Lot n° 74
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: 2 500EUR
Jules BARBEY d’AUREVILLY et Léon BLOY - Lot 74
Jules BARBEY d’AUREVILLY et Léon BLOY
Les Quatorze stations du Salon, followed by a Récit douloureux [by Barbey d'Aurevilly].
Manuscript of 20 double-sided calligraphed leaves (the first and the last two blank), signed by Léon Bloy, small in-4 (191 x 145 mm), each page framed with a red fillet, contemporary binding in bradel vellum bearing on the first cover, calligraphed in red ink, the mention J. Barbey d'Aurevilly. Les OEuvres et les Hommes, red fillet on the boards and on the spine, red edges, folder, case (binding not signed but by Gayler-Hirou).
Very beautiful autograph manuscript by Léon Bloy, superbly calligraphed by him to be offered to the wife of the sculptor and art critic Zacharie
Astruc (1835 - 1907).
The text is a copy of a glowing article by Barbey d'Aurevilly on Astruc's work, Les Quatorze stations du Salon (Paris, Poulet-Malassis, 1859), a critical account of the 1859 Salon. A painful account deals with Courbet and the role of the critic. Published in Le Pays on November 1, 1859, Barbey's article will be reprinted in Les OEuvres et les hommes.
The manuscript opens with a dedication leaf signed by Léon Bloy: "Offered to
Madame Astruc, by the friend of the Frédégondien, Léon Bloy". Follows the title, beautifully calligraphed with a large illuminated initial, preceding fifteen leaves of text.
In fine, autograph signature Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly in red ink. The latter has also made four autograph corrections in red in the text.
In 1875, the sculptor Zacharie Astruc - who will become Gacougnol in La Femme pauvre - had made a bronze bust of the Connétable, now in the Louvre.
This effigy of his master of thought excited Bloy to the point of inspiring him to write a prose poem, La Méduse-Astruc (the eyes of the model evoking for him the marine animal), a panegyric of Barbey, which was his first literary attempt. He sent the manuscript to the author of Les Diaboliques, who annotated it, and the whole, superbly calligraphed by Bloy, was reproduced by a polygraphic process in a dozen copies sent in September 1875 to as many dedicatees, among whom was already Mrs Astruc. It is thus two months later, that thus entered in relations with the Astruc couple, Bloy addressed to Madam the present volume, new and double homage of most refined.
Attached to the manuscript is an autograph letter signed by Léon Bloy to Madame Astruc, three pages in-12 square on blue paper, with stamped envelope, dated Tuesday, Day of the Dead 1875 (1): he had promised to bring Barbey to her on Sunday, but he "did not come"... Rather than "offering him vain and silly excuses", he prefers to "announce this" to him:
My beloved Master, My adored Sagittarius, The educator of my intelligence, The converter of my soul, The illuminator and the perpetual incendiary of my imagination, The miraculous pacifier of the worries of my mind, The mercilessly beneficent Mocker of my ridiculousnesses which are without number, Finally the one for whom I would give without hesitation my sad life...
Arrive tomorrow Wednesday.
(1) Curious coincidence (?), Barbey was born on November 2nd, "day of the dead", a circumstance that marked the writer and on which he will pour out his heart on several occasions ("I was really born on the day of the dead, at two o'clock in the morning, by a devilish weather. I came as Romulus went, in a storm" (Letter to Trébutien, October 1, 1851), even introducing it in his work (La bague d'Annibal).
Although thus placed under the sign of Scorpio, Barbey, who, as we know, cared little for accuracy, named himself Sagittarius, "this arrow-throwing centaur having more panache, no doubt, for the warrior of letters that was the critic of OEuvres et les Hommes, without counting that it also designated the wounded man, victim of the trait of the others, in the everyday life as in love" (M. Lécureur. Lécureur. Barbey d'Aurevilly.
Le Sagittaire, 2008) :
My name is Sagittarius !
I was born under this sign and I put it everywhere!
And in this inert, boring and vulgar world, I like to throw my arrow at everything (Disjecta Membra)
Remarkable set, testifying to the quasi-subsidiary relationship between the future ungrateful Beggar and the already chubby Constable of letters.
Although not signed, the binding was certainly executed by Gayler-Hirou, Barbey's favorite bookbinder. It reminds us of the very similar bindings he made on books offered by Alphonse Daudet to his wife Julia.
Jules BARBEY d'AUREVILLY and Léon BLOY In 1867, Léon Bloy, unemployed, close to poverty and already thinking of writing, presented himself to Barbey asking for permission to "contemplate him". The two men were neighbors, both living on rue Rousselet in Paris. The first was only twenty-one years old, the second fifty-eight.
"The Norman writer will make himself at once the leader of the
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