Guillaume Apollinaire Autographed Letter Signed to Lou. I love you. 1915

  
Autographes des Siècles bookstore specializes in the sale of autograph letters and manuscripts. Autographed letter signed to Louise de Coligny-Châtillon, known as Lou. Two pages in-4° on Café Tortoni letterhead in Nîmes. "I love you with all my might. No poem today, I have written you many in recent days.

Tender and loving letter from the poet Lou, inspired by the muse to create one of his most beautiful poetry collections. "Dated my letters from yesterday the 4th by mistake - Today your letter from Thursday the 4th - so you are leaving, will write to you tomorrow on Sunday the 1st. Time and Wednesday the 2nd. Time - But I don't understand why not every day since you write well to Toutou.

Every day and he also writes to you every day. Since you receive no letters under your name, I don't understand these strange precautions at all. I suppose it comes from the fact that Toutou doesn't know that I write to you every day and that you write to me in return, and that you fear hurting him by telling him - that in return, you won't write to me anymore and I will be left alone in Nîmes. So when you receive this letter, you will be in the beautiful capital of Lorraine, in the capital of King Stanislas, whose history greatly appeals to me. I had a lot of fun reading about his dwarf Ferry.

You might hear the cannon rumbling! I wrote to you yesterday to give a thousand regards to Toutou on my behalf, I repeat them in case you leave before receiving my letter. Give him a kiss on both cheeks.

Tell him I am his friend and I am sure that our friendship will grow even more when we get to know each other. Ask him if he has a sitometer. To send to me through you. Finally, my Lou, may God keep you and may Our Lady protect you, courageous and kind woman. Return safely from the front, my darling.

You know how much I love you, I will be anxious throughout this journey. I wish you had received the letters I wrote to you in Baratier before your departure, it's fantastic how strangely the posts are made. Finally, gather interesting impressions that you will tell me about. I send you a funny clipping from L'Écho de Paris: a strange and funny news story. I won't write very long today because I am invited to dinner by my friend Nicolini and will take care of your room. My concern accompanies you, you are my constant worry and my supreme comfort. I love you with all my might.

However, tell Toutou this verse about artillery, I took it from a small poem sent to my friend André Dupont, the meanest man in Paris, and I wrote it in my artillery notebooks "Artillery is the art of measuring angles". A thousand kisses, I adore you, I kiss you on the mouth, my beloved. An instrument for measuring the so-called site angles, the elevation of a target in a vertical plane relative to the observer. Apollinaire's ironic wink to a letter written on February 1 to his friend Dupont: "Artillery is the art of measuring angles and horseback riding is the art of tightening the straps well".

Indeed, Apollinaire is initiated in Nîmes into the subtleties of firing angles. On notes kept at the BnF, it can be read that "the burst height H depends only on the site angle and the corrector". And on January 21, Apollinaire writes to Lou that he is "fed up with all their geometry algebra horse artillery and the rest of the mess." He immediately falls in love. On December 6, 1914, he joins the 38th field artillery regiment stationed in Nîmes.

Lou joins Apollinaire in Nîmes in mid-December 1914 and they will spend more than a week at the Hotel du Midi, exploring together a sensuality that will feed the poet's dreams for a long time, faced with the horrors of war. On the back of the letters that Apollinaire sent almost daily to Lou are the famous poems that were later gathered under the title of Shadow of my love and then Poems to Lou. Here is the amusing testimony of this extreme poetic prodigality: "No poem today, I have written you many in recent days." Finally, we observe that in this second month of the year 1915, Apollinaire is still in the euphoria of this great love but must nevertheless contend with a rival and lover, Gustave Toutaint nicknamed Toutou, then employed as a liaison agent in the Vosges and whom Lou is about to join in Nancy. Lou will ultimately evade Guillaume Apollinaire by refusing to part from Gustave Toutaint.

The rupture will be definitively consummated in March 1915, the day before Apollinaire's departure for the front. The poet and Louise de Coligny-Châtillon will continue to maintain regular correspondence during the following summer, until Apollinaire's engagement to Madeleine Pagès in August. The letters will then become rarer and more impersonal.

The last one is dated January 18, 1916. Check out our manuscripts The Autographes des Siècles Gallery specializes in the sale and expertise of autograph letters and manuscripts from great personalities of the past centuries.

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