Autographes

1920 · 75933 — 1920. Fine. A priceless poetic testament from Marcel Proust's mentor hidden away and out of sight since the death of the author. s. d. ca 1920 25 x 33 cm en feuilles sous chemises The set of largely unpublished autograph poems by Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac is brought together by the Count in a collection entitled Le Dernier Pli des neuf voiles whose composition extends from his very first collection Les Chauves-Souris 1892 to his last trilogy Offrandes 1915. Set of 620 autograph leaves. 532 unpublished first draught handwritten on the recto and numbered in pencil preserved in 3 chemises in half red contemporary morocco red morocco labels with gilt author and title; the poems are then placed in the chemises with a handwritten title and a number for publication. According to a note from the author “the differences in ink have no meaning mere change of copy”. Rare pages from the hand of his secretary Henri Pinard: p. 20 of “Huitième voile” and p. 29 of “Neuvième voile”. 23 pages present the printed or typewritten texts of the poems and are enriched with Montesquiou's handwritten corrections. A set of printed proofs are found at the top of the first chemise as well as a pencil tracing after Aubrey Beardsley drawn by the author and accompanied by his handwritten indications. Sublime ode to dandyism to homosexuality and beauty this worldly and poetic promenade by Montesquiou embarks the reader into the decadent fin-de-siècle Paris described in In Search of Lost Time by his friend Marcel Proust. Imbued with his legendary enthusiasm for pictorial decorative theatrical and floral art the collection also delivers hundreds of mournful verses after the disappearance of Montesquiou's lover Gabriel Yturri. Thanks to this collection of poems by Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac all of which had been lost since 1986 it is now possible to complete the rehabilitation of the aristocratic poet who has long embodied and shaped the Parisian spirit. In May 1920 Montesquiou left handwritten instructions for the posthumous publication of the collection initially announced in two volumes and never produced. On his death a year later the poems were bequeathed to his secretary Henri Pinard who in turn sold them on an unknown date. Auctioned on 24 November 1986 they were mentioned in the LoWire-Littérature colloquium in 1989. This considerable manuscript by Montesquiou forms a veritable “home of poetry” like his famous aesthetic apartments described by Huysmans. The series of Voiles contain dozens of unpublished poems written in parallel with his previous collections. The author himself indicated the kinship of each “voile” with a published set of poems announcing here the total completion of his work by the addition of poems which still lay dormant in his papers. The three thick chemises contain rare and curious treasures sometimes drawn on colored sheets often pasted on larger sheets rigorously ordered while awaiting their publication. The poems are written without crossings-out they are fluid with rounded and precious handwriting and stand alongside other first-draught manuscripts: redactions and corrections also bear witness to the work in progress on the new poems; they were applied in the printed proofs of the work present at the top of the manuscript's first chemise. Some poems are taken as they are from collections already published but are slightly modified according to the explanations given by the author. Montesquiou also adds some handwritten notes detailing his intentions. The manuscript contains a poetic anthology of sacred art of extremely rare flowers and of antique furniture adorning his famous Parisian apartments “around which so many legends were built” Jacques Saint-Cère which fuelled the personalities of Des Esseintes Baron Charlus Dorian Gray and the vain peacock in Edmond Rostand's Chantecler. Moreover Montesquiou was overwhelmed by the features of these famous fictional ghosts of w unknown