GIDE André (1869-1951). - Lot 99

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Lot n° 99
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GIDE André (1869-1951). - Lot 99
GIDE André (1869-1951). AUTOGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPT, Les Poésies d'André Walter, [1891]; 33 pages small in-4 (22 x 16.5 cm) mounted on tabs on wove paper leaves; bound in full almond green jansenist morocco, spine with 5 nerves (color of spine a bit faded), ivory morocco lining and endpapers, gilt edges, case (G. Mercier, 1934). Complete manuscript prepared for the printing of Poésies d'André Walter, the only poetic collection of Gide. The whole was published anonymously in April 1892 under the title Les Poésies d'André Walter. Posthumous work, at the Librairie de l'Art indépendant. The manuscript, in black ink on laid paper, without erasures, was used for the printing; it contains numerous typographical indications in pencil, testifying to the care taken by Gide and his editor to the material form of the work. Some poems were published in the review La Conque in January 1892, and two in La Syrinx in April 1892. The manuscript, like the edition, includes twenty poems. It carries in subtitle: L'Itinéraire Symbolique. Only a few poems have a title. I "There was no spring this year, my dear"...; II "A new lamp replaces the empty one"...; III "One evening we raised the head"...; IV Eclipse: "One night we went out of our low room"...; V "It must have happened something"...; VI "I know that a soul implies a gesture".... ; VII Nocturne : " I wandered on the adventurous edges " .... ; VIII " We are two poor small souls "... ; IX " Formerly we had pretty smiles "... ; X " One morning however a ray of oblique sun "... ; XI " One morning however she came "... XII The Avenue: "A rhythmic high and uncovered path"...; XIII "Under the calm burning of the lips"...; XIV Solstice: "A horn song resounded in the sonorous air"...; XV The Park: "When we saw that the small door was closed"...; XVI Mountains: "Mountains! Mountains that we climbed"...; XVII Polders: "A gray sky; green mud"...; XVIII Double moor: "This moor of pink heather"...; XIX Promontory: "We wandered until the evening towards the sea"...; XX "The monotonous plain still, marshy and without paths"... The Poetry of André Walter is the third work published by Gide, after the Cahiers d'André Walter; it was written at the same time as the Traité du Narcisse in the summer of 1891 at La Roque. This was the time when he began to frequent Mallarmé, whose literary salon he had become familiar with every Tuesday on the rue de Rome. Poésies d'André Walter is the only collection of poems by Gide and already, in the Cahiers, the false diary sometimes gave way to verses. "These poems echo the cruel disappointment that Gide felt after his cousin refused his marriage proposal in January 1891. The tone differs notably from that of the Cahiers du pseudo-André Walter: it becomes ironic and disillusioned in the manner of the poems of Jules Laforgue that Gide had just discovered" (F. Callu). The collection was greeted at its release by Francis Viélé-Griffin: "Almost everything is deliciously thought and felt in this booklet", and by Camille Mauclair: "A whole outside of aesthetics", who added: "The best is to read these ingenuous things, these flowers of a binding and subtle soul of sick metaphysician". These poems constitute a series of landscapes and "emotions caused by him". It is the "first Gide" who expresses himself here, symbolist poet strongly marked by Stéphane Mallarmé, seeking, as he says it himself to "bend the language". For all that, Gide never disowned this work. If he did not reread the Notebooks, he admitted: "On the other hand, I reread with pleasure some of these Poems [...]. I wrote almost all of them in less than eight days, shortly after the publication of the Cahiers, which explains their title, and this attribution to an imaginary André Walter, even though he had already died in me. Even the André Walter of the Cahiers does not seem to me to have been capable of writing them; I had already passed him by. Provenance: Du Bourg de Bozas-Chaix d'Est Ange library (ex-libris, sale June 27-28, 1990, n° 309).
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