Correspondance generale 1872, et complements (review)

Lacoste-Veysseyre, Claudine, ed. Théophile Gautier: Correspondance générale 1872 et compléments. XII. Ed. avec la collaboration d'Andrew Gann. Genève-Paris: Librairie Droz, 2000. Pp. 411. ISBN 2-600-00374-6

On August 30, 1872, Théophile Gautier writes one last time to Carlotta Grisi of "ces désirs de m'envoler à Genève [...] comme un instinct voyageur. Cet instinct a une telle force qu'il produit une nostalgie dont on peut mourir" (70). Within two months, he will die, perhaps not of the mortal nostalgia for those dream sites that was the affliction / blessing of so many of his literary personae, but with nevertheless that ironic and always movingly pathetic admixture of unexpectedness - for one who still longed and lived for beauty, love and well-being, and of inevitability - for one whose health had been so weakened by recent deprivations.

Having (barely) survived the difficult years of the Commune and the Prussian occupation, Gautier attempts to return to the work of earning a living, and to the joys of maintaining friendships. The correspondence of 1872 fittingly exhales that reticence and personal discretion, which, in my opinion, are essential and fundamental to the understanding and appreciation of Gautier's writing: his humor, his understatement, his "objectivity," his deferment or dissemination to stylistic spectacle. His correspondents in these last months of his life - again fittingly, these include many of his lifelong attachments and/or reflect many of his lifelong pursuits - seem to respectfully join him in that communicative game played between the goals of what is to be said and what is to remain unsaid. In response to a warmly appre-ciative letter from Victor Hugo in which he thanks Gautier for his review of a revival of Ruy Blas, and in which the sincerity with which he proffers "mon plus tendre serrement de main" is evident, Gautier sighs/smiles: "Me jeter une poignée de diamants pour me récompenser d'une pauvre réclame de théâtre," and signs off: "Votre ancien page Albertus qui n'est plus que le toujours déjoué Théophile Gautier" (26-27).

While the number of letters written in the year 1872 are understandably few, this final volume of the Correspondance générale includes Gautier's undated corres-pondence: these letters are arranged in the alphabetic order of the correspondents' name. The volume also offers a Complément des tomes I à XI: letters which were not previously available and which are here numbered so that they can be easily placed in the appropriate chronological context and order of the earlier volumes. One of the most notable of these additions is a very long letter from Marie Mattei (#4414 bis), written in 1870, in which she argues against what she perceives to be Gautier's faulty aesthetics in Mademoiselle de Maupin (See 301-10).

As in the previous volumes, much valuable information and many relatively inaccessible citations are provided in the editorial notes to individual letters and in the "Index des correspondants." An excerpt from an article written by Gautier in the Moniteur Universel and which annotates a letter written by the actress Siona Lévy offers a wonderful insight into the orality of Gautier's poetics (See 272-73). There is a moving quotation from a letter that Victor Hugo wrote to Jules Simon on the 24^th of June, 1872, in which he pleads that more financial support be given to his ailing friend: "Accablé des tortures d'une affection chronique inexorable, il est forcé, à travers la souffrance et presque l'agonie, de travailler pour vivre" (348-49). In its identification of Pierre Jules de Vabre, an old Jeunes-France comrade who writes to Gautier in April of 1872 to let him know that he is indeed alive and well, the volume's Index quotes the chapter in the Histoire du romantisme which Gautier devoted to this "Compagnon miraculeux" and...