Rémy de Gourmont - Lettres à Sixtine [num. sur Hollande 70 / 337] - 1921

Luxurious edition of these love letters by the young Remy de Gourmont addressed to his mistress and muse Berthe de Courrière, written in 1887. Some fragments were published in the Imprimerie gourmontienne, no. I, November-December 1920, January 1921, under the title 'Private notebooks. Letters to Sixtine.'

Copy on Hollande van Gelder paper, numbered no. 70 / 337, the only large paper among the 1075 copies on laid paper for Lafuma.
Curiously, in the proof, the publisher presents the 1075 copies on Lafuma pure thread paper as 'the first edition of this work,' but there is no mention of the copies on Hollande like ours.

One copy established in a fine period half calf binding, 'crushed' style, with a spine divided into two broad nerves decorated with the title and author stamped in gold. Original covers and spine preserved, with untrimmed margins.

Light flaws: the spine and leather of the front cover are partially detached. Interior fresh and free of foxing. Very good condition.

The passionate letters that Gourmont wrote to her during 1887 will be compiled into a volume titled Letters to Sixtine (1921), and she will be the heroine of Sixtine, a novel of cerebral life (1890), and later of The Phantom (1893).

Regarding the Letters to Sixtine. Some critics have spoken of the Letters to Sixtine as if it were a novel in letters, composed like the Songe d'une Femme. No, these letters are real letters, whose originals bear the postmark and the stamp.
Carefully preserved by Sixtine herself, these pages written at the very moment of emotion form the lived novel that my brother was to cerebralize in the novel titled Sixtine.

In these Letters, everything is true and spontaneous, and the landscapes are not literary compositions but direct descriptions of the scenery that surrounded his inner exaltation.

Remy de Gourmont
Letters to Sixtine [ref. on Hollande 70 / 337]
Paris, Mercure de France, 1921
in8 (22 x 13 cm); 201 pages. 1 figure.