Charles BAUDELAIRE juggles between Edgar Poe and his prose poems.

Charles Baudelaire (1821.1867)

Autographed letter signed to Louis Marcelin.

Two octavo pages on letterhead from the Grand Miroir hotel in Brussels

Autograph address. Missing on the 4th ^sheet without affecting the text.

Brussels. July 4, 1864.

Unpublished letter to the Pléiade correspondence.

"I was forced to temporarily abandon prose poems ."

A magnificent and important letter from the poet, successively evoking his lectures on Edgar Allan Poe, and the momentarily interrupted writing of his Little Prose Poems in favor of his pamphlet against Belgium.

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"Dear Sir, here is the manuscript I promised so long ago, and completely revised. I kept it here for two months because I intended to give lectures on Edgar Allan Poe , and I needed my entire work before me. As we agreed, you may cut wherever you wish, and I again recommend the proofs to you."

Now, I want to speak to you again about Mr. Jousset [Auguste Jousset, the innkeeper in Dieppe who financially supported Baudelaire], whom I am entrusting to deliver these two packages to you, and to whom I owe money. It would please him and do me a great service to give him the approximate value of the three pieces. If this is a breach of established practice in your country, then by all means, break with tradition for me ; I will know how to thank you. We had calculated that the work, comprising 1300 to 1500 lines, should represent a sum of 325 to 375 ^francs , perhaps a little more.

I had to temporarily set aside the prose poems because I want to make use of my trip and I've started a work on Belgium . I have to go to Namur, Liège, Ghent, Bruges, and Antwerp. Everywhere, magnificent monuments, and abominable people. – but towards the end of the month, I'll return to the poems , and I'll make a selection for you; that is to say, I'll choose those that, by their nature, can be adapted to your Review , like the two you kept.

If you have anything to write to me, I will never be away from Brussels for more than three days. But in closing, I ask you again to do everything you can to ease Mr. Jousset's suffering. Please accept, dear Sir, the assurance of my highest consideration.

Charles Baudelaire. Hôtel du Grand Miroir. Rue de la Montagne. Brussels.

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In April 1864, heavily in debt, Baudelaire left for Belgium to undertake a lecture tour, but his talents as an enlightened art critic met with little success. He then settled in Brussels and, in June 1864, began writing a scathing pamphlet against his short-lived adopted country. * La Belgique déshabillée * (Belgium Undressed) remained unfinished. The first excerpts were published posthumously in 1887, and then in its entirety in 1952 under the title * Pauvre Belgique* (Poor Belgium ).

. Émile Planat, known as Louis Marcelin (1825-1887), founder in 1862 and director of La Vie parisienne, had welcomed several texts by Baudelaire into his review: Chapter XI of Le Peintre de la vie moderne (April 23, 1864), two prose poems: Les Yeux des pauvres and Les Projets (July 2 and August 13, 1864) and, through the efforts of Jules Claretie, the sonnet Sur les débuts d'Amina Boschetti (October 1, 1864).

The Spleen of Paris , also known as Petits Poèmes en prose (Little Prose Poems ) , was published posthumously in 1869, at the initiative of Charles Asselineau and Théodore de Banville, in the fourth volume of Complete Works , published by Michel Lévy. The fifty poems comprising this collection were written between 1857 and 1864.

Provenance: Christie's Paris sale. April 30, 2014. Lot 74.