HUYSMANS Joris-Karl (1848-1907).

Lot 114
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Estimation :
2000 - 2500 EUR
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Result : 1 950EUR
HUYSMANS Joris-Karl (1848-1907).
MANUSCRIT autograph signed "J.K. Huysmans", Chez le coiffeur, [1881]; 3 pages in-fol.(31 x 21 cm) sewn (slight cracks at the fold). Humorous evocation of a session at the hairdresser. This text appeared for the first time in the magazine La Vie Moderne, on February 19, 1881; it was reprinted in Le Journal pour Tous, with illustrations by Eugène Courboin, and was collected in De Tout (Stock, 1902). The manuscript, in black ink, includes about fifteen corrections or modifications and five additions; it was used for the printing. An addition at the end of the text of 4 lines covers a part of the original text on a glued paper strip. The session is described with black humor as a torture: "Then the odious torture begins. The body wrapped in a bathrobe, a towel packed in a bulge between the flesh of the neck and the collar of the shirt, feeling at the temples the small sweat of suffocation, you receive the push of a hand that lays your skull on the right, and the cold of the scissors begins to make you shiver in the dermis [...] The operation comes to an end, however. You get up, staggering, pale, as if coming out of a long illness, guided by the executioner who throws your head into a basin, grabs you at the neck, sprays it with a lot of cold water, then compresses it strongly with a towel and takes it back to the chair where, like scalded meat, it lies, without movement, very white"...
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