BAUDELAIRE Charles (1821-1867)
Signed autograph letter addressed to his mother, Mrs. Caroline AUPICK [Paris], March 29, 1862. 6 pages in-8 in brown ink on paper filled with tight handwriting.
Beautiful and long letter to his mother.
Baudelaire asks his mother to advance him money before his articles on L'Esprit et le style de M. Villemain (still in draft form), to pay his maître d'hôtel.
"I assure you that there is no disorder in my life. Order takes up a little more space every day. I am sad, resigned to everything, even to suffer for the rest of my life, resigned to the judicial council and determined to simply do whatever I have to do to have it destroyed. - I'm going to have four vol. to publish this year. I'll bet all four will go unnoticed. I'm not getting justice. ...Prose Poems will also go to press. 1,000 francs! But, alas, it's not over yet. The Literary Dandies will be published in the press. Perhaps the Philosopher Painters. We have to stay in Paris to finish all that. And then to conclude. I think Hetzel will buy me a reprint, in volume, of the Prose Poems. The money for all this is distributed in advance. I still have two other resources, but they're not as secure as the work. How it takes years of fatigue and punishment to learn the simplest truths, for example that work, that unpleasant thing, is the only way not to suffer, or to suffer less from life! [...]».
Baudelaire then talks about FLAUBERT who finishes Salammbô: "Recently I read a few chapters of Flaubert's next novel; it's admirable; I felt a strengthening feeling of envy. HUGO is going to publish his Misérables, a novel in ten volumes. All the more reason why my poor volumes, Eureka, Poëmes en prose and Réflexions sur mes contemporains should not be seen. To be over forty, to pay my debts and make my fortune through literature, in a country that loves only vaudeville and dance! What an atrocious destiny!".
Baudelaire is still in Paris to finish his "research on painters and engravers",
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