LAMARTINE Alphonse de (1790-1869)

  2. Result
  3. LAMARTINE Alphonse de (1790-1869)
  4. Lot n° 152 
Lot n° 152
Go to lot
Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
LAMARTINE Alphonse de (1790-1869)
L.A., Saint-Point 14 September 1823, to Victor HUGO; 4 pages petit in-4. Beautiful friendly and admiring letter to Victor Hugo, on the beginnings of Romanticism and La Muse française. [The first issue of the literary review La Muse française, matrix of the first Romantic group, had just been published in July 1823. Founded by Alexandre Soumet and Alexandre Guiraud, it was dominated by Hugo, Vigny and Émile Deschamps. One can feel here Lamartine affected by Hugo's silent refusal to accept his proposal, formulated in June 1823, to subscribe to and collaborate with La Muse française]. "I do not know what I have done, my dear Hugo, to deserve that you have not answered my last letter... Speak frankly, you are dealing with a man who understands everything, and nothing can hurt him. My offer to you may be indiscreet", but it was "sincere and felt [...] I always write to you about the Muse. She made a noble appearance under your auspices and those of Mr. Soumet, I have already read it, and here it is when I was about to ask you to subscribe to it. I thank you very much for it, and it will keep me informed of your thoughts in my desert, where I think I have never seen so many beautiful verses. ...] You know that I have recommended that you register me as the first subscriber. If you hold this rudder with a firm hand, if your Muse gives you a hand to it, if the young moralist [Émile Deschamps] is still in luck, you will succeed. Finally, you speak Literature in a clear and vigorous sense, you have come out of the hemisphere and the diphthong, you attack the live, it was necessary; only go gently into the beginning, follow the slope and the current of opinion that is forming, do not get too far ahead of it, otherwise you will make a universal haro! You will be given a name! and everything will be said in France. This morning I read your ode to my father! It's really you. My dear Hugo, there are some ravishing images, the last one goes to my heart. If I were you, I'd correct one or two obscure verses about Buonaparte. But it's nothing. Give us many more of these". He returns from Paris, where he stayed only three days, and where he learned that "Mme Hugo was in diapers", and he asks for news of it: "We take a great part in it my wife and I love you in your verses! But even more in your persons, and in your double person. ...] I went to Paris with a nasty volume of Meditations sketched out between illness and travel [Nouvelles Méditations poétiques], and a small fragment of my poem entitled Socrate of which Ladvocat makes a volume [La Mort de Socrate]. I recommend the whole thing to your indulgence. It is much needed, and the century will not have much of it. Farewell, my dear Hugo, I have returned to my silence for an unbounded time, I am damaged in a thousand domestic affairs, separated by a hundred and twenty leagues from all the living. Remember me from tems to tems"... A l.a.s. of a MONTESQUIOU (stained signature altering the last 2 letters of the signature), Paris 8 February 1722, is attached to the Chevalier de Perier
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue