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ALDE

80 - CYRANO DE BERGERAC (Savinien de). Les Œuvres diverses. Paris…
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Estimate €4,000 - €5,000
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Description
CYRANO DE BERGERAC (Savinien de). Les Œuvres diverses. Paris, Charles de Sercy, 1654. - The Death of Agrippina. Ibid, 1654. 2 parts in one volume in-4, marbled calf, spine decorated, smooth edges (Binding of the period). Extremely rare first editions of two of the main works by Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655), published a year before his death and dedicated to his patron the Duc d'Arpajon. The Œuvres diverses bring together the "first follies of [his] youth", he wrote in the dedicatory epistle. They consist of two parts. The first contains the Lettres, forty-seven prose texts inspired in turn by poetry, satire and love, full of exuberance, audacity and ingenuity. The second part contains the prose comedy Le Pédant joué, a masterpiece of whimsical excess, "with a prodigious abundance of vocabulary and inexhaustible comic verve", according to René Pintard. Admired by Molière, this play gave him many happy ideas and some of his most famous scenes. The title bears the mark of Charles de Sercy and the dedicatory epistle the arms of the Duc d'Arpajon. La Mort d'Agrippine is literally impossible to find in its original edition. This tragedy by Cyrano, which we do not know for certain whether or not it was performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, was quickly banned for impiety: it is famous, in fact, for the declarations of atheism made by the conspirator Séjanus. Cyrano's play is reminiscent of La Mort de Sénèque by his friend Tristan L'Hermite, and yet, according to Antoine Adam: "However vigorous Tristan's work was, Cyrano's dominates it as a work of genius can dominate a work of great talent. Cyrano has the art of stretching situations to the extreme, of pushing passions to the point of frenzy". From the Loynel library, with bookplate. Copy without the author's portrait, which "is missing from most copies of the Œuvres diverses", according to Madeleine Alcover. The frontispiece to La Mort d'Agrippine is also missing. Upper hinge cracked, missing headpieces, corners and one box, scattered foxing and wetness; in La Mort d'Agrippine, 2 lim. ff. worn with small marginal tears and small marginal worm work on the last leaves. Having noted these defects, it should be emphasised that apparently no copy of La Mort d'Agrippine has been offered for sale since the records began, and that only three copies of the Œuvres diverses have been offered for sale since 2008 (at ALDE sales), all three of which were without the portrait. Tchemerzine-Scheler, II, 709, 704, 700.
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About the sale Antiquarian books from the 15th to the 19th century - Astronomy
Auction location
Auction time 06/24/2026 at 2:00 PM
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