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A youth letter from Charles Baudelaire announcing his intention to commit suicide was sold Sunday at 234,000 euros, three times the estimated price, at the Osenat house auction of the author's missives. Flowers of Evil.
The highlight of the sale, this letter from Baudelaire, dated June 1845, to the address of his mistress Jeanne Duval, was estimated between 60,000 and 80,000 euros. It will now be part of a private French collection, said the auction house.
"When Miss Jeanne Lemer will give you this letter, I will be dead (…) I kill myself because I can not live anymore, that the fatigue of falling asleep and the fatigue of waking me up are unbearable", writes the poet .
He will stab himself without serious consequences. He is then 24 years old and will live until 46 years old.
"Goodbye, my friend, without gesture, without words"
Other suicide letters are pbaded on to posterity after the death of their author. Of course, there is Romain Gary, who writes a note for the press before dying. Cynical, he refers to the suicide of his ex-wife Jean Seberg in 1979:
"Day J. No relationship with Jean Seberg. The devotees of the broken heart are asked to go elsewhere. "
In 1941, Virginia Woolfe left her Susbad home to a river, filled her pockets with stones and let herself sink. She leaves her husband a farewell letter that talks about his bipolar disorder:
"My darling, I'm sure I'll go crazy again: I feel we can not bear one of those horrible times again. And I feel that I will not be recovering this time. I start hearing voices and I can not concentrate. So, I'm doing what seems to be the best thing to do. "
But the most spectacular suicide letter is the work of Sergei Yesenin, Russian poet of genius and husband of the dancer Isadora Duncan, who leaves in 1925 a poem written with his own blood:
"Goodbye, my friend, without gesture, without words,
Do not be sad or sad.
To die in this life is not new,
But living, certainly, is not new. "
He is found hanging from a pipe in a hotel room. His death has always been controversial, with Essenin repeatedly demonstrating his aversion to the totalitarian drift of the regime.
In 1855, it is Gérard de Nerval who puts an end to his days, rue de la Vieille-Lanterne in Paris. The romantic and tortured poet, author ofAurélia and Girls of firehangs on a sewer grate. The night before, he leaves a terse message to his aunt:
"Do not wait for me tonight, because the night will be black and white".
Maupbadant's farewell letter sold for 15,500 euros in 2017
Like Baudelaire's, other suicide letters have been auctioned in recent years. This is the case of the letter of farewell from Drieu La Rochelle to Lucien Combelle, written shortly before his suicide in 1945. The letter of Maupbadant was also sold last year by the company Pierre Bergé & Associates, in badociation with Sotheby's. Estimated at 6,000 to 8,000 euros, it was sold for 15,456 euros.
Sent by Maupbadant to his confidant and physician Henri Cazalis, a few days before his suicide attempts and his internment in 1892, she reported the writer's descent into hell:
"My dear friend, I am absolutely lost. I am even in agony. I have a softening of the brain, coming from washes that I made with salt water in my nasal areas.
A fermentation of salt has occurred in the brain, and every night my brain flows through my nose and mouth into a sticky, salty paste of which I fill a whole bowl. I've spent twenty nights like this. It's imminent death. And I'm crazy. My head is beating the countryside.
Farewell friend, you will not see me again. "
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