André GIDE - Letter signed to the writer Louis-Raymond Lefèvre.

Andre Gide (1869.1951).

Letter signed to the writer Louis-Raymond Lefèvre.

A page in-4°. Paris. June 26, 1928.

“Dear friend, Quickly a quick word, just to shake your hand in passing. I'm leaving Paris in a few days and fear I won't be able to find time to see you until then, because I'm terribly busy. Urgent need for rest and quiet work. Don't worry about Baylac. Take your time. The important thing is to know that you are interested in him and that you are not looking at his notebooks reluctantly. But, naturally, this task must give way to other more pressing ones. I received a very kind Dutch letter (I don't really remember from whom), the result of your intervention, and I responded immediately (I don't remember if it was Mrs Gelikowsky). But here I am, for various reasons, forced to postpone this trip. These first steps will nevertheless be useful later, and I carefully keep all the letters and information concerning the Dutch East Indies, in a separate file, to use them again in due time. »

Gide mentions the case of the notebooks of Jean Pierre Baylac, a young shepherd, who died at the age of 20, an erotomaniac and a zoophile. He recorded his actions over the days, and left around sixty notebooks and some twenty thousand pages. Gide employed Lefèvre to transcribe and type these notebooks, of which he wanted to produce a small edition, on the advice of François Paul Alibert and Roger Martin du Gard.