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an old handwritten letter with a black ink writing on a piece of paperan old manuscript with writing on it and a handwritten page
BOISGIRARD - ANTONINI

94 - SEGALEN (VICTOR)
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Estimate €800 - €1,000
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Description
SEGALEN (VICTOR) A very fine autograph letter signed ‘Victor Segalen’, Brest, 6 November 1907, 4 pp. in-8, to his friend Émile Magne, a document of great interest for understanding the writer’s aesthetic development. Written in Brest, whilst Segalen was still a naval doctor, it bears witness to a pivotal moment in his career, on the cusp of the emergence of his literary vision. ‘My dear friend, first of all, thank you for the kind words you have said to me, both about our friendship and about my book. Thank you also for the criticisms—or rather, for the fundamental critique: it is invaluable because it forces me to justify myself fully to you and to myself, or at least to attempt to do so. / Admittedly, my cosmogonic legends in Part 2 are too distinct and have a markedly different tone from the narrative that frames them; this is somewhat—if not entirely—intentional. Not for the sake of ethnographic didacticism! May God or the Māori gods themselves spare me from that, my dear Friend! But simply because I wished to imbue this second part with the detachment, the solemnity, and the somewhat conventional rigidity of the myths and traditions that have been handed down. Does this halt the drama and disrupt the narrative flow? So much the better; I need to gain twenty years in time and thousands of leagues across the sea; I need to separate the two acts—Old Tahiti and New Tahiti—with a sort of superphonic interlude in which the Ancient Soul, before dying, reappears in its entirety. Hence the very transformation of the prose, which becomes rhythmic, laden with repetitions and deliberate cadences; as if, by dint of passing through its harsh memories, it retained their rough and unpolished contours. That is the full extent of my defence. / As for my ‘Clinicians of Letters’, I am touched by the memory you retain of them, but I would rather you forget them: they bear witness to a period in my intellectual life when I was able to dream of an alliance between scientific research and literature; I therefore disavow them, at this time when I no longer tolerate any compromise regarding the work of art, regarded as the only one that exists, the only real one, and entirely self-sufficient. / I shall be in Paris for four days around the 15th of this month. I very much hope to see you, to offer my respectful regards to Madame Magne, and to resume at once our pleasant conversations of old. Yours most warmly […] A very enthusiastic thank you for the news of Madame de La Suje[?] and her circle. I am certain it will be a great pleasure.’ Here, Segalen responds with remarkable lucidity to his correspondent’s remarks concerning his work, most likely *Les Immémoriaux*. In it, he defends a bold stylistic choice: that of introducing into the narrative mythical passages that are deliberately hieratic and detached from the main narrative, in order to give voice to Māori traditions. This reflection sheds valuable light on his conception of exoticism, not merely as a backdrop, but as an attempt to recreate otherness. This letter also reveals a decisive stance: Segalen, through his rejection of the ‘literary clinicians’, asserts a demand for the absolute autonomy of the work of art. This can be seen as the emergence of a demanding aesthetic that would find its full realisation in his later works.
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About the sale Charity sale in aid of the Petits Frères Des Pauvres charity
Auction location
Auction time 10/25/2026 at 10:00 AM
Pictures credits:
Boisgirard Antonini
See original version (French)
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