Apollinaire, Guillaume
French poet (1880–1918). "M. Anatole France et les Arts – Écrivains d'art – Futurisme". Manuscript signed with autograph title and corrections. N. p., [October 1913]. Small 4to. 9 pp. French manuscript on paper.
$ 6,071 / 5.500 €
(47527)
Charming manuscript for his column "La Vie anecdotique" in the review section of the Mercure de France that he wrote from 1911 to his death in 1918. The article that was published in the October 1913 issue of the Mercure, vol. CV, no. 392 is divided into three sections. The first concerns Anatole France and his research of publication "concerning painters of the Revolution and the Empire" in Parisian bookshops and his support of a Catalan engraver named Louis Jou: " M. Anatole France ne protège pas seulement les peintres de la Révolution et de l’Empire, il va lancer un jeune graveur catalan, M.
Louis Jou, qui, après avoir frappé en vain à un grand nombre de portes parisiennes, décida enfin de soumettre à son auteur préféré quelques bois qu’il avait gravés pour illustrer les opinions de Jérôme Coignard […]". - The second section offers charming portraits of art critics ahead of the opening of the Salon d'Automne: "It is perhaps not without interest to fix the physiognomy of a few of those who have imposed their particular conception of the plastic arts on the public. This year, we will no longer see Marshal Niel, who has withdrawn from the struggle. We will no longer hear from this kindly old man, who once lent Baudelaire half a louis […] M. Étienne Charles will patiently pass countless times through all the rooms of the Salon in search of a little painting he can't find; he is conscience itself, good-natured and good-humored. For the hundredth time, he'll ask me to explain Cubism to him […] We probably won't be seeing André Salmon this year, a poet with the disillusioned look of a Habsburg. He now reserves his critical activity for special artistic events." (transl.) - Finally, Apollonaire offers an anecdote concerning the Futurists Ardengo Soffici and Carlo Carrà: "Mr. Ardengo Soffici, who last year rallied to Futurism, writes a Diary in Lacerba, published in Florence, for which he recently received the following registered letter from his friends, which I translate: "[…] Your Diary is appallingly sentimental despite the great genius it contains […] we conclude by affirming that you constitute an excessively serious case of spermatic engorgement and cardiac diarrhea […].".