Stéphane MALLARME.

Lot 56
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Estimation :
3000 - 4000 EUR
Result without fees
Result : 2 500EUR
Stéphane MALLARME.
Afternoon of a faun. Eglogue. Paris, Alphonse Derenne, 1876. Booklet in-4, mounted on tabs: burgundy morocco, spine ribbed and decorated with cold filets, green morocco title-piece, triple cold filets framing the covers with gilt arms in the centre, gold filleted edges, inner lace, cover preserved (20th century binding). Original edition of 195 copies: one of 175 on Hollande Van Gelder laid paper (no. 104). A first state copy with the price tag as described by Antoine Coron (Mallarmé et ses éditeurs: les deux éditions du Corbeau et les deux états de L'Après-midi d'un faune in Bulletin du Bibliophile, 2018, pp. 321-343). Famous illustration by Édouard Manet. It includes a frontispiece depicting the Faun, printed on Chine volant and enhanced with rose, a header, a cul-de-lampe and an ex-libris printed on Chine, also enhanced with wash. Édouard Manet himself spread the shade of pink wash on each of the prints. He wrote in a letter to Stéphane Mallarmé in 1875: "It is absolutely necessary to stop the colouring costs, it would be dreadful. I'll do it myself. I need a day." Undertaken as early as 1865, rejected in 1875 by the contemporary Parnasse, this capital poem by Mallarmé was published the following year by Alphonse Derenne. "Bag of sweets, but of dreams", the author was to write about this unusual booklet so subtly ordered: one of the masterpieces of symbolism which Huysmans was to make one of the favourite readings of the hero of À Rebours: "Des Esseintes felt captious delights in palpating this tiny booklet, whose felt cover of Japon, as white as curdled milk, was closed by two silk cords, one pink of China and the other black." Copy with unidentified arms (a crowned lion hoist). The binding was executed in the 20th century by a skilled craftsman in the taste of 1880 bindings. (Bibliothèque nationale, En français dans le texte, 1990, n° 302.)
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