Lot n° 120
Estimation :
5000 - 6000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 2 210EUR
RICTUS Jehan (1867-1933). - Lot 120
RICTUS Jehan (1867-1933).
76 L.A.S. "Gabriel Randon" and/or "Jehan Rictus", 1898-1904, to Léon BLOY; about 250 pages, mostly in-8, 6 envelopes (2 annotated by Bloy), addresses on the back of 17 cards (2 telegrams and a press clipping attached).
Remarkable correspondence of the author of the Soliloquies of the Poor to the Ungrateful Beggar. The personalities of Léon Bloy and Jehan Rictus seem at first sight to be quite distant from each other. Jehan Rictus (1867-1933), whose real name was Gabriel Randon, became known with his collection of poems Les Soliloques du Pauvre (1897), in which he made extensive use of slang. But the same experience of misery, a common detestation of the bourgeois and a shared pity for the fate of the humble brought them together. These two violent characters maintained a correspondence of great intensity, and high in color, until the rupture. In 1903, Bloy dedicated to Rictus a long article, "The last Catholic poet", taken up at the end of the Last Columns of the Church, considering him as a "Catholic poet without knowing it". The relationship began in May 1898, when Bloy sent Rictus his Mendiant ingrat, which the poet commented as follows (May 19): "I feel like a man who has accidentally been hit in the stomach by an omnibus and who congratulates himself for not having been totally smashed and then crushed"; and he says "the platonic admiration for the Writer and the Artist that you are". In his second and long (8 pages) letter (May 20), Rictus justifies his language: "The Parisian patois, rather than slang, is my prodigious source of images; most of its expressions, usually concise, contain an esoteric and eternal meaning that, it seems to me, no one has seen - and I am still stunned that no writer has made use of this poetic source that is so rich, so painful, so energetic too. [...] I had this dream of trying to free the unknown Energies that the Bourgeois Order emasculates and nips in the bud. Too bad if I fail. He confesses the difficulties of his existence, comparable to those of Bloy: "My childhood, delivered to a shrew, was abominable, my adolescence worse. I slept outside in Paris in winter for nearly six months. I did various jobs, because in spite of everything I was always nervous and singularly resistant. [...] To numb the pain of my green bowels I used to swallow laudanum in water from time to time". But he lived this misery "alone, voluntarily, never having dared to associate a Woman with such a destiny, I have only my skin to save"... Léon Bloy invited the poet to dinner the next day, specifying, however, that Catholic customs were respected in his home. Rictus' reply (May 22) is unambiguous: "I thank you for loyally setting out your conditions before visiting you and dining at your table. In my turn, no less loyally, I will answer you that I do not subscribe to them. I would be ashamed to cheat and it would be unworthy of me to pretend for the sake of sitting in your home. I hope that by acting as I do I am proving my respect for your belief and for you. [...] Believe me that I myself am far from being surrounded by lice despite what I have written, and that I usually wear white linen". And he signs " Count Gabriel Randon de Saint Amand, baron of Andruze (Jehan Rictus) ". After this letter, the two men remain two years without writing to each other, Bloy having left for Denmark. But when Bloy sent Rictus Le Fils de Louis XVI, their relationship resumed (August 3, 1900). He shares Zola's detestation of Bloy's Je m'accuse (October 2, 1900): "I have hated with you for a long time the disgusting, badly scratched Piedmontese who has indeed killed, or more or less, the French language and the picturesque flavor of its genius". The frankness that characterizes Bloy as well as Rictus, gives rise to lively exchanges, such as this 18-page letter (October 4, 1900) in which Rictus, in response to Bloy's criticisms, defends his aesthetic and the use of slang, quoting Rabelais, Balzac and Tolstoy: "What does it matter if a word or an expression is not parliamentary, classical, noble or of good company, if it expresses a suffering that is so true, so sincere that it twists your guts. But that is what I am looking for. To express, to move. Do you believe that the literary language adopted is not also a jargon? And then where does the limit of good and bad French end? Who set it? Is the language fixed? I believe, for example, that the French of Brantôme or Montaigne is more picturesque, frank and tasty than the French of Racine. [...] I do not seek anything else than to provoke horror and terror. So here my goal is reached and it is important that the Bourgeois should suspect the pains they cause, the crimes that their egoism suffocates, the terrible fate they make to the Unknowns that
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