Lot n° 150
Estimation :
8000 - 10000
EUR
JOUHANDEAU Marcel (1888-1979). - Lot 150
JOUHANDEAU Marcel (1888-1979).
Approximately 400 L.A.S. "Marcel" or "Marcel J.", 1948-1968, to Robert COQUET and Henri RODE, one autograph MANUSCRIT, and about 180 documents attached; in all more than 580 letters and documents, with numerous envelopes, gathered in 17 binders in-4.
Important love correspondence, and precious testimony on the great passion of Jouhandeau's life.
Through this important set, one can read the intimate relationship between Marcel Jouhandeau and Robert COQUET (1928-1998), an attractive young military man he met on the train from Avignon in April 1948. From this meeting, a love affair of about ten years was born between the established writer, aged 60, and the young man of 20 years. The writer and poet Henri RODE (1917-2004) will hold a role of confidant near the two lovers. It was Henri Rode who provoked in 1948 the meeting of his friend/lover Robert Coquet and Jouhandeau.
"Henri knew perfectly well the tastes of Marcel. He therefore knew that Robert would please Marcel. Rode, throwing Robert into Marcel's arms in order to please him, sacrificed himself for Marcel but at the same time recovered his freedom. Never however the complicity of Henri and Robert was broken. They always complemented each other: Robert in Marcel's bed and Henri writing, correcting and typing Marcel's texts, even enriching them or preparing and initiating them. The relation between Henri and Robert remained very pure then and stamped of the seal of the connivance after the initial sharing of their interior self " (Didier Mansuy).
The passion for Robert Coquet inspired Marcel Jouhandeau to write two books: L'École des garçons (1953) and Du Pur Amour (1955), in which he took up several letters received from Robert (they were in fact the work of Henri, Robert simply copied them).
In this correspondence, Marcel Jouhandeau expresses his passionate feelings for the young Robert, but also his sorrows. Indeed, the novelist was often tested by the reserve and detachment of his lover. He also evokes their erotic frolics, in the apartment of Rode, where they meet. 68 ardent letters are addressed to Robert Coquet: "you gave me the flower of your 20 years and 3 years of happiness, because for me happiness is the purity"... We will quote only one letter (April 24, 1951), "the day after our most beautiful evening": "My love, if you knew what your letters are to me, you would be well rewarded for your trouble. Ah, my child, I was so happy yesterday that I thought I was cured. The approach of your young body had burned me magnificently. I did not believe to be any more by a beautiful afternoon, at the moment that a hairy bumblebee in the heart of a rose and then soon a peony deflowered by a big peacock pearly. No, nothing escapes me from your written allusions which translate more or less what I feel on my side, but felt by you on yours. For example, when you talk about this warmth that spreads through your limbs, when I look at you, I had guessed it on Sunday morning. The wonder is the discretion with which we surround each other. Not once did you let me suppose that you were gorging yourself with my gaze, your eyelids stubbornly lowered, but I knew it, warned by an Angel. And God knows that for my part it was only rarely that I dared to take you in my eyes. But every time, just when you hit the bull's eye, when the opponent's swell was struck by your imperial jet. No, you can't know the majestic security of your male gesture that submitted me dazzled to your Law"... And on the last page, Jouhandeau draws the "monstrance of our love", with these words in the center: "I adore you, in you as in Paradise for all eternity, and YOU in me".
431 letters are addressed to Henri Rode, which are like a commentary on Robert's passion: "My Henri, you who know us both, alone, you can guess how marvelous are the shores we are approaching, Robert and I, marvelous both for him and for me. Now the intimacy between us is complete, the abandonment without reserve, the consummated unity"... At the same time, Jouhandeau gave Rode advice on writing: "the only constant rule for writing well is not to write", one must get rid of "all useless words, all that is not essential and clean". He will also provide financial support in exchange for proofreading and correction of his manuscripts. We will quote only one letter (October 20, 1948): "Henri, I don't know what happens to me when I leave R. An unspeakable melancholy takes hold of me, a kind of taste, an impatience to die. Is it because our passion is without exit, although the happiest? Is it precisely the happiness, after having known it, because it is beyond what one .../...
can wish humanly, which is paid with this infinite, cruel disenchantment. Perhaps I am dying to move away from him, from
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