Lot n° 27
Estimation :
3000 - 4000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 6 192EUR
Paul VERLAINE.
La Bonne Chanson. Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, 1870.
Small in-12: emerald blue morocco, spine ribbed with gilt fillets and pink mosaic calf scrolls, four gilt fillets and a pink calf scroll framing the boards, pink calf linings framed with gilt fillets and a blue morocco scroll, gilt edges, cover and spine preserved, folder, slipcase (Alix)
First edition.
Published at the author's expense, it was printed in an edition of 590 copies; one of 550 on vellum.
Poetic collection published in 1870 by Lemerre during the hostilities. La Bonne Chanson, this "flower in a shell" according to Victor Hugo, was not put on sale until 1872. The poems are inspired by his engagement to Mathilde Mauté. It is "in the rather voluminous baggage of my verses, what I would prefer as sincere par excellence and so kindly, so gently, so purely thought out, so simply written."
Autograph address signed on the false title: to M. Emile Zola hommage de l'auteur P. Verlaine.
Describing the copy of Sagesse given by Verlaine to Zola in 1880, Christian Galantaris observes that "the two writers mutually accused each other of 'acting like children.' In Voyage en France par un Français (1880), Verlaine considered that La Conquête de Plassans was "full of grotesqueries" and that "M. Zola has ideas about mental and physiological identity and a 'scientific' system for speaking his language when he acts like a child...". Reporting on Verlaine's funeral in Le Figaro (18 January 1896), Zola said: "Verlaine was the most admirable poet of this fin de siècle. [...] In short, if he refused everything, as he said, it is because nothing was offered to him because he was only a great child." (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, #55).
Very nice lined and mosaic binding by Mme Alix.
"The most admirable poet of this fin de siècle" (Émile Zola)
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