MIOMANDRE (Francis de). - Lot 218

Lot n° 218
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MIOMANDRE (Francis de). - Lot 218
MIOMANDRE (Francis de). Born in Tours. 1880-1959. French writer and translator. M.A.S. from "Francis de Miomandre". S.l.n.d. 11 pages in-8, "L'Evolution du Divan". S.l.n.d. 11 pages in-8, "L'Evolution du Divan". Francis de Miomandre humorously recounts a brief "history of the divan": If the old dictionaries define the divan as a ... "sort of chaise-longue with or without a back, used as a seat in certain lounges and in some cafés known as cafés-divans"... there was a time when it was a piece of furniture used mainly in lounges. ...But, then, what was it replaced by in the lounge? Well, precisely nothing. The sofa was ignored. Only a few travelers spoke of it as something they'd seen in the East, for the siesta and long lazes of a people unaccustomed to action and unaware of our modern progress. They hadn't the slightest idea of how to make it at home. [...] Among us, the sofa reigned, that correct, well-mannered, reasonable piece of furniture, made for gentlemen and ladies wisely seated, hands on knees, and chatting about general affairs or mundane gossip [...]. He reigned for a long time, and it seemed as if he would never be dethroned. [...] However, this revolution took place, and happier than many others, without finding anyone to regret the past. [...] How many things in literature, art, politics and morality can be explained by the advent of the couch, and can only be explained by it! [...] It is not through the Orient itself that the divan comes to us. But through Russia, which is a bit of the East, of course, but a less aggressive and, as it were, Europeanized East. We're less wary. What we wouldn't accept from a Tartar, we accept from a Muscovite. The amount of divans consumed in Russian novels is incredible... Proof that it's the same in real life. The heroes of Pushkin, Turgenev and Dostoyevsky spend a large part of their lives dreaming and chatting on a sofa. It's there that he meditates on the complication of love and the malfeasance of this incomprehensible universe. It's where he rebuilds society, and God knows what he's capable of when he gets up to apply these ideas. It is, after all, there that he leads his true life, which is the inner life. [...] There was quite a long struggle between the sofa and the couch. The couch, in order to maintain its failing dominance, defended itself with a number of mimicry devices. It sank, spread out, became a chaise-longue, a pouf, what do I know? His paltry efforts could not save him. You'll find his final triumphs in Marcel Proust's novels (or at least in that part of them that takes place in Charles Swann's time, lost forever)... But ... the couch settled in, now invincible. He was not content to be there. He still needed to be alone... and ...he began to spill out. [...] From the living room and boudoir, he made his way to the bedroom [...] the study, [...] the dining room and the anteroom. [...] By dint of being so universally attractive by virtue of its convenience, and in a way magnetic, the sofa very quickly lost its status as a piece of furniture. It became the focal point, around which the decoration and layout of the entire home took shape... Francis de Miomandre won the Goncourt in 1908 for his fifth book, Ecrit sur de l'eau. "As the award was unexpected, and no one had read the book, which had a print run of five hundred copies published by Le Feu de Marseille, the articles devoted to it by critics were disarmingly fanciful. Le Temps, among others, gravely asserted that it was a study in the mores of ocean liners! For a time, he took part in the "Club des longues moustaches" [1908-1911], an informal literary group that met at the Caffè Florian in Venice.
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