Une saison en enfer
The only volume of poetry published during Rimbaud’s lifetime, and the only book he himself oversaw.
A very fine copy, enriched with an autograph letter signed by Paul Verlaine, concerning his sonnet “À Arthur Rimbaud”, which he had just written and which the journal La Plume would publish less than a fortnight later: « Reçu de Vanier éditeur la somme de cinq francs — Sonnet sur la mort de Rimbaud, Paris, 30 janvier 93, P. Verlaine ».
This sonnet, entitled “To Arthur Rimbaud – Based on a sketch of him by his sister,” was written on the very day that Vanier showed Verlaine a drawing by Isabelle Rimbaud depicting her brother as an Abyssinian, dressed in a gandoura and playing the harp. Inspired by an ethnographic engraving, this portrait deeply moved Verlaine, who, overcome with emotion, wrote this poem in one sitting. It was published on February 15, 1893, in La Plume, then reprinted in Dédicaces (Vanier, 1894). One of the rare posthumous tributes to Rimbaud: 
« Toi mort, mort, mort ! Mais mort du moins tel que tu veux,
En nègre blanc, en sauvage splendidement
Civilisé, civilisant négligemment
(…)
Tu meurs en poète et soldat, grand comme un enfant. »
A rare posthumous eulogy, as well as a meditation on the mythical figure of Rimbaud: Verlaine projects his undiminished admiration for the genius of his former companion. We will not dwell (too long) on this well-known story: Léon Losseau visiting the printer Poot in Brussels, going down to the cellar, the dusty bundle, the stove: “It was in 1901 [December 1902, in fact]. I was looking for a separate print of La Belgique judiciaire, a collection that had been printed in Brussels for sixty years […]. You can imagine the emotion felt by the bibliophile when he saw what was inside a dirty, stained, dust-covered bundle that he had just lifted from among others: hundreds of copies of Rimbaud’s La Saison en enfer! Rimbaud had not paid his bill. The printer had kept the books, and his clerk, Adrien-Roméo de Ghilage, who was a worker at the time of composition in 1873, had become Poot’s successor at 49 Rue aux Choux.
Losseau said he left with 425 copies (the receipt, dated January 1, 1903, mentions 400 copies). Paterne Berrichon, quickly informed of the “find,” wanted Losseau to burn the books he had found, no more and no less. He refused; what he did destroy, however, was the myth, the lie of the book burning that Isabelle and Paterne Berrichon had been peddling for years and wanted to see continued.
Losseau died in August 1949 and, in 1938, claimed never to have sold any copies, apart from the few sold in 1914. It was not until 1943 that part of this stock of paperback copies of Une saison en enfer was sold to a Brussels bookseller. The bookseller piously and slowly put them on the market. But only part of the “Losseau stock”: in the beautiful mansion on Rue de Nimy, his safe still houses the famous copies discovered in 1901. They are carefully protected, inaccessible, and inalienable. A philanthropist, patron of the arts, bibliophile, and medal collector, upon his death he bequeathed his house on Rue de Nimy, which contained his remarkable library of nearly 100,000 books and periodicals, to the city of Mons and the Province of Hainaut! A Doctor of Law from the University of Liège, a Doctor of Political and Administrative Sciences, and a lawyer at the Mons Bar, Léon Losseau only pleaded to defend the cause of the humble and the disadvantaged. A lawyer, president of the bar, and company director, this scholar enjoyed sufficient material wealth that he did not have to spend his days in court, preferring instead the conclaves of the many learned societies of which he was a member. His name will forever be linked to the discovery of the legendary copies of Une Saison en enfer.
Very fine copy.