Marcel JOUHANDEAU (1888-1979). L.A.S., January 29, 1965, to Henry de Montherlant; 5pages in-8. Beautiful letter about Montherlant's La Guerre civile [first performed at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre on January 27, 1965, with Pierre Dux as Pompey and Pierre Fresnay as Cato]. Thanks to Fresnay, he was able to attend the premiere: "It was a great honor and a joy for me. I greatly admired your choice of this moment in the history of Rome, in the history of the world. The beauty of the language, the sustained tone from one end to the other of this wide-ranging fresco imposes. In short, you show us the other side and the other side of the absentees you evoke in turn. What an extraordinary crossroads! What encounters! What clashes! At the same time, underneath the Roman effigy, we find the recent, cruel times we've lived through together. I kept looking at Brutus at the end of the play, and regretted a little that in the sublime stanzas that foreshadow the denouement we hadn't caught more of the glare of his avenging dagger. The iconography of Pompey and Caesar is suggestive. Their statues are portraits of striking resemblance [...] For my part, I can't help but have a soft spot for Caesar, because of his perfect, virile face, the line of his life and the multiple resources of his character. You've shown what was swollen and flabby about his rival. At the end of the day, our destiny is not unrelated to what we've earned. I like the fact that you said: "Friends are made to fall out. Fallouts are necessary storms. Friendship remains. I've never stopped being the same for you, even when I've perhaps been wrong to make ridiculous demands of you. Friendship in my eyes is a sublime dispute, the dispute of the Blessed Sacrament"... Attached is an autograph note from Montherlant, draft of his reply, February 3, 1965 (1p. in-12).