Lettre autographe signée adressée à Georges Louis

Autograph letter from Pierre Louÿs signed with his initial, addressed to Georges Louis. Six pages written in violet ink on a double leaf and a single leaf. Central creases inherent to posting.
Very fine letter addressed to his brother Georges Louis with whom Pierre Louÿs maintained a very intimate relationship and whom he considered as his own father.
The question of the real identity of Pierre Louÿs's father still fascinates biographers today: "His father, Pierre Philippe Louis, [...] had married in 1842 Jeanne Constance Blanchin, who died ten years later after giving him two children, Lucie and Georges. In 1855, he remarried Claire Céline Maldan, and from this union was born, in 1857, a son, Paul; then, in 1870, our writer, who received the first names Pierre Félix. This late birth, the differences in character between father and son, the former's disaffection toward the latter, the profound intimacy that always reigned between Louÿs and his brother Georges, all this has led certain biographers and critics to suspect that the latter was in reality the writer's father. The exceptionally intimate and constant relationship that Pierre and Georges maintained between themselves all their lives, could be an argument in this sense. Of course, no irrefutable proof has been discovered, and none will probably ever be discovered. Nevertheless, certain letters [...] are quite disturbing. In 1895, for example, Louÿs writes seriously to his brother that he knows the answer to "the most poignant question" he could ask him, a question he has had "on his lips for ten years." The following year, in the full triumph of Aphrodite, he thanks Georges effusively and ends his letter with this sentence: "Not one of my friends has a FATHER who is to him what you are to me." Arguing from the close intimacy of Georges and Claire Céline during the year 1870, and the jealousy that the father never ceased to show toward his younger son, Claude Farrère did not hesitate to conclude in favor of Georges Louis. And what to think of this dedication by Louÿs to his brother on a deluxe paper copy of the first edition of Pausole: For Georges, his eldest son / Pierre." (Jean-Paul Goujon, Pierre Louÿs)
A true reflection on literature and the choice of words, this letter was written while Pierre Louÿs was working on a work that would appear the following year: Poëtique.
"Louÿs decides [...] to write a Poëtique which will be like the testament of his work as well as a message to young writers. He had always reflected on poetic art and accumulated dozens of notes, both on poets and on poetry itself." (Ibid.) To reflect on poetic art is precisely what he does in this fine letter: "Regarding negation, I wondered why the principle I tried to establish (nuance, ruse or error) was not classical. I believe the answer is: Chimène. - We take the word as a text to teach high school students that negation is an additional force. - Ex. "Je ne te hais point" ["I do not hate you"] more expressive than "Je t'aime" ["I love you"]. But no. Rodrigue has just said: "Votre haine" ["Your hatred"]. It is Rodrigue who imprints the image. The response "Je ne te hais point" ["I do not hate you"] is the passage from shadow to light: it is to speak the nuance. [...] It is terribly delicate to write "ne pas" ["not"]."
Then in a period of great trouble and isolation, the poet is touched by Paul Valéry's support: "The other day I had written a long letter to Valéry, about my "Poëtique." - He answered me immediately, a letter where he began by thanking me for all that he had felt of affection for him in the very fact that I had spent part of my evening with him without his being there. I answer him in turn - as much as I remember - "It is so rare, friends who suspect affection beneath something. There are hardly more than two kinds of people: those who do not lift the stone because they are certain there is nothing underneath, and those who do not lift the stone because they are certain to find a woodlouse there." I believe that is true, isn't it?"