Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Autographed Letter Signed Intense Composition

  
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly - Signed autograph letter - Painful and selfish pleasures of a relentless composition. Beautiful signed autograph letter, Sunday 6 am, addressed to Astolphe de Custine, 3 pages in-8 with red ink, some stains and slight split at the bottom of the central fold. Devoted to the "tyranny of work" with "a novel and 2 other works of a different genre", Barbey d'Aurevilly indulges in the "painful and selfish pleasures of a relentless composition". It is to discourage you from being kind to me. I would like you to be well persuaded of the happiness I feel in being with you and at your place [.

] I seem ungrateful but I only appear so. I am, Sir, almost in seclusion like a cardinal who makes a pope. I do not make a pope, but I have a novel to finish, and two other works of a different genre to get out of my head by the end of this month (September).

These forced works are even more so as they will determine, if I finish them, a little trip to the south which I greatly need, next month. I no longer leave my slippers like a Chinese woman with a broken foot and I am devoted to the painful and selfish pleasures of a relentless composition.

My head is nothing more than a machine, heated to white [.] That is, Sir, in all truth, my excuse. You know the tyranny of work, but you do not know it like I do. If it were only the tyranny of thought!

You are, I can say without any exaggeration, the most charming relationship I have in my life of isolation and expiation, and I cannot enjoy it as much as I would like, I have to deprive myself of that last drop of conversation, wit, and good taste, which is the best, and with which one savors it to the fullest, as long as one can, once it has been tasted. Believe me, Sir, it takes almost character to deprive oneself of that enjoyment"...