MONTESQUIOU (Robert de). - Lot 169

MONTESQUIOU (Robert de). Born in Paris. 1855-1921. Man of letters, "insolent dandy", he served as a model for des Esseintes in Huysmans' À Rebours and for Proust in La Recherche du temps perdu for Baron de Charlus. L.A.S. "Comte Robert de Montesquiou" to "cher confrère et ami" [Robert Brussel]. "Palais rose" [Le Vésinet], June 14, 1912. 5 pp. 1/2 in-4. Stamped envelope. ...I think I'll be sorry to cause you the slightest trouble, by a declamation of these gestures, and for something I have no concern about... He explains: ...For if your intimate testimony is extremely pleasing to me, its publication, I repeat, adds nothing to it for me. I'm used to injustices; better still, I love them, being convinced that, on the one hand, they carry within them the punishment, more or less imminent, of those who commit them. On the other, the final exaltation of those to whom they are committed...He invites her to come back and see him, and adds a long postscript about a Monsieur Guitharel to whom he wrote...Is he a touchy, off-putting, unaccommodating man? It seems to me that I spoke to him in the right way. Descendant of Blaise de Montluc, Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac is a writer now known for appearing in the works of others. Proust saw in him a "teacher of beauty", and he proclaimed himself - as the title of one of his poetic collections, the expression coming from Flaubert, in Salammbô - "le Chef des odeurs suaves". He is said to be both the model for Des Esseintes, in À rebours, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, whom he never knew, and for Baron de Charlus, in the work of Proust, to whom he was close (we also see him in Monsieur de Phocas by Jean Lorrain and Chantecler by Edmond Rostand). During his lifetime, he was already a household name, both in the art world and in the world at large, where he exercised his Baudelairian "aristocratic pleasure of displeasing": he was painted by James Whistler, Antonio La Gandara and Giovanni Boldini, photographed by Nadar, drawn by Caran d'Ache on the front cover of Figaro. Familiar with Gustave Moreau, he was a renowned critic. In music, he supported Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré. Robert de Montesquiou lived there from 1908 until his death in 1921.