VALÉRY, Paul.

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Lot n° 1619
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VALÉRY, Paul.
La Soirée avec monsieur Teste. [Paris, Le Centaure, 1896] Small in-4 [235 x 185] of (1) f., pp. [33]-44 : black jansenist morocco, spine ribbed, gilt edges on witnesses, case (Alix). Pre-original edition, taken from volume II of the review Le Centaure. "La Soirée avec monsieur Teste, one of the texts most closely linked to the name of Valéry (Teste being wrongly identified with him), is also one of the most famous prose works of the late 19th century" (Judith Robinson-Valéry). Signed autograph letter : to Paul Léautaud // with pleasure // Val At the time of the letter, the two authors were still very close. They knew each other in the early 1890s at the Mercure de France. Léautaud mentions their relationship several times in his Journal. "It was Mallarmé, I believe, who decided on my relationship with Valéry. Until then I had seen him at the Tuesdays of the Mercure without talking to him much. One Tuesday when I was going to the Mercure, I entered the tobacco shop on the rue de Seine, between the rue Saint-Sulpice and the rue Lobineau. Valéry was coming out. He waited for me and we walked together. I don't remember what led him to mention Baudelaire's name. I answered him that there was a poet whom I put well above: Mallarmé. Since I don't know what sympathy binds me to him, we have often talked about him together. He was even to take me with him one evening this winter to the rue de Rome" (September 10, 1898). Nearly thirty years later, on June 23, 1927, he notes: "I have made many reflections on Valéry, all these last times. A friend of youth, to whom such a great success happens, that makes one think. I do not like Valéry's verses. I find them the opposite of what I consider to be poetry, I put in fact that most of the people who admire them do not understand anything about them and it often happened to me to call the fame that was made for him buffoonery and to joke his admirers when I met some of them, like this poor Frédéric Lefèvre, to whom I said one day: "How is your Valéry disease?", like Cassou, like Souday. There are even things in Valéry's verses that make me laugh out loud - so much is the silliness without limit." The copy belonged to André Schück (I, 1986, no. 275). At that time, it was kept in a Maylander binding and was accompanied by a note in which Valéry apologized to Léautaud for the condition of the volume, all the pages of which are stained by humidity. Schück having opposed any washing, the volume remained as it was: it was rebound by Mme Alix, but the autograph it contained was not preserved. In French in the text, BN, 1990, nº 323: notice by Judith Robinson-Valéry.
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