![null TROYAT Henri (1911-2007) [AF 1959, 28th f].
MANUSCRIT autograph signed "Henri...](https://cdn.drouot.com/d/image/lot?size=phare&path=58/132229/feae359dc4a08eb51e1a8b4eab4f3767)
Lot n° 204
Estimation :
800 - 1000
EUR
TROYAT Henri (1911-2007) [AF 1959, 28th f].
MANUSCRIT... - Lot 204 - Drouot Estimations
TROYAT Henri (1911-2007) [AF 1959, 28th f].
MANUSCRIT autograph signed "Henri Troyat," Discours de réception à l'Académie Française, 1960; 2-127 small leaves in-fol. mounted on tabs and bound in a small in-fol. square half-burgundy chagrin volume with corners.
Working manuscript of his acceptance speech to the Académie Française in the chair of Claude Farrère.
Lev Aslanovitch Tarassov, known as Henri Troyat, was elected on May 21, 1959 to the Academy in the chair of Claude Farrère (deceased on June 21, 1957); born in Moscow, he was the first writer of foreign origin admitted in this institution. The reception took place on February 25, 1960; Henri Troyat was received by Marshal Juin.
Troyat expresses his emotion when thinking about his native Russia, "the distance that separates my birthplace from the place where I am now", the domes of the Kremlin quite different from this one, the little boy he was and who, "fleeing with his parents his country torn by the war, landed in Paris at the beginning of 1920", thinking that he would only stay there a few months. He evokes the force that French culture and art soon had on the young immigrant that he was: "Soon France seized him completely". Then he retraces, with his talent as a biographer, the life and work of his predecessor Claude FARRÈRE (1876-1957), to conclude: "Like the old Arab storytellers he had met, Claude Farrère wanted, until his last breath, to imagine fables and spread them around him for our amusement. At a time when too many writers would believe they would fall if they did not bring a political, mystical, aesthetic or social message to the world, he had the naive courage to be a novelist. If some of his heroes lack weight, if a summary psychology animates them, if improbable adventures push them from one chapter to the other, the kind of warm-hearted enthusiasm that the author puts into writing his books wins him more than once the sympathy of the reader. Let those who judge severely the so-called escapist literature question their memory well: there is no one, or almost no one, who, at some point in his or her life, has not been charmed by a novel, by a tale by Claude Farrère, no one who, at the age of hesitant vocations, is not indebted to him for a desire to travel, for a Japanese, Turkish or Indochinese dream, for an impulse of heroism or love, no one whose interior universe does not bear his mark, on the floor of the beautiful illusions of adolescence...
The manuscript, of first draft, in blue ink on the recto of the pages of bifeuillets, comprises numerous erasures, whole passages crossed out (often with the red pencil), references and additions on the verso of the page opposite, and variants with the published text (Plon, 1960).
This manuscript was offered to the great bibliophile Jean DAVRAY (1914-1985), very close friend of Troyat, as testifies this beautiful dedication (on the folio following the title page) : " For Jean Davray. My dear Jean, you were so close to me while I was writing this speech! We talked about it so much together! Receive the manuscript as a token of my fraternal friendship! Henri on March 19, 1960.
Jean Davray had bound at the top a beautiful photo of young Troyat, the subscription form for his academician sword and 4 invitation cards.
We join 3 L.A.S., 1954-1959, to André MAUROIS; and a L.A.S. to André Lasseray, 1959 (with drafts of Lasseray).
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