VERLAINE (Paul). - Lot 222

VERLAINE (Paul). Born in Metz. 1844-1896. French writer and poet. L.A.S. "P. Verlaine" to "Cher Monsieur". Vouziers (Ardennes), s.d. [24, ca. 1884]. 1 page in-8. ...I haven't been able to read your other 2 novels If you only knew what terrible worries I have! But from this evening I'll be acquainted with your exquisite books, which I judge such after Songes lu...Settled with his mother on the Malval farm in the Ardennes, Verlaine gave himself up to drunkenness. Elisa Verlaine, anxious to protect her son, donated the farm to him with a clause stipulating that it could not be seized. Verlaine did not spare her his excesses of brutality, which brought him before the Vouziers court (in February 1885). On March 8, 1885, Verlaine put a definitive end to this Ardennes parenthesis and sold the house before returning to Paris.Songes, is a novel by Francis Poictevin (1854-1904), dedicated to Maupassant and published by Kistemaeckers in Brussels in 1884. Poictevin had previously published La Robe du moine (1882) and Ludine (1883). A dandy, an aesthete and a disciple of Edmond de Goncourt, Poictevin gradually drifted into madness. Forgotten, he was later admired by Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard and André Breton. Verlaine devoted a monograph to him in Les Hommes daujourdhui, no. 424, 1894.