LOUŸS Pierre (1870-1925)

LOUŸS Pierre (1870-1925)
Autograph MANUSCRIT (incomplete), Pervigilium Mortis, [December 1916]| title and 10 oblong pages in-8 paginated 4-13.
Pierre Louÿs' famous lyrical masterpiece, with important variants.
This poem, elaborated by Louÿs in December 1916 from a poem of 1898 inspired by his affair with Marie de Régnier, was not published until 1930, five years after the author's death. The first three stanzas are missing from this manuscript, which contains erasures and corrections|
Louÿs has not yet incorporated the poem L'Apogée (these 6 stanzas will form the fourth part of Pervigilium, added in January 1917), but the manuscript ends with the two final stanzas conceived in December 1916: "Let yourself be darkened, black flower, curves of urn, Long fluid and safe body of the mists of Lethe.
Disappear from the evening in the nocturnal universe.
The fading color rises to the light.
Free from the gods, an eternal wave can be born
Where died the days that whisper "I loved."
If the pure-blooded Word finds in the sources of being
The beat of the verse in life forever".