Anna de Noailles prefers Baudelaire: beautiful signed autograph letter

  
Tuesday, September 26, 1922 - Paris. Two large octavo pages (size: 16 x 24 cm). Autograph envelope and stamp preserved. Printed letterhead: 40, Rue Scheffer, 16th arrondissement. Beautiful signature “Ctesse (Comtesse) de Noailles” at the top of the letter, due to lack of space at the end of the letter on the back (with ink bleed-through). A remarkable and deeply sincere testimony to the poet’s poetic preferences on the occasion of the centenary of Théophile Gautier. Anna de Noailles is responding here to André Legrand-Chabrier, a journalist, literary critic, and writer known for organizing literary “surveys” among the great figures of his time; these surveys were regularly published in Comodia or Le Figaro. This survey, marked by blunt frankness, was published under the title “Should Théophile Gautier Be Reread?” in the September 30, 1922 edition of the newspaper Le Gaulois, four days after the letter was written. Anna de Noailles had a profound, almost mystical admiration for Baudelaire. The value of a survey lies in the absolute sincerity of the answers. Strange as it may seem to me, I must admit that I rarely think of Théophile Gautier, that his verses have not intoxicated me, that they are not among those which “like a knife thrust have entered my plaintive heart,” and, finally, that the memory they leave me is that of a skillful and magnificent work in which there trembles a carnival of Venice, an Egyptian swallow. The famous “Voyage en Espagne” seemed long to me, and I stopped at the point where the prodigious oleander of the Generalife blooms. It is a dazzling page; I preferred not to leave its fragrant circle. Besides, it sometimes happens that one does not finish reading a beautiful book, held back by one point of that very beauty. Please believe me in all my best sentiments. Ctesse de Noailles [on the front].

The poem “Le Laurier du Généralife” is taken from Théophile Gautier’s famous collection España, first published in 1845.

You who, like a knife thrust,
Have entered my plaintive heart;
You who, strong as a pack
Of demons, came, mad and adorned,
To make your bed and domain
In my humiliated mind;
- Infamous one to whom I am bound
Like the convict to his chain,
Like the stubborn gambler to the game,
Like the drunkard to the bottle,
Like carrion to vermin -
Accursed, accursed be you!
I prayed the swift sword
To win back my freedom,
And I asked the treacherous poison
To come to my cowardice’s aid.
The poison and the sword
Looked on me with disdain and said:
“You are not worthy of being taken
From your cursed slavery,
Fool! - from its rule
If our efforts set you free,
Your kisses would bring back to life
The corpse of your vampire!”
Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du mal.

You whom one does not believe dead, so much does the heart possess you,
So much do each of your songs have the brilliance of eyes,
Baudelaire, dark angel, sparkling, feverish,
Whose word moves us, guides us, and obsesses us.
Can it be that one is near you this morning,
On the funerary ground where your silence sleeps,
You whom one does not approach, whom one never reaches,
And whose tomb alone allows us your presence!
Anna de Noailles, Derniers vers, Grasset.

Below, Anna de Noailles in 1902, aged 26, posing in front of her chalet in Amphion (Haute-Savoie).