[WILDE]. William Ernest HENLEY. Lettre adressée... - Lot 103 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

[WILDE]. William Ernest HENLEY. Lettre adressée à Oscar Wilde.
Lettre autographe signée "W. E. H.", 1 page 2/3 in-8.
Importante lettre de W.E. Henley adressée à Oscar Wilde dans laquelle le critique souligne, avec pertinence mais pour la critiquer, l'influence de Flaubert dans The Happy Prince.
Le recueil de nouvelles d'Oscar Wilde fut édité 1888: Henley adressa sa lettre le 27 novembre de cette même année.
My dear Oscar, Many thanks for the young Prince. I have read it with singular pleasure. It reminds me too much of the Flaubert of the Tentation; but there are things in it that are well enough invented for even him. Things, I mean, that are touched with real imagination: things that leap at the heart & live in the memory. Things (enfin) like the three strokes of Death.
I haven't time to write of your prose generally. It is admirably clever; it is full of colour & light & life: it has a real quality of music; but it does remind me of the Tentation &
Salammbô. I should not have believed it possible - I never did believe it possible - that that style could be so perfectly mimed [? Imitated?] in English. You, though, have done the feat, & I esteem it an invention. Here & there (I might to add) I find that you've lapsed from your ideal: that you, too, have your "momentary unrequited aridness" (I thank thee, Jew!), & that I almost like'em. But of all this another time.
Especially as, by this, you are livid with fury, & cursing the gods for that I am out of work.
Ever yours, W. E. H.
In these stories you have found - or are finding - your vocation. They are worth doing, & doing well.
Dans la réponse désopilante qu'il adressa au critique, Oscar Wilde expliqua: "To learn how to write English prose I have studied the prose of France. I am charmed that you recognise it - that shows I have succeeded - I am also charmed that no one else does - that shows I have succeeded also. Yes! Flaubert is my master, and when I get on my translation of the Tentation
I shall be Flaubert II. Roi par grace de Dieu - and I hope something else beyond. Where do you think I am not so good? I want very much to know - Of course it is, to me, a new genre."