Louise MICHEL - Autograph letter signed to comrade Alexandre Roy.  

Louise MICHEL (1830.1905)

Autograph letter signed to comrade Alexandre Roy.  

Four pages in-4°. Co-written (on the 4th ^sheet ) with Achille Vauvelle.

Autograph envelope. London, April ^,

“You will see that I will be quite heroic too…”

Long letter from Louise Michel (completed by Achille Vauvelle) about poetry and English and French literature.

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Louise Michel promises to return to Roy her copy of a treatise on poetry, with a few pages added “ to prove that the measures banned from the treaty are as beautiful as those received there ” and gives some examples of what can be tolerated in the number of versified feet.

Then she answers several questions from Roy, about Mme Bras, about whom she speaks in her Memoirs , about her aunt, then gives her opinion on different methods for learning English, the best being “ the one which enters the most into the life of the one who studies ”, citing those of Theodore Robertson, Sanderson or François Gouin, then explaining his own method of teaching for English speakers: “ We therefore take a work that is a bit fascinating for the moment we had last year Resurrection by Tolstoy and Fertility by Zola translated into English which we were reading about in French. It was really good. This year we are doing dozens of lessons . […]. We take the twelve chapters of Ivan the Mad by Tolstoy which we translate in the same way by adding a short summary aloud in French on the reading or a judgment on the work .

She sometimes carries out a word-for-word translation, particularly of poems, also relying on works translated into English, such as Travail de Zola, or readings in French, such as Le Père Goriot by Balzac. She specifies that she plans to publish her method in England, after having given news of the Russian revolutionary Goworouchin, said Gregorieff: “ No, poor Gregorieff is not out of poverty. We advertise his Russian lessons every two or three days in the Intransigeant but he has no luck .”

It is Achille Vauvelle who completes this letter, thanking Alexandre Roy for sending a book on color photography, expressing his doubts about the use of colors which only exist through contrast: “I fear the harsh colors and the lack of harmony of the final result. ”