COLL HENRY DAVRAY AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED STUART MERRILL (American Poet) 1901

  

Coming from the old archives or personal collections of Henry D., one will find, sold individually, numerous letters from Stuart MERRILL in particular, but also from other French or English-language writers of the time, publishers, directors of literary magazines, etc. A signed autograph letter from Stuart MERRILL. Very good overall condition, clean. Usual folds and minor stains on edges.

Regarding the literary and artistic life of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Known by his real name Henry Durand, he is also known under pen names. Henry Davray is, at the beginning of the 20th century, a prominent popularizer of English literature by translating and introducing the works of Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Frank Harris, H. Wells, Joseph Conrad, or George Meredith.

He creates several magazines, the most famous of which is the Anglo-French Review. After World War I, his efforts to promote the dissemination of English prose make him the most famous Frenchman in British literary circles, where he settles in 1940 after being made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George VI. Davray is responsible from 1896 for the "English Letters" section of the Mercure de France.

As the first translator of De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde in 1898, he also translated a large part of H.'s works into French from 1898 to 1912 (including the famous The War of the Worlds).

Literary critic, journalist, translator, writer. Henry Durand-Davray, born on August 14, 1873 in Gennevilliers, and died on January 21, 1944 in London, was a French translator and literary critic. A specialist in English literature at the prestigious Parisian newspaper Mercure de France, he translated works by H.

Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, and Yeats into French. During World War I, he was a war correspondent and official delegate of the French government. He is the brother-in-law of the painter Georges Dola. Born to a Vosges father, Jean-Lucien-Henry Durand, a gardener, and an Occitan mother, a chambermaid and then a cook, he developed a deep aversion to Germany and an attraction to England where he spent most of his vacations.

He studied English at the Sorbonne but failed to obtain a degree due to his prolonged absences. Nevertheless, he acquired a vast culture that allowed him to integrate and evolve in artistic, political, and literary circles both in London and Paris. He met many writers, especially those belonging to H. Wells' circle: Arnold Bennett and Joseph Conrad.

In 1917, he was one of the founders of the Anglo-French Society, whose goal was to promote the Entente cordiale; his friends affectionately nicknamed him "the tunnel under the English Channel". When Oscar Wilde, after being released from prison in 1897, stayed in Naples for a while, Henry-D. Davray met him, having obtained his address, Villa Giudice in Pausilippe, thanks to Ernest Dowson, a close friend of the writer. The two men met again by chance when, towards the end of his life, Oscar Wilde was in need. Having had to cancel an appointment to receive him, Wilde asked Davray for money and offered him a dedicated copy of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in return.

A symbolist and anarchist poet. Stuart Merrill, an American poet, spent his childhood in Paris, where his father was part of the US embassy. At the Condorcet high school, he was classmates with some of the future symbolists, including René Ghil, André Fontainas, and Éphraïm Mikhaël, among others.

He was captivated by the French language and acquired a rich poetic culture. There, he became the spokesperson for French poetry, particularly of Parnassus, which strongly influenced him. At the same time, he familiarized himself with the prosody of the English language. He published his first collection of verses, Les Gammes (1887), at the time when Mallarmé's circle was forming.

The reference to music is evident, and like most other symbolists, he sought to use words as notes on a staff, as elementary sounds that would organize into a song. While others, such as Ghil, found innovative techniques, such as verbal instrumentation, to achieve this musicality, Stuart Merrill borrowed from English poetry the technique of alliteration; he applied it systematically and quickly demonstrated the limits of such a poetics. Fastes (1891), Petits Poèmes d'automne (1895) still bear the mark of this prosodic work; however, Stuart Merrill gradually freed himself from any influence: Les Quatre Saisons (1900) are already a much more personal and original evocation. Permanently settled in France since 1890, Merrill wrote numerous articles on the symbolists on both sides of the Atlantic and contributed to their appreciation by the public. However, as a great admirer of the American poet Walt Whitman, he moved towards a much more didactic poetry.

Une voix dans la foule (1909) illustrates his love for humanity and his democratic ideal. Language serves his conviction, and he gains a strength that is foreign to his early verses. The manifesto of symbolism, published by Jean Moréas on September 18, 1886, appeared while Stuart Merrill was staying in the United States, which he had returned to after his father's death.

From there, he corresponded with his French friends and sent his first poems for publication. "Passionate about social justice, involved in the Marxist movement, he was seen in the streets of New York selling leaflets exposing the "four hundred" of high society... Having returned definitively to France at the height of symbolism, he published Les Fastes in 1891 and Les Petits Poèmes d'automne in 1895, opened a salon frequented by the symbolists at his home on Quai de Bourbon in Paris, supported Oscar Wilde during his trial, and showed enthusiasm for the Armenian cause and the defense of Captain Dreyfus.

As a contributor to the magazines La Plume and L'Ermitage, he linked his poetic writing to a political commitment under the sign of anarchy. "What gives the strength of the symbolist theory is precisely its anarchy. It only asks the poet to be significant, that is to say, individual, and to reveal himself, both in thought and emotion, through images as general as possible. Yes, symbolism is anarchy in literature; instead of shrinking between two dates, like Mr. Zola, or burying oneself alive in a box of mummies, like Mr.

Leconte de Lisle, it parades its glorious fantasy through lands and ages, caring little whether the riches it gathers come from Golconda or Ophir." L'Ermitage, August 1893, p. From then on, his attachment to liberated verse and free verse, freed from the constraints of meter, is understandable. However, beyond the structure, it is inspiration that is at the heart of his poetic approach: "The poet's talent alone justifies or condemns his metrics.