Max Jacob - Méditations - Mystique et Martyr - Deux "petits cahiers d'écolier" : 10 méditations autographes - 1940

Exceptional pair of two autograph “little schoolboy notebooks” of Max Jacob’s spiritual meditations, comprising 10 meditations, of which 8 appeared in Pierre Lagarde’s book, Mystique et Martyr.

There are six meditations in the first notebook, and four in the second, all written in brown ink, on parchment paper with a red margin.

This lot constitutes the working manuscript directly used for post-war edition of Max Jacob’s meditations by his young friend and mobilized disciple, brigadier Pierre Lagarde.

List of the meditations:

- Meditation XVII: “Excellence of Virtues” (timestamped 9h - 5) - “The virtues come from God who told us: Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect..."

- Meditation XIX: “Solitude of Man” (timestamped 9h 1/2)

- Meditation “The Sins” (timestamped 6h 1/2)

- Meditation XXXI: “Death” (timestamped 10h - 5) - “How hard it is to picture death. A body without movement, without thought, or sensation. A dummy! [...]

- Meditation II: “Hell” (timestamped 8h 1/4) - “My God I stand before You I offer You all my sins, my anger, my meannesses, my lies [...] I consider myself a horrible man. [...]"

- Meditation “Paradise” (timestamped 10h - 25) - “Quite the opposite of Hell is Paradise. Instead of physical sufferings, here is help in movements, the security of health, nothing that hinders or weighs..."

- Meditation XXI: “Pagans and Christians” (timestamped noon - 1/4) - “Find me Christians worthy of that name. Too soon my Christian life of faith has been ruined [...] "there are souls that await me and need my word!" [...]"

- Meditation XXII: “Purpose of Life” (timestamped 8h . 25 .) - “Does our life have a purpose? Travelers who meet splendid forests where no one has passed and will pass [...] they do clearly see the cause but not the end. For our human mind is used to seeking a goal for everything. [...]"

- Meditation XIII: “Paradise and Hell” (timestamped 6h 1/4) - “My surprise when I came to myself again. All around, birdsong! Around me bend the most beautiful faces [...]"

- Meditation XX: “Pagans and Christians” (timestamped 9h) - “My God you are the center of the entire world, the pivot, the beacon [...]”

Dimensions: 16.9 x 22.1 cm.
Condition: Paper yellowed, fragile and brittle. Otherwise in good condition. See photos for details.

Number of pages: 21 pages (first notebook); 12 pages (second notebook)

These documents come from an exceptional collection of correspondence, manuscripts and notes dating from 1939-1940 of Max Jacob, a major figure of French symbolism and modernism, who was at once a poet, novelist, painter and mystic, and Pierre Lagarde, author of Max Jacob: mystique ou martyr (Éditions Universitaires, 1959). They testify to a close intellectual and spiritual relationship between the two men. Pierre Lagarde, a careful reader and faithful friend, drew from the meditations, inventions and letters that Jacob had entrusted to him the very material of his work. These pieces, of a mystic and poetic scope, illustrate the direct transmission between Max Jacob’s spiritual experience and Lagarde’s critical interpretation.

These documents are essential to understanding Jacob’s last creative period and the work undertaken by Pierre Lagarde to preserve its depth and religious dimension.

- Max Jacob, born Max Jacob Alexandre on July 12, 1876 in Quimper and died March 5, 1944 in Drancy, was a French modernist poet and novelist but also a painter and mystic. Wikipedia

Careful shipping in a rigid, waterproof packaging.