BAUDELAIRE (Charles). - POE (Edgar Allan). Extraordinary sto - Lot 4

  2. Result
  3. BAUDELAIRE (Charles). - POE (Edgar Allan). Extraordinary sto - Lot 4
  4. Lot n° 4 
Lot n° 4
Go to lot
Estimation :
4000 - 5000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 26 000EUR
BAUDELAIRE (Charles). - POE (Edgar Allan). Extraordinary sto - Lot 4
BAUDELAIRE (Charles). - POE (Edgar Allan). Extraordinary stories. Paris, Michel Lévy frères, 1856. In-18, xxxi-(one blank)-330-(2 of which the last blank) pp. half purple leather, spine smooth threaded and decorated with flowers, speckled edges, first leaf with brittle fastenings, slight spotting in the upper margin of the pages, rare freckles (period binding), volume placed in a cardboard case by Julie Nadot. ORIGINAL EDITION, of which no large paper was made. Copy from the presses of Louis-Simon Crété in Corbeil. AUTOGRAPHICALLY SIGNED ENVOILED: "to Mr. J. Cohen, Ch. Baudelaire" (on the title page). BAUDELAIRE HERE MAINTAINS HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE NEWSPAPER LE PAYS, WHERE, FROM 1854 TO 1856, HE PUBLISHED SEVERAL TEXTS BY EDGAR POE. The lawyer and publicist Joseph Cohen (1817-1899) was, among others, the editor-in-chief of this semi-official organ of the imperial regime from the end of 1853 to the end of 1856, which welcomed various literary collaborations and where Barbey d'Aurevilly, a friend of Baudelaire's, served as critic. Although Le Pays refused to publish Barbey's article in favour of Les Fleurs du mal in 1857, it did publish the same article on Les Paradis artificiels in 1860. In 1865, Baudelaire would still think of this newspaper to place one of his texts. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE RECOGNIZED IN EDGAR POE A BRILLIANT BROTHER OF "GUIGNON". When, in 1848, he published his first translation of Edgar Poe (1809-1849) in La Liberté de la presse, he saw in him only a late follower of the illuminism of the late 18th century. He soon came to a more accurate understanding of the work of this complete author (critic, novelist and poet), recognized himself in it, and from then on devoted himself to it with boundless admiration. Thus, in 1853, he praised his "genius" to Auguste Poulet_x0002_Malassis, and in 1856 promised Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve to return "to the supernatural character of his poetry and tales". HE DEVOTED A GREAT DEAL OF HIS LITERARY WORK TO THE TRANSLATION OF EDGAR POE'S WORKS. He first chose tales and some poems which, published in periodicals from 1852 to 1855, were collected in two volumes, Histoire extraordinaires (1856), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (1857), and then gave Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym (1858), Eureka (1863) and Histoires grotesques et sérieux (1865). All these volumes were his most profitable literary works. THROUGH HIS TRANSLATIONS AND CRITICAL WORK, HE COULD JUSTLY BOAST OF HAVING "BRANCHED EDGAR POE'S REPUTATION IN PARIS" (letter to Eugène Pelletan, 17 March 1854). He was certainly not the first to take an interest in the texts of the great American author: Isabelle Meunier, Adolphe Borghers, William Hughes, Amédée Pichot, Émile Forgues or Gustave Brunet gave translations in reviews or volumes from 1844. On the other hand, he distinguished himself by the breadth and sincerity of his translations, and by the fact that he accomplished in parallel an admirable critical work on Edgar Poe: he indeed conducted active research, obtained useful information from the Parisian American William Wilberforce Mann, among others, and wrote three successive studies, the first published in 1852 in the Revue de Paris, the second and third in prefaces to the Histoires extraordinaires (1856) and the LIVRES & AUTOGRAPHES JEUDI 29 AVRIL 2021 9Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (1857) respectively. Here he offered some of his finest pages of literary criticism: "If you add to this impeccable vision of the true, a real infirmity in certain circumstances, an exquisite delicacy of sense which a false note tortured, a fineness of taste which everything except exact proportion revolted, an insatiable love of the Beautiful, which had assumed the power of a morbid passion, you will not be surprised that for such a man life became a hell, and that he ended badly, you will admire that he was able to last so long" (p. xi of this volume).
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue