the themes dear to Huysmans' singular pen.