Jacques BENOIST-MÉCHIN (1901-1983). 229 letters, mostly L.A. - Lot 149

Jacques BENOIST-MÉCHIN (1901-1983). 229 letters, mostly L.A.S., including 13 postcards a.s., and 51 L.S. (most with autograph additions), 1948-1979, to Janine Duclos; approx. 380 in-4 or in-8 pages, a few envelopes, plus 2 telegrams and a few enclosures, all mounted on tabs and bound in 2 in-4 volumes in navy blue jansenist morocco, lining in the same morocco with framing gold fillet, dark blue moire endpapers, slipcases (Georges Cretté). Important and very interesting correspondence to a devoted friend, particularly during her imprisonment, supplemented by her correspondent's replies. The first letter (Fresnes, December 27, 1948) is addressed by Benoist-Méchin to his "godmother"; subsequent letters, after his transfer to Clairvaux, and almost weekly from September 15, 1949 onwards, are addressed to his "dear Janine", who went out of her way to ease the prisoner's fate, with numerous shipments (notably of food and books) and approaches; a few letters are addressed to the cat Sylvestre. The prisoner talks a lot about his mother, his monotonous life in prison, his deteriorating health, his reading: La Peste, Koestler "un farceur", Huxley "un pédant", Malaparte "une ordure", Zola, Fabre-Luce, Desmond Young's Rommel, Vacher de Lapouge, Brasillach's Poems (which he saw being born in Fresnes: "Robert passed them to me day after day through the crack in my door"), the Chinese poems of Mao Tse Tung ("unquestionably a great poet"), Bertrand de Born, Verhaeren, Anne Green, Gaxotte, Marg. Yourcenar, Drieu la Rochelle, Von Papen, Ernst Jünger ("a disgusted man", "an aesthete and a snob"), Blondin, Apollinaire and many others. He also talks about his work as a writer on "Le Loup" (Mustapha Kemal), and his project for an anthological work to "show how, over the centuries, war has been reflected in the souls of peoples, and how the souls of peoples have been revealed through their conception of war"... Politics is also mentioned: "Of course Monarchy is the best system. But we'll only come back to it through Dictatorship. (The Republic is certainly the worst). I have many ideas on this"... A long, 8-page letter, dated March 3, 1950, is devoted to the note he had written, "with a view to approaching the Élysée Palace, with a view to reducing my sentence. [...] I have confined myself to a statement of the facts that have occurred (or become clear) since the date of my conviction. This is the only way I can proceed, since I cannot and will not 1°) deny anything I have done. 2°) beg anyone for mercy. My policy, good or bad, has been what it has been. It is also what people, more or less well informed, think of it. I can't change either. Ultimately, the debate boils down to this: the people who condemned me deemed it criminal, and they had the power to impose their point of view. Other men in their place might have congratulated me, I don't know. It's not a question of truth, but of balance of power. In that sense, it's a political matter. [...] This is a serious step, because a lot depends on it. It must not fail. A first appeal has already been rejected. If a second one were also postponed, it would be very unfortunate, because it would put off my release from prison to a date so far in the future that I don't even want to think about it"... He sets out in detail how to proceed, the personalities who will have to intervene, including President Vincent Auriol, a socialist; and he counts on Janine to take "in hand the direction of a delicate operation, on which my freedom depends, my possibility of getting to know you at last and putting an end to my mother's ordeals, in other words all the reasons why I would like to get out of here"... In the following letters, he follows and comments on the progress of the steps, often despairing: "And 49 years old today! How awful! "What have you done with your youth, O you who are here...". Time passes at a dizzying pace. I'll leave here all white, in a wheelchair, and spoiled" (July 1, 1950)... On September 22, 1950, he wrote: "Today I enter my seventh year of detention, having been arrested on September 22, 1944. That's a dark chapter in a man's life. Less dark, of course, than the post. But all the same"... And he accompanies his letter with a confidential 5-page note on how to "get out of here", examining the legal route, with the steps currently being taken, and then the illegal route, in case the Communists take power and the Russians march westwards, Clairvaux being between the Russians and Paris, of course.