Charles BAUDELAIRE / Signed Autograph Letter / His Translations of Edgar Poe

  
A signed autograph letter from "Charles" to his mother, Madame Aupick [Paris], "Wednesday" [October 28, 1863], 1 page, in-8°. Small repair to the Japanese paper in the lower margin, without affecting the text. A word redacted in Baudelaire's hand. Baudelaire informs his mother, not without bitterness, about the cession of his rights for the complete translation of Edgar Poe's works to his publisher Michel Lévy. FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF GODOY AND LABARTHE.

"My dear mother, I was hoping for a letter from you this morning. Did this trip go smoothly and without incident, and above all, how are you? [Madame Aupick visited her son in Paris during the month of October] Yes, the Lévy matter is settled. Tomorrow, I will relinquish all my future rights for a sum of 2000 francs payable in about ten days. It’s not even half of what I need.

Belgium must therefore pay the rest. I will write to Belgium for a contract (for I distrust the Belgians), a contract stating the price for each lesson, how many lessons in total, and how many lessons per week. The Poe provided me with an income of 500 [francs] per year. Michel [Lévy] has therefore treated the matter as one would treat the sale of a grocery business. He simply pays four years' worth of the product.

The contract will be formalized between Charles Baudelaire and Michel Lévy frères three days later, on November 1, 1863 (which fell on a Sunday, presumably to facilitate the accounts). The cession of all his rights to Lévy includes: Extraordinary Stories; New Extraordinary Stories; The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym; Eureka (not yet published); Grotesque and Serious Stories (not yet published). The publisher takes advantage, through leonine clauses, of the financially drained situation in which the poet finds himself, increasingly cornered by debts.

In another letter to his mother dated November 25, Baudelaire further admits that Lévy "has committed to sharing this money among some of [his] creditors." This contract is all the more terrible for him as of all his works published during his lifetime, only the translations of Poe achieved commercial success. The "lessons" mentioned here by the poet will actually be lectures he will give the following year when he settles in Brussels. They will not meet the expected success. Collection Armand Godoy Drouot, October 12, 1988, no.

203 Then from the collection of André Sylvain Labarthe. Charles Baudelaire, unpublished last letters to his mother. 177-178 - General Correspondence, ed.