Lot n° 84
Estimation :
2500 - 3000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 1 950EUR
CLAUDEL Paul (1868-1955). - Lot 84
CLAUDEL Paul (1868-1955).
Correspondence of 29 L.A.S. "P. Claudel" or "P.C." (plus 2 business cards), 1922-1929, to Jacques BENOIST-MÉCHIN; 62 pages various sizes, mostly in-8 with headers, envelopes.
Interesting literary and musical correspondence from the poet-diplomat to the young musician and journalist. Jacques BENOIST-MÉCHIN (1901-1983), the future Secretary of State of the Vichy government and historian, was then devoted to music, then to journalism; he was close to Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach. Paul Claudel was ambassador to Japan, then to the United States. We can only give here a glimpse of this beautiful correspondence, with a few quotes. Tokyo 1922. -June 17. He authorizes him to set La Ville to music: "You are tackling a task that is not very easy, especially with regard to the economic discussions in the second act. But now that music has annexed the vast domains of noise and "induced" ideas (in the sense of electric currents), there are new things it can attempt. I am sure that you will succeed in making something good out of the 3rd Act, written under the fresh influence of a conversion (mixed with the admiration of the English poet W. Blake) and of which I did write 5 or 6 different versions between 1886 and 1891. I would have liked to make of it a great liturgical and natural Easter poem, and I did not succeed perfectly. .... - December 15.... "I left France in a great feeling of bitterness and sadness [...] Then here in the solitude and the silence I made my examination of conscience [...] My life will be copied until the end on that of Rimbaud of which it was a kind of enlargement. [...] I applaud with all my strength your idea to make religious music. There is an immense field there"... Tokyo 1923. - April 29th. Long letter on oriental music: "there are no notes but simply a continuous and flexible line"... - July 17, to Adrienne MONNIER: "I assure you that I am a pure and simple Christian. The cross may hurt your forehead, dear Adrienne, but it would comfort your heart and it is in it alone that victory lies". This is followed by questions to ask LARBAUD, in view of the "Spanish drama" he is writing... - November 13. He rejoices at the good news of his friend's conversion, "the greatest and rarest of miracles". Recommendations: "The second idea that must be discarded and that bothers so many artists is that Christianity is a cause of impoverishment for the spirit. [The Truth delivers, it makes us live. It breaks our shell"... Tokyo 1924. - February 10th. "To live is to struggle and to suffer, and true life is that which does not leave indifferent the smallest action, the most tenuous nervous branch of your intimate substance"... - September 12. "I am currently writing the last scenes of Le Soulier de Satin, which is a kind of examination and mockery of myself. After that I will have another four years or so of various works, and at that time, if I have been able to ensure the lives of all my people, I will radically change mine"... Tokyo 1926. - March 5th. He rejoiced at the engagement of his friend. "I returned to Japan without much joy. The interest of this country is for me more or less exhausted". He is preparing a book on Japan, The Black Bird in the Rising Sun, and has "composed a new finale for Proteus"... - May 29. Pentecost is the date when one should feast and rejoice in all the goods of the earth [...] Snyders, Rubens, Jordaens, Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese answered this invitation of the Holy Spirit". Spirit"... - June 16. He thanks him for his book on Proust and music. "As for PROUST himself, his monstrous vices put between him and me a thickness that is at once transparent, infrangible and dirty, like the glass roof of the Orsay station that you describe so well"... - July 1st. "I agree with the greatest pleasure to serve as your witness for your wedding"... - October 6. Project of a performance of The Humiliated Father: "I understood that there should be music, but not the music of musicians, the music of a dramatist, forming around the text a vibratory halo, which prolongs the text and does not suffocate it"... (double dactyl. attached of the answer of Benoist-Méchin)... October 29. Hesitations about the publication of Le Soulier de satin. "For the moment I am writing studies on Japanese art in the form of a conversation, which will be the form of all my new works"... Tokyo January 7, 1927. "I am currently writing a long study on Richard Wagner which amuses me a lot, full of admiration and antics. I am daubing in passing on this solemn pawn of Goethe whom I cannot stand and who, with Luther and Kant, was the bad genius of Germany"... Paris May 6, 1927. "Yesterday I had a magnificent bath of music! Your choirs have a fullness, a rhythm and an admirable sonority "... Washington October 23, 1929. "I had stormy explanations with Gallimard this year and it is my friends
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