BARBEY D'AUREVILLY ( Jules). Autograph letter... Lot 45

BARBEY D'AUREVILLY ( Jules). Autograph letter signed [to a journalist of the newspaper Le Réveil]. S.l., [late July or early August 1858]. 2 pp. in-8 and one line, in red ink with an addition in brown ink, traces of tabs on versos. "My dear friend, I went to your house on Monday, but corrections requested by Basset [André Basset, editor of the newspaper Le Pays] and which I made on the spot kept me at Le Pays until 2 p.m. When I came to Le Réveil, you had left. I wanted to ask you for some much needed money. We have not paid since April 15. If you can send me 200 francs, do it, but see where we are. Settle that. Let me know what I can count on for the rest, and, without embarrassing you, when - by the 15th of August, if you like. A word on this, my dear friend. I do not have ready matter of two columns like LAOCOON [a poem published by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly in Le Réveil of July 17, 1858]. I HAVE GRACEFUL OR TERRIBLE RHYTHMS, BUT WHICH YOU COULD NOT PUT IN YOUR ALARM CLOCK. THEY WOULD HAVE TOO MUCH PASSIONATE ACCENT. I am preparing for you a superb MICHELET, but a long one, and not for this time. We mustn't take opium at the Reveille, do you hear, my friend? A newspaper has just said so. BOOKS & AUTOGRAPHS THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2021 58 THE ARTICLE ON SACY IS MUCH SOFTER [one of the directors of Le Réveil, the historian, critic and politician Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, had published in this paper, on July 17, a review of the work Variétés littéraires, morales et historiques which had just been published by the academician Samuel Silvestre de Sacy, administrator of the Mazarine library and literary critic for the Journal des Débats]. It is superbly written, but the boring, dull, leaden Sacy whose heaviness sinks into error, this Jansenist excrement of a constipated race, did not deserve Granier's twisted reverences. Oh! politeness leads to emptiness, and the official relations of an arrived man are also an influence on talent! What gloves, and padded ones at that, put on that boxer of old! IF WE HAD STARTED THE REVIVAL WITH THESE CONGRATULATORY WAYS, WE WOULD NOT HAVE OUR SUCCESS. YOU FIND ME TOO ELOGIOUS FOR [ERNEST] FEYDEAU, BUT AFTER HAVING put as composition and idea, fragment of an idea, when a whole one was needed, THE BOOK IN PIECE, I SAY ONLY THAT HE HAS TALENT, BECAUSE ACTUALLY, HE HAS. He has life, but Sacy is death, the dust of the sepulchre and the whitewashed sepulchre of a Pharisee! To-morrow send to my house about four o'clock, I may have your two columns on this or that. I will dream there. I have here a Montégut Revue des deux mondes, "Opinions libres sur le temps". But two columns! We mustn't strangle him. If you send me the requested danari (forgive me this request), I will write to you if I can extract two columns on Montégut and the Revue [Émile Montégut, a contributor to the Revue des deux mondes, had just published an Essay on the present age: free moral and historical opinions]. LET US NOT FALL ASLEEP, PEOPLE OF THE AWAKENING. TO YOU, OH! YOURS, OH, SO YOURS... "On the back of the first page: "Read this book quickly. It's my first little one. The Correspondance générale mentions, according to a bookseller's catalogue, a letter from Jules de Barbey d'Aurevilly dated Port-Vendres on October 6, 1858 and addressed to Léon Escudier, with a partial quotation corresponding to a passage of the present letter, but also with indications that differ or are not explained.