MOCKEL, Albert. Signed autograph letter to [Édouard Ducoté]. - Lot 221

MOCKEL, Albert. Signed autograph letter to [Édouard Ducoté]. 4 pages, in-12 format, in black ink, Paris, May 11, 1900. A lengthy letter written after reading Édouard Ducoté’s *Merveilles et moralités*, published in *Le Mercure de France* in 1900. Albert Mockel offers a subtle analysis of this first collection of short stories. “Perhaps you are more of a philosopher than a man of letters; and yet you know how to write. I can only fault you for a bit of carelessness in form, and even that word is not entirely accurate [...] You have great gifts, truly very rare ones. Symbols come easily to you, and you immediately find the human gesture, the vivid image in which your idea must take shape”... Édouard Ducoté (1870–1929), who edited the literary journal *L’Ermitage*, and Albert Mockel (1866–1945), a Belgian writer, were both part of the Symbolist movement and shared André Gide as a mutual friend.