Léon HENNIQUE. Autograph manuscript signed, Esther Brandès, - Lot 437

Léon HENNIQUE. Autograph manuscript signed, Esther Brandès, [1887]; 33, 23 and 33 pages small in-4 (23 x18cm) in 3 sewn quires. Complete manuscript of this play in 3 acts, first performed at the Théâtre Libre on November 11, 1887. Published by Tresse et Stock in 1887, the play was dedicated to André Antoine, who had staged it at his Théâtre Libre, and played the male lead André Morel, whose wife Louise Morel was played by Mlle Sylviac, while Mlle Barny played Esther Brandès. André Morel, a good bourgeois who married a young girl in his forties, falls seriously ill: "The slightest emotion must kill him; the doctor tells his sister-in-law - an old maid, this one, living with the household. An enigmatic person indeed, this black Esther Brandès; black in clothes and hair, and almost black in face and soul. The word of the enigma, however, if we have guessed it, is love; but the love in question is nothing less than all sensibility concentrated for the benefit of a single being - the little sister - by the strongest feminine will imaginable, in the harshest naturalness that the Hebrew race can produce: Esther Brandès, in order to bring up her youngest daughter, has suffocated her own heart; having brought her up, she has married her; having married her, she is not yet satisfied: she had dreamed for this young head, on whom she has deferred her right to happiness, a more beautiful match. And this man, whose selfishness is continually exerted and reinforced by his illness, becomes a more sullen companion every day" (Louis Ganderax). Esther succeeds in provoking the emotion that kills André. The manuscript, in brown ink, contains a number of erasures and corrections.