A moving letter from Max Jacob to his friend Kees van Dongen. 1921.

Max JACOB (1876.1944)

Autographed letter signed to his friend Kees Van Dongen.

A page in-4°. Autograph envelope.

Presbytery of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. July 5, 1921.

“I write prose and verse and […] I attend services which are in pure Gregorian chant.”

A moving letter from Max Jacob who, having just retired to the presbytery of St Benoît, far from the artistic bustle of Paris, remembers, with nostalgia, his old Montmartre friendship with the Fauvist painter.

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" Dear old friend. I'm so far away. Thank you! My dear friend, thank you for thinking of me, so far away in spirit from Paris. I'm working like a horse. The party will be lovely, and I'm a little sorry to miss it; a little sorry, very little. There are too many parties in my life and too little work. I'm making up for it now."

I am in a garden between a presbytery that resembles the cottage at the Trianon and a basilica in the middle of a field, considered the most beautiful Romanesque church in France. It matters little to me. I write prose and verse, and since there is a pilgrimage here, I attend the services, which are in pure Gregorian chant, and the processions .

My compliments to you and your wife, this long-standing friendship that you know so well. Max Jacob.

Do you remember when Clément Vautel was the artistic director of Le Rire, and we used to meet in the anteroom, you in boots and me God knows how?

If you are thinking of the poor, send your collection to the priest of St. Benoît (Loiret), who has no shortage of suffering to alleviate.

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A year after the death of his friend Modigliani, Max Jacob decided to renounce artificial paradises and, in June 1921, on the advice of Abbé Weil, went into exile in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire to find peace and immerse himself in work: "I came here to crush myself before God," he wrote.

In 1928, tired of his spiritual retreat, "which had beautified his soul," he returned to Paris, penniless. Eight years later, in 1936, he rushed back to Saint-Benoît, "as a fisherman."

It was on this land that the Orléans Gestapo arrested him on February 24, 1944. On the train taking him to Drancy, he wrote a final note to the priest of Saint-Benoît: "I have faith in God and in my friends. I thank Him for the martyrdom that is beginning." He died a few days later in the infirmary of the Camp de la Muette, on March 5, 1944.