Lot n° 139
Estimation :
7000 - 8000
EUR
HUYSMANS Joris-Karl (1848-1907). - Lot 139
HUYSMANS Joris-Karl (1848-1907).
42 L.A.S. "JKHuÿsmans," Paris and Ligugé 1889-1903, [to Henri GIRARD]; about 130 pages in-8, in-12 and in-16 (name and address of the addressee carefully erased on the backs of the letter-cards, repairs to one letter), each letter mounted on tabs on a sheet of strong vellum paper, some under a cut-out window, title-page calligraphied in red and black, the whole bound in a large volume in-8 red jansenist morocco, spine ribbed, gilt fillet on the edges, inner border of the same morocco decorated with a gilt fillet and a burgundy morocco scroll, linings and endpapers of wine-red silk, gilt edges (Devauchelle).
Interesting correspondence to a close friend.
Henri GIRARD, a poor actor, who played small roles in small theaters, was taken in affection by Huysmans in 1886 and, between his tours, became a regular at the Sunday evening dinners of the rue de Sèvres. He visited Huysmans at Ligugé, and eventually gave up the theater to buy a bookstore on rue Saint-Sulpice. During his theatrical tours, Huysmans advised him in his visits: to Troyes, where there are "curious churches", to Valenciennes and Besançon where he will see "some paintings of German primitives in the museums", to Berlin, whose admirable museum with Botticelli and Cranach he praises, or to Greece: "Everyone has defied Greece and its rastas who possess you. I am not at all surprised by what you tell me about the southern disgust of these places. It is joined there of insipid classical memories, and the foul ghost, in the modern, of the Moréas "...
The correspondence takes place between 1889 and 1903; spaced out and written from Paris at first, it then expands after Huysmans moved to Ligugé in 1899. In it, Huysmans tackles, in a very familiar tone and without any restraint, the most diverse subjects, evoking his entourage, his stays at the Trappist monastery, his literary works, his life at Ligugé, the political events in the tumult of the Dreyfus Affair, and the struggle of the Catholics against the republican government and its "scurrilous" laws on the separation of the Church and the State, on associations, etc. He often quotes Girard's two companions, Georges LANDRY, a faithful follower of Barbey d'Aurevilly and Huysmans, and Gustave BOUCHER, a bookseller on the quays, who followed Huysmans in his conversion to Ligugé. He also evokes Lucien DESCAVES, François COPPÉE, Gustave GUICHES, Léon BLOY, Charles DULAC, for whom he organized a posthumous exhibition in 1899; one can also follow his quarrels with his publisher Pierre-Victor STOCK. He also evokes some women: Anna MEUNIER, his mistress, whose condition never ceased to worry him and who died insane; Julie THIBAULT the mystic, who kept his household in Paris but whom he refused to bring to Ligugé; and "the Sol" (Countess of GALOEZ), who persecuted him and "wrote letters that were more and more inflamed. Also very present are the ecclesiastics who accompanied him in his documentary and then spiritual research: the Abbé BOULLAN, an occultist priest; the Abbé MUGNIER, who steered him towards the Trappist monastery; the Abbé FERRET, his confessor; Dom BESSE, father abbot of Ligugé; the Abbé BROUSSOLLE, an art historian; Louis le cardonnel, a religious poet whom he rubbed shoulders with at Ligugé.
Huysmans encouraged Girard, on tour in Lyon (1892), to visit "the friend Boullan", whose suspicious death would later cause him much trouble: "If the Boulan affair is arranged in the press, it is not arranged at all in private life" (19 January 1893). It was then that he began his journey towards the oblate. July 10, 1893: after 8 days spent "with the good Trappists" where he was "treated like a friend and the rule, so hard, was loosened as much as possible", he dreamed of "being able to live my life as an Oblate at the Trappist monastery. I would certainly be happy there and I would have an extraordinary good at least, peace of mind. But all that is just dreams; I will have to go back to the office and begin again the fetid existence of every day"... The following year, in the autumn, he made a new and harder stay at the Trappe ("Getting up at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night is a torture, but the good people! "); he waits for the proofs of his book in Stock; he gives news of Anna Meunier "almost spoiled", and says his joy to have found "at the bookseller Foulard the 1st edition of the Old Mistress, 3 complete volumes arriving from a reading room of Charleville, the whole for 6 francs... That gives at least in a life without joy some minutes of pleasure"... January 30, 1895: he can no longer endure at the Ministry his "impulsive, sick, purely insane Director, revoking at random, making people call in the evening, etc."; he announces the death of Descaves' wife in childbirth, and the confinement of Léon BLOY's wife, on whom he passes a terrible judgment: "It is a very despicable soul, very black
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