Mysterious – and unpublished – letter from Charles BAUDELAIRE from Brussels.
"All these people here are so stupid that they can't even tell me the exact postage price to Madrid."
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"All these people here are so stupid that they can't even tell me the exact postage price to Madrid."
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Charles Baudelaire (1821.1867)
Signed autograph letter.
One page in-8°.
[Brussels] October 22, 1864.
Unpublished letter to the Pléiade correspondence.
“Poulet Malassis remains at 35 bis (and not 13) rue de Mercelis faubourg d’Ixelles.
I live on Rue de la Montagne, at the Hôtel du Grand Miroir. Yours sincerely, Charles Baudelaire
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"Dear Sir, I thank you most sincerely for your excellent letter. My surprise and pleasure were great. I am writing to Mr. Prévost to express my sincere gratitude. I believe I will be in France in about twenty days at the latest. I will pay you a visit and request the item in question."
Poulet Malassis lives at 35 bis (not 13) rue de Mercelis, Faubourg d'Ixelles. – I live on rue de la Montagne, at the Hôtel du Grand Miroir. Yours sincerely, Charles Baudelaire.
All these people here are so stupid that they can't even tell me the exact postage price to Madrid. »
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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 prepared a pamphlet against his short-lived host country which, in his eyes, represented a caricature of bourgeois France. The fierce Poor Belgium will remain unfinished.
Only five months after this letter, during a visit to the Saint-Loup church in Namur, on March 15, 1866, Baudelaire lost consciousness in the square. This collapse is followed by brain disorders and aphasia. The resulting hemiplegia prevented the poet from writing correctly and from March 23, 1866, his letters were only dictated.
On October 13, 1864, Auguste Poulet-Malassis, the publisher of Les Fleurs du Mal, was officially registered in Brussels at 35 bis rue de Mercelis. It was noted at that time that he was a convicted criminal, and the authorities seemed to leave him alone. Life in Brussels was less expensive than in Paris, and he found the printing industry more developed than in France.
Bibliography: Claude Pichois. Auguste Poulet-Malassis. Baudelaire's Publisher .