MAUPASSANT Guy de (1850-1893). - Lot 173

Lot 173
Go to lot
Estimation :
8000 - 10000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 6 944EUR
MAUPASSANT Guy de (1850-1893). - Lot 173
MAUPASSANT Guy de (1850-1893). Autograph poem signed " Guy de Maupassant ", To Madame la Comtesse Potocka"; written on the back of an embroidered and painted silk fan, with inlaid bone mount. Length : 26,5 cm ; width open : 45,5 cm. (A broken strand, small lacks or cracks to the silk, restorations). Precious fan enriched by Maupassant with a poem for his muse. A floral decoration, rural scenes painted and enriched with colored silk threads and hard stones adorn this beautiful fan. The poem has two quatrains, written in black ink on the reverse side of the white silk. "You want verses? Well no. I will not write on this thing Which makes wind, neither verses nor prose; I will write nothing but my name. So that by fanning your face Your eye sees it, and that it makes you Under the fresh and light breath, Think of me without thinking about it." In a letter to the Countess Potocka of August 21, 1889, Maupassant described this famous fan: "I wanted to send you from here a fan with some lines. I found only one, rather mediocre but old and doubled so as to allow me to write two quatrains which do not make much sense, but my head is not clear today. I have never felt as lost as I am at this hour, and I see before me so much sorrow, so much pain. [...] Your dispatch which has just been sent to me was a relief, something like a smile, a handshake, more, a very gentle sympathy which did me infinite good. It came so right that it seemed to me brought by a spirit. I was so surprised, not having given you my address, that I almost thought it was witchcraft. I finally realized that the shipping number had been used to find me. That is ingenious, kind and delicate. Thank you, ma'am. Would you please tell me if you received my fan, of which I am a little ashamed in every respect. If I ask you, it is because I do not know the commercial probity of the merchant who made the expedition. In the midst of all my misery today I thought a hundred times about that little dinner yesterday in the station buffet. I had never felt my attachment to you so alive and vibrant. Born Princess Pignatelli di Cergharia, separated from her husband, Count Nicholas Potocki, attached to the Austrian-Hungarian Embassy, the Countess (1852-1930) was a rare beauty and great elegance. "The Countess Potocka was one of the queens of that time, famous not only for her wit and luxury, but also for her salon, which from 1882 onwards was the meeting place for an elite group of men of the world, writers, artists, scholars and academics, in short, for the "Tout-Paris". (Christoph Oberle). Exasperated by giving in to her magnetism in spite of himself, Maupassant soon went to her house every day, reports the young Marcel Proust, and established an ambiguous relationship with her, perhaps less superficial than it seems. It is believed that they traveled together by train from Paris, arriving in Lyon on Tuesday, August 20, 1889, late in the afternoon. They had a meal together at the buffet of the Perrache station, before Maupassant visited his brother in the Bron asylum (near Lyon); the writer himself fell into madness eighteen months later.
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue