LOUŸS Pierre (1870-1925). - Lot 114

Lot 114
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LOUŸS Pierre (1870-1925). - Lot 114
LOUŸS Pierre (1870-1925). 23 L.A.S. "Pierre Louÿs" or "P. L.", 1899-1902, to Augustine BULTEAU; about 60 pages of various sizes, mostly in-8, in violet ink (traces of tabs, small flaws to some letters). Very interesting correspondence to a friend, approaching, with lightness and humor, the most varied subjects. [Augustine BULTEAU (1850-1922), nicknamed "Toche", was a prominent figure in the worldly and literary circles. Very rich, she bought, after her divorce in 1896, together with her friend, the Countess de la Baume-Pluvinel, the famous Palazzo Dario in Venice. She had a literary salon in Paris, on Avenue de Wagram, where Barrès, Henri de Régnier, Anna de Noailles, Maurras, as well as close friends of Pierre Louÿs, such as Paul-Jean Toulet and Jean de Tinan, would meet. She wrote articles in Le Gaulois and then in Le Figaro signed "Fœmina". Louÿs was in contact with her for four years, from 1898 to 1902, and Mrs. Bulteau played the role of confidante and sometimes cumbersome adviser to him. She wanted to marry him to Germaine Dethomas, sister of his friend Maxime Dethomas. But he chose Louise de Heredia]. It is a question of theater and Edmond Rostand's L'Aiglon, of literary criticism, of King Pausole, of bibliophily and bookbinding, of the painter Zuloaga, of Louÿs's daily schedule, of worldly and Parisian news. Pierre Louÿs adopted a friendly and bantering tone with Madame Bulteau. We can only give here a few extracts from these witty letters. 19 March 1900. After the premiere of L'Aiglon by Edmond ROSTAND. "I don't like it that when a gentleman has written one hundred and twenty-five pages he forces me to listen to them from the first word to the twelve thousandth. When a page of a novel makes me yawn, I skip forty or simply abandon the book; in the theater one feels obliged to take everything. [...] In short, I have never heard a single play by our illustrious playwright. I only know from having read it that he constructs an act even better than Sardou and that he writes verses even worse than those of Émile Augier. Double miracle. But this Rostand has movement and from the bottom of my heart I affirm that this word means genius. In any case there is no rarer quality. This does not mean that I like his plays. [1901]. Louÿs advises Mme Bulteau an original approach for her album amicorum, and takes the liberty of flaying certain literary glories of the moment: "On these pages, and so that the text matches the morocco or the gilded vellum which would dress it, it seems to me that in your place I would ask my friends to make me a little anthology of their predilections. No lady has ever done that. Don't you think that a passage chosen by Hervieu or Régnier from Crébillon or Laclos would be something rarer than a paragraph from their future books? And that it is interesting to know which artist of the past would choose Forain if he were asked to copy a drawing that was not his? Of course everything should be before 1780. July 9, 1901, on The Adventures of King Pausole: "Books are like wines; they pass with age. With age, those that were pale have become dull; those that were too lively have taken on body and "are made" as wine lovers say. So, leave this novel in your library - I was going to say in your cellar - and tell yourself that it is "too young", that it is from the vintage of 1901. Towards 1940, if you still want to remember me, you will perhaps say to the young girls, who will not understand you at all: "when I think that formerly we found that... light!"July 10, about the binding that Mrs. Bulteau wants to do on this book, Louÿs describes, like an expert in heraldry, the arms of Pausole: "He bears "tierce in pale; in the 1, of gold to the cat sitting Gules, crowned Vert, holding a cigarette of the same (which is of Pausole); in the 2, azure with three sheep passing argent accorned sable, accolated gules and clarined or (which is of Tryphême); in the 3, argent with a mace gules (which is of Paphos)", with the motto: I am Pausole. "Régnier would have wanted me to propose to you...asse: "azure with a Venus of carnation coming out of a sea of silver; on a chief of gold charged with a bunch of three cherries of gules bound of vert and accompanied by two turtles of sable". - But these are absolutely fanciful coats of arms, and even literary"... December 6, 1901. A letter talking about an article of La Vie parisienne, and a sonnet of Swinburne is annotated at the head : " Correspondance de P.L. Lettres à Mme B. tome XIV, lettre 802 ", and with the imitation of various quotations of autograph dealers, among which Charavay. December 29, 1901. Fancy timetable : " 1. waking up every day at four o'clock in the morning, I first offer my heart to God, by an act of faith and humility. 2. Immediately afterwards, observing a great fashion
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