Max JACOB

Lot 91
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1000 - 1500 EUR
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Result : 1 792EUR
Max JACOB
6 autograph letters signed and 1 manuscript A.S. of a poem, to Henri Parisot. 9 pp. in-4. Paris and Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, 1934-1944. Very beautiful and moving correspondence from the last years of Max Jacob's life, most of them written during the war and then under the occupation. One of the letters is decorated with an ink drawing: handshake with wedding ring. He mentions his move, two paintings he would like back, the publication of Coleridge containing "very profound" poetry. "Scutenaire has an imperturbable seriousness that is the very source of humor. It is a great mistake to believe that laughter wants a comic accent. Comedy only comes from seriousness: Scutenaire reminds us of Henri Michaux but he is quite different, he reminds us rather of Pliny the Elder telling that a race of Africa that only sleeps during the day carries an individual sun in its stomach [...]". He keeps for Gisèle Prassinos "not a weak but a strong". "Since I read the Old Mariner [by Coleridge] - ten or fifteen years ago (I don't know where or how I read it) - I have kept a warm desire to read it again and to possess it to read it again. I don't know (even in Edgar Poë, whose poems I prefer to any other poetry), I don't know any poem that suits me more than the Old Mariner. I am convinced that this is poetry, that poetry is a fable, a mythology (like Homer) and not a rambling about dusk, dawn or love [...]. Paul Morand thought he was perhaps humiliating me, once, by calling me "the good fabulist of the Rue Ravignan". I do not say that he did not succeed at that time, twenty years ago, but this humiliation was not retrospective and I am proud to be a fabulist, I would be even more so if I were a fabulist like Edgar Poë or the Coleridge of the Sailor [...]". A letter of August 31, 1942 announces dark days. "Béalu does not come much anymore, but I know he is faithful to friendship. I am accused of "Jewish conspiracy" because of the number of my visitors (file at the police headquarters). All is well. I had been waiting for a long time to reach the bottom of the funds: this is it. The goal has been reached [...]". A last letter is dated January 10, 1944, a few days before his arrest. He speaks about his collaboration with the Sans pareil. The poem, entitled "Fils de rois", dated April 1935, composed of 24 lines, is dedicated "to Henri Parisot, his friend. Max Jacob".
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