BAUDELAIRE Charles (1821-1867)

Lot 19
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Estimation :
7000 - 8000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 15 600EUR
BAUDELAIRE Charles (1821-1867)
Signed autograph letter addressed to Auguste POULET-MALASSIS S.l., Thursday, November 11, 1858. 3 pages in-8 in ink on paper. Exceptional letter addressed to Auguste Poulet-Malassis, publisher of Les Fleurs du Mal. "[...] My dear friend, I received your thanks, and they astonished me. I absolutely wanted to please you by sending you an unpublished piece, which I simply wanted to add to the pieces I am accumulating for some newspaper, and I did not believe that this miserable sonnet could add anything to all the humiliations that the Flowers of Evil have made you suffer. I wanted to be pleasant to you, nothing more, and I cannot understand why I deserved so many insults, so much so that you compare me to the Secret Beranger, as Veuillot did. It is possible, after all, that the subtle turn of your mind made you think Beelzebub was the Con and the Charming Dagger was the Pine. When I made that discovery, I laughed. All in all, it's all very light. The only serious thing, which is contained in it, is this mysterious faculty which pushes you to insult your friends, with all the more audacity as they are more intimate and older. So when I see you making a new acquaintance, I guess in myself how many years from now it will be worthy of being insulted by you. Michel Lévy also has a singular propensity of this kind; but at least he has the merit of being stupid. There is also De Broise saying in Banville: The prefect of Alençon asked us why we publish such nonsense as the Odes. Another than you, a reasonable mind, would have written: I am grateful for your gift, but your talent is compromising for a provincial newspaper. Only, if you had written that, you would not have shone sufficiently in your own eyes. It was necessary to season this letter with a mass of impertinence for an old friend of yours who cannot have quarrels with you. Believe me, if I mock you a little, it's for your own good. One of these days something bad will happen to you, not by me, of
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