"Nous sommes tous bien emprisonnés en nous-mêmes."

Autograph letter signed by Jean Wahl addressed to Marc Barbezat, two pages written in blue ink on one leaf. Envelope included. Transverse fold inherent to mailing.
Jean Wahl was Marc Barbezat's examiner for the philosophy baccalaureate examination, and it was then that the two men became friends. In 1940, shortly after writing this letter, Barbezat would found the review L'Arbalète to which the philosopher would contribute by entrusting his very first poems to his young protégé. This review would later become a publishing house that would notably publish the first and scandalous texts of Jean Genet.
Beautiful and very poetic letter: "Merci de tout coeur de cette lettre où le coeur se meurt - et la mer - et la solitude, l'étrangeté ; l'au-delà de ce paysage que vous me décrivez." ["Thank you with all my heart for this letter where the heart dies - and the sea - and solitude, strangeness; the beyond of this landscape that you describe to me."] Wahl laments: "C'est dommage que lorsque je suis en face de vous vous, notre intimité que je sens dans vos lettres et dans les miennes s'évanouisse. [...] Nous sommes tous bien emprisonnés en nous-mêmes." ["It's a shame that when I am face to face with you, our intimacy that I feel in your letters and in mine vanishes. [...] We are all quite imprisoned within ourselves."]