Max JACOB (1879-1944) - Lot 19

Max JACOB (1879-1944) L.A.S., Sainte-Maxime April 27, 1920, to Léonce Rosenberg; 2pages and a half large in-8. "I don't write much or to anyone because my life is that of a monk in the sun when it doesn't rain and a monk in the shelter when it does. My life is devoid of anecdote (like my friends' paintings) and as flat as the blue sea and as regular as that stupid tree called a palm tree, no doubt because of the purple ribbon. So don't be angry with me for my silence, which you share with all our friends. Sharing a silence! I think that's a bold image". He comes out of his "epistolary inertia", as Rosenberg announces a book by Galanis with a preface by Max Jacob, which he does not remember: "If I could remember, I would be very sorry, for I am determined not to write a preface to the work of my dear Galanis any more than I wrote one to that of my brother and unalterable Picasso. I will not write a preface - either out of ignorance or laziness, or for lack of real ability as a preface writer - for any painter except Max Jacob - and even then!!.... Prefaces bore me. I don't know anything about painting, or I know too much, I don't know. Besides, I'm getting dumber and dumber, and I like to sink into idiocy as if it were a refuge from perpetual, immanent unhappiness. What a vale of tears, my dear! Gris is angry with Reverdy. Reverdy no longer has a deep friend, Gris Ah still has one, that's me, and you're the second, I think Ah! poor Reverdy! what a misfortune! So much intelligence, so much wit, so much talent! he tears my heart apart"...