LAMARTINE Superb signed autograph letter - His Works & Writer's Work

  

Alphonse de LAMARTINE - Superb signed autograph letter - His Works & Writer's Craft. One of the great figures of Romanticism and an immense writer. Autograph letter signed "Alph," January 21, 1849, to his "dear angel" [his niece Valentine de CESSIAT (1)], 4 pages in-8 (small ink stain on the last page).

A very beautiful letter to his beloved niece, about his work as a writer and his works (Raphaël, the Confidences). Letter published in "Correspondence of Lamartine" (letters from 1849).] You accuse me for sure, and yet I am quite innocent. I have not a minute, neither night nor day.

I have been ill with rheumatism. I have 26 volumes in the making (2), the Chamber, the Council of State (3), 100 letters a day, my eyes worn out, my hand tired, but my heart for you full, young, old, tender, ardent, compassionate, loving, seeing, regretting, hoping, admiring, blessing, cherishing, invoking as when I was Raphaël and a million times more.

Yes, the soul is immaterial and infinite like God Himself. I feel it clearly when I think of you.] your past and yet also your present, your present and yet also your future.

I see you being born, growing, beautifying, blooming, bearing fruit, and yet I also see you after me living, charming, loving, remembering, aging, and coming to join me in the abode of eternal youth, and yet I am an aging uncle, feeling myself grow old, wither, weaken; you are incomparable nieces in every kind of physical and moral satisfaction, courses, and souls of predilection for nature, and I love you as if I had created you. I sent you Raphaël (4), a bad first edition.

The other one being published is perfect. Paris is in a frenzy; one encounters only women with a Raphaël in their muff; [...] It is cried everywhere universally that never has the language burned so much, that it is written with charcoal on the skin of the heart. What would they say then if I had written it under the impression of other circumstances or at other times in my past life?

To my eyes, it is but a pale extinguished memory. But I said it in the preface: what is most divine in the soul of man never comes out; to write is to profane. The Confidences (5) also have an unheard-of success, from the prince to the porter, priests, peasants, women, students, eighty thousand copies are sold daily.] You will read Graziella (6), which is very Greek and Neapolitan.] I will write another one far superior at the end of my sensitive life and even purer and more diamond than Graziella!

Then I will write nothing but hymns for God. But I will always put the names I have loved the most! It is the grain of eternal incense on the altar of the heart [... At the same time, I am pursuing and preparing my great project of my selected works by subscription; it is being announced well. The prodigious success of universal astonishment of all that I am publishing at this moment is a guarantee of the success of the project. Paris and France, in all classes, except the middle class, are passionately returning to me. I am followed in the street like a ray, and not like a man. I refuse everything; I remain in my modest and laborious isolation with God and your thought [... Our conversation is in heaven (7).] Have fun, read, love, excuse the time, hope for the future, in a word, study to be as least unhappy as possible in life. And do not ever torment yourself for me; I am not selfish, or rather my self is you." The favorite of her uncle whom she loves passionately. After the death of Madame de Lamartine in 1863, she never left him, serving as his secretary, reader, tireless in devotion. In 1867, she would have married her uncle in Switzerland. A religious and secret marriage, but no written proof has ever been discovered either in France, Switzerland, or the Vatican. Universal legatee of Alphonse de Lamartine's property, she dedicates herself to the glory of the poet. (2) At that time, Lamartine is working on the History of the Revolution of 1848, the New Confidences, the project of the People's Counselor, and the preparation of the edition of his selected works. (3) The Assembly's examination of the organic law on the Council of State. (4) Raphaël, a love novel by Lamartine. Raphaël is the name Lamartine gives, a little over thirty years later, to the lover he has been. (5) Confidences, in which Lamartine recounts youthful confessions. A prose meditation where the author first recounts his childhood. The key piece of the book is the episode of Graziella. (6) Graziella, a novel that was the most read book of its author.

Lamartine evokes Italy and takes up certain themes dear to Romanticism. (7) Paul, To the Philippians, 3:20.