GONCOURT Edmond de (1822-1896). Autograph manuscript, Journal, 1872-1877; 218 le…
Description

GONCOURT Edmond de (1822-1896).

Autograph manuscript, Journal, 1872-1877; 218 leaves in-4 (27,2 x 21,7 cm), in 6 volumes, bound in mustard morocco, double gilt fillet framing the boards stamped with the Hugo EGO HUGO motto, inner gilt scroll, gilt edges (Lortic) Manuscript of six years of the famous Journal des frères Goncourt. This manuscript, carefully copied by Edmond, for the publication of volume V of the Journal des Goncourt. Mémoires de la vie littéraire chez Charpentier in 1891, preceded by a serial publication in L'Écho de Paris from November 30, 1890 to January 16, 1891. The autograph manuscript is carefully copied in black or violet ink on the front of sheets of ivory or buff paper, leaving a large margin on the left. There are cross-outs and corrections, and several passages have been crossed out. The leaves were cut into small strips numbered in blue pencil for the composition of the text at the newspaper's printing house, then carefully reassembled (some strips are missing). Each bound volume corresponds to a year. I. 1872. Pg. 1-45 (with a moving spout added to fol. 44: "End of October. With the years, the emptiness left to me by the death of my brother, becomes greater. Nothing pushes back in me the tastes which attached me to the life. Literature no longer speaks to me. I have a distance for the men, for the society. At times, I am haunted by the temptation to sell my collections, to escape from Paris, to buy in some corner of France, favorable to plants and trees, a large space of land, where I would live all alone, as a fierce gardener"). II. Year 1873. Pag. 47 to 65 (including a f. 48 bis). III. Year 1874. Pag. 67 to 107. IV. Year 1875. Pag. 109 to 162. V. Year 1876. Pag. 1-2 to 36 VI. 1877. Pag. 1 to 24. Marginal addition, dated September 1st on Gustave Doré and the burial of Thiers. The manuscript opens on the account, on January 2, 1872, of the "Dîner des Spartiates", and the remarks of the general Schmitz. Further on, there is mention of Flaubert, Théophile and Judith Gautier, Princess Mathilde, Ziem, Tourguéniev, Zola, Victor Hugo, etc. The year 1873 begins, on January 22, with a dinner at Thiers'. Then there is talk of Flaubert, Sardou, Alphonse Daudet, Gavarni, Rops, etc. 1874 opens with this melancholic note (January 1st): "I throw into the fire the almanac of the past year, and with my feet on the andirons, I see blackening in the flutter of small tongues of fire, all this long series of grey days, deprived of happiness, of dreams of ambition, of days amused by small silly things". Then there is talk of Flaubert, Dumas fils, Balzac, Labiche, Degas, the premiere of Flaubert's Candidat, Daudet, Zola, Princess Mathilde, etc. 1875 begins (January 8) with a long note after an illness: "For two or three days, I have been beginning to live again, and my personality is slowly returning to the vague and fluid and empty being that great illnesses do. I have been very ill. I almost died. By dint of walking, last month, a cold in the mud and the thaw of Paris, one fine morning I could not get up. For three days, I remained with a terrible fever and a beating brain. On Christmas Day, I had to [go] in search of a doctor, indicated by the concierge of the villa. The doctor declared that I had a fluxion of the chest, and made me put a vesicatory as big as a kite on my back. For eleven days I lived without closing my eyes, always moving and always talking, with the awareness that I was delirious, but I couldn't help it. This delirium was a kind of mad race in all the stores of trinkets of Paris, where I bought everything, everything, everything, and took it away myself. There was also in my troubled mind a distortion of my room, which had become larger and moved down from the first to the first floor. I told myself that it was impossible, and yet I saw it as such. One day, I was inwardly very agitated, it seemed to me that the Japanese sword, which is always on my chimney, was not there any more: I imagined that one feared an attack of madness on my part, that one was afraid of me. In this delirium, always a little conscious, the man of letters wanted to analyze himself, to write himself. Unfortunately the notes, which I found on a notebook, are completely illegible"... Then there is mention of Flaubert, Tourguéniev, Zola, Desboutin, Daudet, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Cernuschi, Gambetta, Barye, etc. A brief note opens 1876, on January 1: "I am now entering the coming year with terror. I am afraid of all the bad things it has in store for my peace of mind, my fortune, my health". Then he talks about Daudet, Fromentin, Morny, Dumas fils, Cernuschi, Tourguéniev, Hugo, Renan, Flaubert, Huysmans, etc. At the death of Jules de Goncourt in 1870, Edmond continued alone this vast fresco of the life

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GONCOURT Edmond de (1822-1896).

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