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424
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PERRAULT, Charles - The Mirror or the Metamorphosis of Orant…
See original version (French)
424
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PERRAULT, Charles - The Mirror or the Metamorphosis of Orant…
See original version (French)
Estimate €5,000
Voluntary lot
Description
PERRAULT, Charles - The Mirror or the Metamorphosis of Orante. Paris, Charles de Sercy, 1661. Pet. in-12, 66 pp, (1) f., paper a little yellowed, 18th c. marbled fawn calf, smooth spine decorated.
LEVER 308. TCH V, 161. First edition of Perrault's first published tale, unknown to all bibliographers before Lucien Scheler. The text was reprinted in the Recueil of 1675. ''J'ai vendu l'originale à M. Tannery'' (Note added by Lucien Scheler in the reprint of the Tchémerzine). It was bought by the Bibliothèque Nationale, after the Tannery sale of 4 to 6 May 1954. Another copy will go on sale on 18 October 2019 at Alde, belonging to the Albert-Jean Guibert library. This would be the third known copy. ''This is the story - of Venetian origin - of Orante, a gentleman who makes portraits, and of his very chaste love affair with a very pretty young lady called Calliste. She never tires of the improvised and flattering portraits he paints of her. But one day she fell ill - with smallpox - and her lover sent back her disfigured image. Furious, she hits him with an awl and Orante shatters into a thousand pieces, sending back not one, but a thousand portraits of her ugliness. Love appears, glues the pieces back together and turns Orante into a mirror. Love looks at himself, inspects himself, appreciates himself and falls in love with himself" (Ed. des Contes, Gallimard, 1981).
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
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