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a handwritten letter from a man who is writing a poem
Ader

338 - Maurice Saillant, known as CURNONSKY (1872–1956).
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Estimate €300 - €400
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Description
Maurice Saillant, known as CURNONSKY (1872–1956). Autograph manuscript, *Bonheur du jour*, [c. 1895]; two and a half pages in-4, and one page in-8. A book project for Willy, for which Curnonsky was one of the ‘ghostwriters’. ‘The Baron de Loguivy – aged fifty – very well preserved – a former officer, widower of a very pretty woman whom he loved madly but who did not return his love – retired, after losing his fortune, to a country house (in Brittany or the Basque Country) […] He left behind in Paris a charming mistress, Mariette Nordy – half courtesan, half ham – aged thirty-five – very intelligent and with a head for business”, to whom he writes regularly, recounting his adventures: ‘It’s exactly *Les Liaisons dangereuses* turned on its head’… He concludes: ‘She’ll set the local coquette on the pretentious dandy, who will be duly ruined, etc. (us today). Thus the balance will be restored and, as Mademoiselle Anglochère says in *Flipote* [a comedy by Jules Lemaitre, 1895] – everything will return to normal, the true social order founded on everyone’s selfishness, baseness and vice. And it will be a fine moral tale in action. All the letters will, of course, have a very different tone and will be found, as if by chance, in a writing desk known as ‘happiness of the day’.” At the end, an autograph note from Willy: ‘Old Cur, it’s ingenious and it “holds up” very well (I can’t say the same for my uncle). But I implore you to abandon this arbitrary and outdated form of the epistolary novel. You know, after all, that the public detests it! A compromise: a third in letters; two-thirds narrative. Does that work?”
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About the sale Letters and Autograph Manuscripts – Part II
Auction location
Auction time 10/14/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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