Maurice rostand. Autograph manuscript, Le Vice du siècle, no - Lot 272

Lot n° 272
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Estimation :
250 - 300 EUR
Maurice rostand. Autograph manuscript, Le Vice du siècle, no - Lot 272
Maurice rostand. Autograph manuscript, Le Vice du siècle, novel, 1945; 69-page fol. notebook, brown hardcover (spine missing, notebook unclipped, several ff. frayed with small tears). Draft of a novel left unfinished. The title page contains a list of twelve characters. The manuscript, which has numerous erasures and corrections, consists of a "Warning," six chapters each devoted to one of the characters, and a conclusion; the location of other chapters is only marked. The novel is set in the years before World War I, and was to feature several young people, "a very elegant and wealthy foreigner who loves women," "an eccentric woman of the world," an "impersonating actor," an "extraordinary psychological writer, who may have genius," as well as an aviator, an aristocrat, and "a Sapphic poetess." The story refers to Oscar Wilde, Jammes, Claudel, Stendhal, Balzac and Renan; a certain haunting of the Christian religion permeates it. "What you are about to read, is it really a novel? Is it not several novels that intertwine like lives? And perhaps in the end they have a meaning in this way, and that their coming together affirms. [I let my characters speak; I let them live: each one climbs a calvary at the top of which there may be nothing, but where there may be God"...
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