Poème autographe de jeunesse daté et signé d'Abel Gance intitulé "La pluie" et dédié à Baudelaire

Dated and signed autograph poem by Abel Gance, then aged 18. 18 lines written in violet ink on a torn sheet of a school notebook. The poem was written in Montluçon and dated 1907. Usual folds, a black ink trace in the lower left-hand corner of the leaf.

A mournful and beautiful poem dedicated to Charles Baudelaire entitled "La pluie" (The Rain), probably published in Abel Gance's only and very rare collection of poems "Un doigt sur le clavier, 1909 (A Finger on the Keyboard) when he set out to begin a theater career in Brussels.

"Desolate vertigo of dreary rainwater
Perversely spurting on the pavement,
Weeping lethargy awakening salutes,
Lugubrious patter darker than soot...
[...]
And space veiled in a mournful indecision
Enveloping mind in its network of mist
Makes the gaping heart exhume
A flood of old sorrows it thought obscured."

(Vertige désolé de la morne eau de pluie
Au cinglement pervers giclant sur le pavé,
Pleureuse léthargie éveillant des avé,
Lugubre égrènement plus sombre que la suie...
[...]
Et l'espace voilé d'un funèbre indécis
Enlizant le cerveau de son réseau de brume
Fait que le coeur béant ébarbé exhume
Un flot de vieux chagrin qu'il croyait obscurcis.)

Gance was deeply influenced by John Keats, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. Displeased with his creations, he put his poetic endeavors to a halt and returned from Brussels to Paris in despair.