Marguerite YOURCENAR

Lot 91
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3000 - 4000 EUR
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Result : 5 500EUR
Marguerite YOURCENAR
Marguerite YOURCENAR. Correspondence of 10 letters to the painter-decorator Elie Grékoff (8 are autograph signed and 2 typed signed; 6 written on cards and 1 on the back of an original photograph). Little Piacenza, Warsaw, Soviet Union and Portugal, 1957-1981. 15 pp. various sizes. Envelopes retained. 1957. About the translation of the Gita Govinda and the American censorship. "I am glad that this Gita is a successful thing and that we appear inside the same volume [Gita Covinda, les Amours de Khrisna, translation published by Emile-Paul in 1957, with vignettes by Elie Grékoff, and a preface by Marguerite Yourcenar titled "On some erotic and mystical themes of the Gita Govinda"]. American censorship being what it is, I have asked the Emile Pauls to keep the volumes they have reserved for me until my next visit to Paris []. She tries to find a solution, talks about her partner Grace Frick and her projects. "I have accepted a lecture tour in Italy for the beginning of March, the prospect of which torments me more than it delights me, being here in the midst of work that I would not like to interrupt. She asked him to do what was necessary to continue his subscription to Le Monde. "I prefer to read the bad news in French every day than in English. For two days now, the temperature has been -8 centigrade. The sunsets very red, the trees all black, and the sea and the sea steel grey. Aziz wrote me that he had thought of the theatre in Aix for Electra. But I'm afraid I'm going to fall into a beehive again Good winter in the warm house, good work (and not too much work). Grace and I will name you both in the list of friends (it's not that long) that we recite while ritually pouring wine out the window on New Year's Eve []. 1962. News of the health of relatives, sending a "Canadian coureur des bois jacket". "I am glad that the illustrations of the Russian tale (I remember it very well) are going to appear []". 1964. Card co-signed by Grace Frick on their trip to Poland. June 1971. Card written during a trip to the Soviet Union (some wetness). "This return trip by a Soviet ship was pleasant and interesting, and the ship itself is very functional and beautiful. Unfortunately, the crossing was spoiled by the fact that Grace had a bad fall shortly after leaving Le Havre and had to cross the Atlantic in a cast, having badly damaged her knee. She seems to have been very well looked after by the two doctors. But you can imagine the exasperation and fatigue! [] ". March 1973. Word written on the back of a photo of their new cocker spaniel. "I think we have not yet sent you the portrait of the new dog: Zoé, born on Sept. 1, 1971, adopted on Oct. 5 of the same year, after the death of the beloved Valentine. Zoé is fine and wild, but becomes little by little docile. She was only one year old when this picture was taken. March 1973. A long letter about his health problems, the problems of swindling a Parisian gallery, the conflicts with his publishers and the publication of Souvenirs pieux, the first volume of his autobiographical trilogy. "My affairs with my publishers have been following a reasonably normal course for some time, but only after much negotiation by lawyers, etc, As regards the conflict between Hachette and Gallimard, where each side pulled its own way, dragging the authors to and fro, and on the side of Plon, from which I am only just about free, I have never so far received any damages for the harm done to me by keeping before the public eye the disgusting reprints they made without telling me in 1969, where the errors, the skipped lines, the doubled lines, the omitted words, the added words, the clichés of all kinds were so numerous that Alexis [Alexis ou le Traité du vain combat] or Denier [Denier du rêve] seemed to be written in Dada style. Here again, what is most shocking is the lack of professional conscience that seems to have gone out of the world. This year I'll be publishing a book I just finished a few weeks ago, Souvenirs pieux (Pierre surely remembers the dark little cards with pious pictures that were handed out at funerals in the previous generation: they still are, but they're less gloomy now than those from the 19th century, of which I have a collection). It is a sort of chronicle of my maternal family (the paternal family will come later) and above all, in short, a collection of portraits, which I think will interest two painters, because the problems of interpretation and fidelity to the model are the same []". Jan. 1976. About a fraudulently disappeared gallery. "Everything related to art and literature is full of thieves. I saw the other day at the end of the afternoon, two steps from here, on a branch of a large maple tree
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