Long original letter from Charles Maurras to Jhouney, Paris - Lot 142

Long original letter from Charles Maurras to Jhouney, Paris October 11, 1891. 20 pages. Semet et Plumelle binding in red morocco, ribbed spine, gilt head, in slipcase. "My dear Jouhaney / Forgive me for being so slow in sending you my merci; but it's been a fortnight that I've been living in change. I'm changing Diary. I'm changing my home. And, receiving from you the most eloquent, the most friendly, allow me to say also the most flattering lines, I wanted to answer them with a clear head. I'll try. My gratitude, as you can guess. At the same time, I'd like to express my delight. It's your study on The Scream that has truly given me the greatest pleasure. How right you are to consider the metaphysician a follower of nervous quarrels, born of the misunderstanding of a word or the defective construction of a sentence! How right you are to believe that art without soul, without explosion, without humanity, is an inferior art! But here we are of the same opinion - and I don't want our friend Guigon to contradict it. I know he's far too fond of sentiment, mystery and ? But we misunderstood each other, or *jules *bois misunderstood us. What would I say to you, my "Moreas"? That Paul Verlaine is a great poet, that he is gifted with a soul - I think you mean: an original soul; a soul worth knowing, worth loving for its own sake; a sensitivity so particular that its most banal actions contain something interesting and curious; because, to put it bluntly, as Montaigne would have said, she is she and we are not. Better or more upright than the rest of us, Velaine had, by discovering himself, discovered the deep region where personal feelings pump and mingle their roots in an obscure network of sympathy, not to say identity... I might have added that Verlaine's discovery was not a matter of aesthetics (he had strongly condemned the "mussetisme" and "lamartinisme" in the poemes saturniens). And in my opuscule, I blamed young people who want to reach the same depths as the divine poet de? guided by masters other than life, love and pain. To want to be "sincere" is first of all (as Guigou has rightly observed) to want something infinitely difficult and which requires more genius than any other ambition; and it is, moreover, to condemn oneself almost fatally to play a comedy. To want to cry out, human cries, so as not to resemble Messrs du Parnasse or de l'Académie, is to prepare oneself more or less to write an equivalent of Mr. Jean Richepin's Morphemes. To posit the "ayons de l'âme" dogma in aesthetics is to end up with the grimace of epilepsy. Isn't it admirable that, of the three great passionate poets of the nineteenth century - Lamartine, Musset and Verlaine - the first had no preconceived aesthetic; the second professed the Dandyist theory of detachment to the point of suffering; and the third was a Parnassian, and one of the most fanatical? The unconscious must avoid formulating it, systematizing it - or else it loses its most essential quality. We shouldn't tell young poets: "Have soul. But they do need to be given all the intellectual, metaphysical and technical clarifications their Psyche will need to feel the discipline at the troubled hour when their first ardors vibrate. And how complex the problem is! I'm glad you've given me the opportunity to tackle it. For in this booklet, I was simply aiming at a few men who, in prose and verse, replaced the notion of beauty with that of their personality, and believed that it would be enough for them to become very singular to produce great masterpieces. Our elders are not exempt from this fault. Recall the preface that Maupassant placed at the head of Pierre et Jean, and the words he lent, perhaps without misunderstanding, to the old Flaubert: "Stay in front of this fire... Wait until it appears different from all the other fires you have seen... etc". The deforming aesthetics of Huyslan and Hennequin are all in germ in these perogles of the creator of the Saint Antoine. Ethics, same mistake... you, for example, agree with Barrès... the culture of the self! I love the person and the art of this moralist. But as for the theory of the Free Man, I think it's going to make this species of personal mediocrity swarm incredibly. It's beginning, and it's already a great calamity. It's time for the concept of order to rise in people's minds. For nothing great can be achieved if microbes are ? to ? thoughts, and if the only authority that has replaced Faith (I mean Fashion) loses half its subjects. In short, let's have souls if i