Pierre LOUŸS. Manuscrit autographe, 1884, Journal d'une sema - Lot 216

Pierre LOUŸS. Manuscrit autographe, 1884, Journal d'une semaine, 13-20 aout; 7pages petit in-4 (18,5x15cm) tirées d'un cahier, sous enveloppe titrée. Diary from his youth at age 14, written in violet ink on lined pages taken from a school notebook. The diary, which relates a week's vacation spent at the family home in Dizy, begins with a 16-line poem: "I curse in advance / The impertinence / Of the indiscreet / Who, thinking evil / Of this great diary / Will read the secrets / Shame! opprobrium! woe! anathema! vengeance! [...] This book must be sacred"... Louÿs's attraction to encoding (by systematically shifting a letter) is already apparent, notably to mask the religious questions that beset him: "This is the only time I finally understood what was wrong with the sfmjhpo (religion) dbuipmjrvf (Catholic), whereas the qspuftubouf (Protestant) is so beautiful, so serious, so sweet, so true at last"... (August 14). He recounts the feast of the Assumption (August 15), a "grand cavalcade in Épernay" (17), the progress of his brother Paul's illness (with daily temperature readings in the margins) [Paul Louis, suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, died in Dizy on October 22]. On August 20, he notes victoriously: "I can swim! What an amazing stroke of luck! At the baths, seeing that I swam very well with my belt, I tried to swim alone and managed to cross the width of the bath"... Attached is an unpublished leaflet (1page in-8) on the sensations provoked by the memory of his First Communion: "The organ does more than the sight of the altar. The incense adds to the organ. The host - after the incense and the organ and the spectacle - is the most material sensation, but also by far the most spiritual"...