GIDE (André). - Lot 103

GIDE (André). Born in Paris. 1869-1951. Writer, co-founder of La NRF in 1908. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. L.A.S. "André Gide" to "Cher ami" [François-Paul ALIBERT]. S.l.n.d., Jeudi [Paris (?), September 27, 1928] 2 pages in-8 on pink wove paper (split middle fold, pinholes). Beautiful letter to Carcassonne poet François-Paul ALIBERT, a long-time friend of André Gide whom he had met in 1907. Gide will do ... the impossible to come and spend a few days with you at the end of October. I wish I could find you sooner! This little car trip would have been wonderful, and yesterday I was deliberating, considering whether I could join you in Toulon or Marseille... But first I must go to Cuverville... to join his wife.Returning to an earlier discussion, he clarifies: ...I hope you're not mistaken: "beyond" did not mean "above". I never pretended to "dominate the situation". It's just that, as life went on, I got over it, and once I'd rounded that awful cape of storms, I never felt quite the same as before. Since then, I tell you, it seems to me that I'm only pretending to live, and death will never make me fall from a great height again... He continues: ...I'm due to see Malraux these days [...]. What you tell me about our "classical prejudice" delights me, and about this need to say nothing except out of reluctance. Yes, that's exactly what I'm turning against today. But your whole letter exalts me and heats up my desire, my need to see you again...In a postscript, he adds: ...I sent you to Carcassonne a "Samurai Love Tale" [by Saikakou Ebara, first translated into French in 1927 by Ken Sato].... He points out an ...amusing typo in your Jeux d'eaux de la Villa dEste [...]. Instead of Tasse's Amintas, no doubt by mimicry, you put Amyntas...Finally: ...Excellent everything you say about dAnnunzio...Gide wrote in his Diary on October 30, 1927: "I don't have a friend with whom I feel more perfectly at ease, that is, with whom I have to take fewer precautions to speak".François-Paul Alibert (b. Carcassonne, 1873-1953) was a poet, writer and playwright. Close to the poets of the neoclassical revival at the dawn of the 20th century, he claimed to be a member of the École Romane and Jean Moréas. Fr.-P. Alibert published his first collection of poems, L'arbre qui saigne, in 1907, the same year he met André Gide. The latter remained his friend for forty years. Every year, Gide organized a trip to the Midi with Alibert, during which the two friends shared their literary discoveries and their taste for "Corydonian" love affairs. In the meantime, the two men exchanged a rich correspondence (published in 1982). His work includes some forty titles, plus two erotic stories. His contemporaries put him on a par with Paul Valéry. Retired from the administration in 1933, Alibert devoted himself to the Théâtre de la Citée, the ancient theater in Carcassonne, of which he became director in 1930.Bibliography: "Correspondance d'André Gide et de François-Paul Alibert : 1907-1950", edition established, presented and annotated by Claude Martin (Lyon, Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1982); it lists over 400 letters from Gide to François-Paul Alibert.