BAUDELAIRE Charles (1821-1867). autograph MANUSCRIT,... Lot 14

BAUDELAIRE Charles (1821-1867). autograph MANUSCRIT, Une réforme à l'Académie, [January 1862]; 5 1/2 pages in-fol. (smudges on the first and last leaves). Baudelaire, then a candidate to the Académie française, reacts to an article by Sainte-Beuve on the next elections to the Académie. The article appeared, unsigned, in the Revue anecdotique of January 1862. The manuscript, with erasures and corrections, was used for the printing. Baudelaire reacts to an article of SAINTE- BEUVE, Des prochaines élections de l'Académie, published in Le Constitutionnel of January 20, 1862, "a real event", according to him. He would have liked, like a new lame Devil, to attend the academic session "which followed the publication of this curious manifesto", which attracts on him "all the resentments of this political party, doctrinaire, Orleanist, today religious by spirit of opposition, let us say simply: hypocritical, which wants to fill the Institute with its favorite creatures and to transform the Sanctuary of the Muses into a parliament of discontents". Sainte-Beuve "does not hide too much the bad mood of an old man of letters against the princes, the great lords and the politicians", who populate the Academy and make it look like a government of Louis-Philippe. "The poet-journalist gives us, along the way, in his appreciation of the merits of some candidates the most pleasant details": thus about CUVILLIER- FLEURY who "wants to see everything, even literature, through the window of Orleanism"... Sainte-Beuve "shows himself favorable or indulgent only for men of letters", like Léon Gozlan, Dumas fils whom he invites to introduce himself, Jules Favre, "the great orator of the time", and BAUDELAIRE himself: "M. Charles Baudelaire, whose barbaric and unknown name more than one academician has had to spell, is rather tickled than scratched". And Baudelaire recopies Sainte-Beuve's judgment about him : " M. Charles Baudelaire found a way to build himself, at the end of a spit of land considered uninhabitable, and beyond the confines of the known romantic world, a strange kiosk, very ornate, very tormented, but charming and mysterious ", that he names " the Baudelaire Madness "... And Baudelaire adds: "It seems that Mr. Sainte-Beuve wanted to avenge Mr. Baudelaire from people who paint him under the features of an ill-famed and badly painted werewolf; because a little further on, he presents him, paternally and familiarly, as "a nice boy, fine of language and quite classical of forms". Sainte-Beuve also exercises his verve on "the odyssey of the unfortunate M. de Carné, eternal candidate", and especially on "the most buffoonish and abracadabra candidacy that was ever invented, in the memory of the Academy", that of Prince Albert de BROGLIE, "a porphyrogenist, purely and simply", who has no other title of glory than to have "taken the trouble to be born", a "little man of decadence", "a perfect parrot that Vaucanson himself would not know how to imitate"... Other articles appeared on this subject, among which the one by Texier, estimating that "all the literators of some merit must forget the Academy and let it die in oblivion"; but Baudelaire concludes by adding: "But men such as M.M. Mérimée, Sainte-Beuve, de Vigny, who would like to raise the honor of the Company to which they belong, cannot encourage such a desperate resolution.