BOFA GUS (1883-1968) DESSINATEUR

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Lot n° 59
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BOFA GUS (1883-1968) DESSINATEUR
14 L.A.S., [1929-1944 and n.d., to Lucienne FAVRE]; 37 pages in-4 (6 in pencil). Beautiful correspondence to the novelist Lucienne FAVRE (1894-1958), bard of the working-class districts of pre-war Algiers. We can only give a quick overview. Sunday 8 [September 1929?] Prisoner of the profession, he nevertheless remains one of the freest: "Of course I take pleasure in finishing an album, in seeing another one grow fat little by little, in feeling above all that I can still go further - so that I am still "young". But this pleasure is not enough to counterbalance the regret I have for all the things I don't do [...] I envy you for loving work, and for being able to do it regularly"... He exposes his idea of a retrospective reportage or a film for the centenary of the conquest of Algeria: disappointed by Jean Mélia's book "on the fate of the Algerian natives", he suggests a trip to the Hoggar... Saturday [1930 ?]. He will write about his book [Orientale 1930] in Crapouillot: "It is not at all so far from the line of the others as you had announced to me! It is marked, as they are, by that taste for literary acrobatics which is to be found in all your works"... This book may have seemed to him less difficult than the Noce, "but it does not seem to me any less astonishing: that you were able, by making a woman of the people, an Arab, speak, to make her say all that you wanted to say, about the secret Muslim soul"... Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning [around 1935]. He was moved and proud that she had thought of associating his name with Prosper's, for posterity. "As I grow older I take a great horror of words, even ingeniously arranged ones, and, in general, of any means of expression other than the gaze..." He tells an anecdote about some deaf-mutes he saw whose "will to intelligence" impressed him, and made him think of her and her "sincere wife": she must arrive at "a more or less stable equilibrium between the five or six main Lucienne Favre"... Mauperthuis (Seine-et-Marne) Thursday [1944]. "In the midst of all the "never more" that mark all our roads, your Mourad and his eternal Kasbah have brought me your memory as a solid block, where one can rest"... Tuesday night. He deplores the limits of correspondence: "impossible to maintain, by letter, a true contact of friendship. [...] Friendship has to manage to live on its own, without feeding on precise facts and exact news that cannot be provided"... He appreciates her curiosity: "I've been working for a month now, after six months of not doing much - more and more the realization of an idea bores me. I have probably not yet reached the age where an "idea" is considered to be a precious raw material that can be isolated from others and chiselled away for days on end. Today I am doing it in the same way as a butcher does a three-month-old lamb [...]. It is not without remorse. Or maybe it's just that I'm too old to accept wasting an idea that's too young... Tuesday night. "You seem to me to have such a dynamo breakdown! You have sentimental reflexes too sensitive to do theatre safely. [...] The man of the theatre stands up like a circus horse: with a cane, a hoe and a firecracker in the legs. When he's totally stunned, he gallops gracefully around the ring, looking more spirited than life, and all the afficionados of the generals follow his little tricks with tenderness and admiration. It's quite sickening"... For her debut she came across a bully who was wrong about her play: "he saw a mess in it, where there was an idea - thanks to which he put on your play, where the audience found the idea and forgot the mess"... He advises to let Sauveur sleep for six months, to see it clearly... Friday night. He hopes that she can work in peace and quiet, "far from the literary arenas where singular laurels are fought over. Yesterday I met Madame Rostand, one of your judges, and spoke to her about your book, being surprised that it had not been crowned. She objected to your face, your age, your natural elegance, and that you do not wear glasses. I think she was putting some paradox in it, but the root causes are always paradoxical! Sunday. "In spite of Freud and his prophets, I had never been able to draw anything valid from a dream"... Tuesday night. He has received his "manuscript of the pearls and the onlookers", which he will read... Thursday morning. "I am very happy to know that your manuscript is in the hands of Baty and the Pitoëffs, who are professional people and will give you a valid opinion, while waiting for that of the public, the only one that counts"... Etc.
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