VIOLLET-LE-DUC (Emmanuel-Louis-Nicolas) - Lot 229

VIOLLET-LE-DUC (Emmanuel-Louis-Nicolas) Born in Paris. 1781-1857. Poet, philologist and bibliophile. Father of architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. L.A.S. "Viollet Le Duc" to Messieurs Chevreau and Pichat. Paris, March 2, 1844. 1 1/2 pages in-4. Inscription with postmarks. Brown wax seal. BELLE LETTRE de remerciements pour l'envoi d'un recueil de vers Les Voyageuses que Léon Laurent-Pichat publié en 1844 à la suite d'un voyage qu'il fait en compagnie dHenri Chevreau les menant de l'Italie à la Grèce jusqu'à la Syrie :...Depuis de longues années je ne lis que de vieux vers, et je vous avouerai qu'ils m'avaient un peu dégouté des nouveaux. You have made me reconsider my unjust prejudices, gentlemen. I thought that the strangeness of language had (sic) totally replaced the harmonious expression of the naïve or noble ideas of our fathers; you have proved to me that concise, correct and full verse can still convey true, abundant and fresh thoughts. I congratulate you and thank you... In return, he makes available a work he has just published ...on French pacts prior to the 18th century (...). Léon LAURENT-PICHAT (1823-1886) was raised in Saint-Mandé, in the boarding school run by Henri Chevreau's father, and attended the Lycée Charlemagne. Victor Hugo's protection facilitated his access to literature: his first collection of verse, Les Voyageuses, is the fruit of a literary pilgrimage he undertook with his friend Henri Chevreau. With Louis Ulbach, Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye and Maxime du Camp, Laurent-Pichat revived the Revue de Paris as a "poetry revival"; he became its manager in 1853, and it was in this capacity that he was taken to court in 1857, alongside his printer Auguste-Alexis Pillet and Gustave Flaubert, in the trial to have Madame Bovary condemned as an affront to public decency: Laurent-Pichat had published fragments of her in his revue.