André FONTAINAS (1865-1948). Autograph manuscript signed, Max Waller, [1889]; 3 pages in-4 on gray paper (slight cracks at folds). Homage to Max Waller (1860-1889), the founder and director of the magazine La Jeune Belgique, who had just died at the age of 29. The manuscript, intended for La Cravache magazine, contains a few erasures and corrections. After castigating the carelessness and disdain of Belgian critics, Fontainas insists on the literary desert that reigned in Belgium until 1880: "It is to Max Waller that belongs the honor of having grouped together all those thirsting for the ideal, all seekers of the new, all contempors of low political cuisine, all the workers, all the ardent, all the intellectual fighters of the new Belgium, shaken from its torpor." Giraud, Verhaeren and Gilkin gathered around him, followed by Lemonnier, Rodenbach and Eeckhoud. Max Waller also wrote his own work: La Vie bête, "L'Amour fantasque, nouvelles vraiment jeunes", Greta Freidmann, Lysiane de Lysias, and his Airs de Flûte "in which he let all the finesse of his capricious soul shine through, and all the benignity of his heart tenderized by thrills and spurts of love"...