ANOUILH (Jean). - Lot 23

ANOUILH (Jean). Born in Bordeaux. 1910-1987. French playwright. L.A.S. "Jean Anouilh" to "Madame" [Madame Brulé]. S.l., [April 6, 1944]. 1 page in-4. Envelope enclosed with postmarks. Anouilh renounces occupying Madame Brulé's house, fearing the solitude and difficulties of provisioning: ...I wanted to tell you that my fears are the strongest and that I renounce renting your house in Roconval. It would have been quite miraculous if it had remained vacant for more than a month and a half. I would certainly have found it occupied in May. Jean Anouilh was a French writer and author of numerous plays, the most famous of which is Antigone, a modern retelling of Sophocles' play. His love of theater began in 1923 at the Lycée Chaptal. After passing his baccalaureate, Anouilh began studying law in Paris, which he interrupted after eighteen months. In 1928, Anouilh had two key literary encounters: Giraudoux's Siegfried and Cocteau's Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel. At the age of 22, Anouilh became Louis Jouvet's secretary at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. In 1929, he staged his first play, Humulus le muet, which was a failure. But in 1932, he wrote his first "real play": LHermine. He then decided to make a living from his writing, but the beginnings were difficult. His first big success came in 1937 with Le voyageur sans bagage at the Théâtre des Mathurins. His themes are almost always the same: the revolt against wealth and the privilege of birth, the rejection of a world based on hypocrisy and lies, the desire for the absolute, the nostalgia for the lost paradise of childhood, the impossibility of love, the end in death.