Lot n° 166
Estimation :
3000 - 4000
EUR
Nicolas-Edme RÉTIF DE LA BRETONNE. Autograph... - Lot 166 - Ader
Nicolas-Edme RÉTIF DE LA BRETONNE. Autograph manuscript, Paris dévoilé, [1802 ?]; 2 pages in-4 (one margin uneven).
Precious beginning of the project of a Paris dévoilé (this beginning is missing in the manuscript preserved at the BnF, Mss n.a.f. 22772, ff. 52-86; this unpublished text was published by Pierre Testud in 1990 in the n° 12 of Études rétiviennes).
The manuscript bears, under the title Paris dévoilé, and the epigraph " ô Tempora ! ô Mores ! " the subtitle : First Part / Preliminaries. It is an evocation of the Parisian underworld, followed by a criticism of Louis-Sébastien Mercier.
"Parisians, who thought they knew Paris, you will see, after reading me that you do not know it... Have you heard of Mad. Ogret & her Daughters, of Mad. Yverkop & her Innocents; of Mad. Cunégonde, & of her masterpieces which she called Ressembleuses [...] The Women of whom I speak are successors of the Pâris, this famous Woman, dead Lady of Parish, who gave such an excellent education "that an angry father, who came to seek his daughter, had to agree that she was perfectly educated and left her and proposed to send him his youngest daughter... "But which women succeeded the Pâris? This Woman of Genius, in her kind? A despicable Montigni, a scoundrel Piron [...] & so many other despicable creatures whose names would soil my pages ".
Then comes the criticism of Louis-Sébastien Mercier: "Do you think you know Paris, when you have read Mercier, this novelist, who plays the historian, who knows Paris, his homeland, as he knows Descartes, Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, & Astronomy; who speaks to you of what he has not seen [...] Also his Tableau de Paris, l'Ancien come le Nouveau, is a Novel. I, Aquilin des Escopètes [name of the narrator of the Palais-Royal, hiding Grimod de la Rynière], want to unearth Mercier, as Baillet unearthed the Saints. Let my successor Restif Labretonne, whom Chénier calls l'Emule en folie de Mercier, spare Mercier, if he wants, he can have his reasons: For me, I will not spare him!
In a footnote, Rétif makes his own praise (taken from the German novel Maurice): "Restif this truly extraordinary genius, this inconceivable appearance, in the century in which we live, does not seem to me appreciated. Never has possessed more imagination, more originality, a style more to oneself, a manner more new & more endearing"... Etc.
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