Gros & Delettrez
64
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VARIOT Jean (1881-1962). French scholar, essayist, novelist …
See original version (French)
64
-
VARIOT Jean (1881-1962). French scholar, essayist, novelist …
See original version (French)
Estimate €150 - €200
Voluntary lot
Description
VARIOT Jean (1881-1962). French scholar, essayist, novelist and playwright. Small autograph manuscript on the United States.
ca 1920-1930.
11 numbered leaves recto verso in small in-8 format. Erasures and corrections. Legible handwriting.
Unpublished and critical reflections on the United States. The author, Jean James Joseph Gaston, known as Jean Variot (1881-1962), revisits the comments made by the Académie de Lyon in 1782, which wondered whether "the discovery of America has been useful or harmful to mankind". He began his remarks by openly criticising the thinking behind the question, taking as an example the supposedly hostile relations between Spain and America: "The cruelty attributed to the Spaniards must be one of those lies of political origin of the same order as the lies uttered by the aforementioned school against the splendid past of France...". He deflects by evoking the "qualities" of the Americans of the South, "men of an old race, who have the qualities of old races, but for the U.S.A. the Yankees (...) it is difficult to say as much...".
Then the author asserts his categorical position: "one name will be mentioned straight away, Wilson (...) whom the statesmen responsible for European affairs considered to be the arbiter of the world (...) because Wilson was and is a madman, and this madman was convenient; he was the screen for a whole mass of voters...".
In the end, Variot tries to persuade his reader: "Americans who love France, and there are some, think exactly what I have just said. That's precisely why they love France!
Probably written after the 14-18 War and Wilson's Fourteen Points for Peace, then President of the USA... Variot, a folklorist and lover of Alsace, ended up collaborating with the Germans, having started out as an anti-Dreyfusard. In 1910 he published his first novel, La Très véridique histoire de deux gredins, a portrait of the Dreyfusard milieu, followed in 1913 by Les Hasards de la guerre.
ANTI-AMERICANISM.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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