Robert de MONTESQUIOU Autograph letter signed to Jean Lorrain. 1893

  

The Autographes des Siècles bookshop has specialized in the sale of handwritten letters and manuscripts for many years.

Signed handwritten letter to Jean Lorrain.

Four small-format pages (in-12mo) on blue paper bearing the sender’s address. Traces of a mounting tab on the fourth page.

“I have taken on your sorrow.”

From one dandy to another: Robert de Montesquiou offers an emphatic, lyrical tribute to Jean Lorrain’s Decadent short-story collection, Buveur d’âmes (Drinker of Souls), published by Charpentier in 1893.

“Dear Sir,

I must thank you for your gift, which is now my book—or should I say, for your book, which is now my keepsake? Does its ingenious title not invite us all to recall, draw upon, and drain once more some intoxicating draught from the cup of the soul and the chalice of feeling? Your second title should be merely a subtitle, allowing the first to encompass all our intoxications, both their delights and their dregs.

I like the way the Gospel’s glass of water seems to well up in your work; and Au-delà (Beyond), whose final page brushes against the great mystery, and Laide (Ugly), which best exemplify this, are the stories I like most. Certain kindly and welcome signs lead me to think that the refreshing stream from that drop of water sought by Lazarus may gradually soften and tenderize your work.

By comparison with your earlier writing, I seem to discern in it a new serenity that lends added beauty to your dazzling invention, in which universal pity grows compassionate and individual sympathy shines.

Having long prided myself on living between these serene sisters, I write to you about our books. Do not let that rather widespread—and still more commonplace—insistence on seeing me as nothing but a dilettante make you unjust toward mine. Certainly, I am one, and I pride myself on it. For might not the finest work of art be defined as the one whose finished form has preserved the greatest share of the love that moved us to create it?

And would not the expressive dilettante then have the right to call himself one of the most refined creators?

The other day, then, I took pleasure in a perceptive critic’s kind remark about my Fleurs: that it was already an achievement to have seen them where a professional poet would have confined himself to lilies and roses—and even then without distinguishing too carefully between the two.

But I realize that I have been speaking to you about your books. May the pleasure remain with you, together with my warmest regards.”

Montesquiou and Jean Lorrain moved in the same literary and social circles in the late nineteenth century, their relationship marked by both admiration and rivalry. Lorrain was fascinated by Montesquiou’s personality and aesthetic sensibility, which inspired some of his characters. Montesquiou, for his part, followed Lorrain’s work closely and held it in genuine literary esteem, as this letter demonstrates.

Their relationship gradually deteriorated, however, and Lorrain later became highly critical and satirical toward Montesquiou. They thus remained two closely connected yet competing figures in the Decadent movement, caught between fascination, esteem, jealousy, and hostility.

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