Invectives

First edition.

Contemporary Bradel binding in grey cloth-backed marbled boards, smooth spine decorated with a gilt floral motif, gilt date and double fillet at foot, brown shagreen label, original wrappers preserved; a contemporary binding executed for Léon Vanier with the binder's ticket pasted ton front pastedown "Reliures Léon Vanier 19 quai Saint-Michel Paris" .

Our copy exceptionally contains a faded original photograph by Otto Wegener depicting Paul Verlaine standing with a cane and wearing a top hat; exceptional signed autograph inscription by Paul Verlaine in the lower right margin of the print: "A Léon Vanier son édité et ami. P. Verlaine." (To Léon Vanier, his published [author] and friend. P. Verlaine)

Verlaine was probably, along with Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and Laforgue, the most famous “published” author of Léon Vanier, to quote the words he wrote in the margin of this portrait. In return, Vanier, the “dearest debtor... I was going to say benefactor!!” (letter by Verlaine, 7 July 1892) financially supported the poet until the end of his life, even though their relationship was sometimes difficult, particularly after the publication of Parallèlement. Verlaine dedicated four sonnets to his publisher published in the second edition of Dédicaces (1894).

He also wrote Vanier's biography in the famous series Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui (No. 320, February 1888), also edited by Vanier: “Long life and good luck to the ‘good man’ who dares to call himself: Publisher of the Decadents!” he wrote, not without a touch of irony, at the end of the portrait. Eternally penniless, Verlaine was the only contributor to be paid by Vanier for his biographies of authors and artists.

Mounted on a flyleaf at the front of the volume, the famous portrait of the poet by Otto Wegener was inscribed by Verlaine to Vanier. In this full-length photograph, taken for his application to the Académie Française in 1893, Verlaine wears the extravagant Charvet scarf embroidered with Japanese motifs, gifted by the writer and dandy Robert de Montesquiou.

The book of poems itself was the result of a final posthumous collaboration between Vanier and Verlaine: Invectives, a vengeful work that had been in the making since the early 1890s, was published shortly after the poet's death thanks to Vanier. In possession of the manuscript, he published it even though he was the subject of one of the "invectives" in the collection, in the “Ballade en faveur de Léon Vanier & Cie.”: Du Kohinnor et de Lahore / Princes trop grands, mais peu donneurs,

/ C’est vers vous que je m’édulcore, / Mes chers, mes tendres éditeurs" (Of Kohinnor and Lahore / Princes too great, but not very generous, / It is to you that I soften, / My dear, my tender publishers).

A superb copy with a prestigious provenance, bringing together poems that “demonstrate a technical brilliance and poetic mastery that tend to be overshadowed by the ranting and slander that fill every page. Verlaine developed this poetics of hatred by adapting two languages, that of anger and that of verse.” (Olivier Bivort).

Provenance: one of Léon Vanier's copies, with the Vanier bindery label on the inside cover.