Lot n° 126
Estimation :
6000 - 8000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 17 920EUR
Camille SAINT-SAËNS. 52 L.A.S., 2 autograph... - Lot 126 - Ader
Camille SAINT-SAËNS. 52 L.A.S., 2 autograph notes and 3 telegrams, 1918-1921, to Pierre Aguétant (one to Madame); 77 pages in-4, 36 pages in-8 and 6 pages in-12, 2 envelopes, dry stamps with his monogram, several hotel headers (small flaws to some letters, one torn and repaired).
Important friendly correspondence to a young poet, partly unpublished, with precious confidences, during the last four years of his life.
Pierre Aguétant (1890-1940), a young poet from the Bugey region, sent his first collections to Saint-Saëns in 1918 with "the fixed, haunting idea of seeing some of [his] unequal lines set to music by the illustrious composer. Thus was born this almost paternal friendship with the young poet; the composer set two of Aguétant's poems to music, and he wrote a preface letter for his collection À fleur de chair (1919).
In 1938, with Alsatia, Pierre Aguétant published a Saint-Saëns par lui-même, made up of numerous extracts from the letters he had received and from his interviews with the master, arranged not chronologically but thematically: the same letter can be divided into two, three or even five quotations, in various parts of the book; sometimes, he retained only two short passages from a letter, leaving the rest unpublished; and three of the chapters provided for remained unpublished, one of which was on religion. Aguétant noted with a light pencil line on the letters the passages to be quoted. About thirty letters quoted in the book have not been found. We can only give here a glimpse of this very beautiful correspondence.
1918. - Cannes, April 14. "Modest verses... great honour... our most illustrious musician... [...] It is not to a young man of 82 that one should say such things. At my age, you see, one has seen so much that one does not let oneself be easily influenced... I'm more easily touched by simplicity. In short, you have a lot of talent, you are charming, and you have the art, which I have always lacked, of knowing how to weave garlands. I am indifferent to these, but I am not insensitive to either talent or amiability. What does it matter if some details are not to my taste! In front of such ravishing, even beautiful things, I have only to bow down. As a nature, I would rather be closer to Clemenceau than to Massenet. I do not regret it. And if people say that I have a bad temper, I assure you that I don't care. So take me as I am"... Quoting Le Poème du Bugey, he tells the poet of his admiration and sympathy... - April 18th. He reads La Tour d'ivoire, which delights him "by the accuracy and finesse of its thoughts, by the beauty of its expression. What more do you need? That I should kiss your knees, like Priam did Achilles'? Old age is so little compared to youth and poetry! You have them with all their gifts and their adorable defects. At my age, one has only defects which are not adorable"... He is thinking of setting L'Angélus to music... - May 1st. He sends the two melodies [L'Angélus and Où nous avons aimé] with the advice not to let them be copied, as they belong to "the Durand company, which has secured possession of my works by a treaty. In compositions of this kind, the verses are not for me a pretext for music; I am like the lapidary who sets a diamond and nothing more. It follows that these pieces need to be said as well as sung and have no value, separated from the text. So they have everything to lose when they are performed by singers, as there are so many now, who think only of the sound and not of the word, and do not make it reach the listener's ear. For these pieces, "the diction comes before the voice; with a beautiful voice and no diction, there would be nothing left"... - 4 May. He urges his poet to "give up following the pernicious example of poets who see only the harmony of the verse and disdain the qualities you have stated, such as Mme de Noailles, such as Mallarmé who had come to the point of no longer speaking French"; and he cites the example of Victor Hugo as a great poet.... - 9 May. Lesson in prosody on ée and é, and "the finesses of the French language"; for it is a barbarism to "say the verses like prose"... - May 13. "When one says what one thinks, one has twenty chances against one of obtaining no other result than to make an enemy; but this unique chance of success creates for me a duty which I never fail to perform without concealing the inconvenience and knowing perfectly well the harm I do to myself. [...] When I make compliments, they can be taken seriously. As I was a child prodigy, my mother had a terrible fear of adulations and warned me from the start against their falsity; and I have never believed compliments except as a matter of course. I preferred criticism, and I was well advised to do so"... - 15 May. He resumes
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