Magnificent and long manuscript consisting of one hundred and forty-six verses – in perfect condition – of his poem The mouse at a judge’s house published in his collection Elegies and New Poems (Ladvocat. 1825).
3.500€
Marceline DESBORDES-VALMORE (1786.1859)
Autograph manuscript – The mouse at a judge's house.
Six quarto pages in brown ink.
No place or date [1823-24]
A magnificent and lengthy manuscript, comprising one hundred and forty-six lines—in perfect condition—of his poem " The Mouse at a Judge's House," published in his collection " Élégies et Poésies nouvelles" (Ladvocat, 1825). The manuscript contains fourteen unpublished lines (reprinted in later editions) as well as numerous variants from the first printed edition of 1825.
_______________________________________________________________________
The mouse at a judge's house
Trembling, trapped, and barely breathing,
imprudent departure from the maternal care unit,
dreaming of his last hour to the sole sound of his chain
A young mouse was seeing the dawn.
Within the narrow wire mesh that holds her prisoner,
passed on the brilliant light from a torch,
She shudders, listens: a peaceful silence,
succeeds the movement that chilled her with fear,
and an old wall, hidden beneath thick curtains,
Then came this humble and gentle lament:
….
She fell silent. The judge then said: Hey! Quick!
She is trapped, hurry and come to her.
strangle this poor little girl;
I don't like to see people suffer.
_______________________________________________________________________
To the sorrows she experienced in her youth—a family ruined by the Revolution, an odyssey to Guadeloupe from which she returned orphaned—was added later a profound romantic disappointment caused by Hyacinthe Thabaud. Several of the compositions in Élégies et Poésies nouvelles are haunted by the obsessive image of this man.
The reader might be tempted to find in this poem, where a judge—a symbol of authority, power, and harshness—becomes the executioner of a poor, trapped, and pleading mouse, a memory of Marceline's tormenting lover and an echo of her own suffering. The poet lends her voice to all the weak and the destitute, sensitive to all human suffering, which she expresses in strikingly simple phrases, such as this evocation of death, " the formidable enemy of all that breathes ."
Formerly in the Alexandrine de Rothschild collection (sale of February 26, 1969, lot 25)
Sickles Sale. November 10, 1990 (No. 1096).