Les Griseries
One of the first 10 copies on Hollande paper (no. 6).
The poems “Premier Sinet” and “Second Sinet” are here printed on orange paper. A peculiarity of the copy: the corresponding half-titles were placed before these leaves at the time of binding, disturbing the apparent order of pagination without affecting the completeness of the volume.
Les Griseries is his fourth poetry collection, following Le Sang des dieux, La Forêt bleue and Modernités. Its table of contents already reads like the inventory of a fin-de-siècle aesthete’s cabinet: Fragonard, Fête galante, Les Boulingrins, Rocaille, Les Paons blancs, Coin de parc, Embarquement, La Damnation de Pierrot, followed by an entire section entitled “Le Coin des Esthètes,” which accumulates artistic references.
The collection also contains the first act of a verse comedy, written as early as 1884 and published in the Revue moderniste in December 1885, before being collected in Les Griseries as La Damnation de Pierrot.
The copy of Jacques Gérigny, with his bookplate on the half-title and the manuscript note “Don de Madame Janvier, née Tauveron,” along with the latter’s pencil bookplate.