Max JACOB (1876-1944). L.A.S., "33 Boulevart Barbès" May 16, 1906, to Henri Hertz; 4pages in-8. Beautiful literary letter on poetry and modernity. [Henri Hertz (1875-1966) had just published Quelques vers with L. Vanier]. "The distinction between traditional and modernist beauty is absurd: there is the beautiful and the ugly at the same time. Beauty is fresh color [...] modernity is our mirror [...] beautiful works are those that seem to be the natural lyricism of an era"... He saw in Hertz's verses his own era, "an era that wanders, resigned and not resigned with a glance and a smile from which it retains a study; intelligent as the struggle (don't do it to us, eh?Hugo and his theatrical Golgothas, Baudelaire as Gautier's client for the earrings department, that's the Second Empire: luxury decor and this is laughter, which is a luxury! (Laughers are sad, see the Englishman). Corbière was on the boulevard and Laforgue was at college. They compare you to these two whistlers! but no! we are otherwise shaken"... And Jacob evokes Bruant... "Protée, the poet becomes a bull for or against the bull. To be distinguished is to come out of oneself to be more oneself"...