Ernest de GENGENBACH.

Autograph letter signed addressed to Jean Vilar, with collages. Undated [1952]. 8 pages in-4, in black and fuchsia ink, on two double sheets with 7 clippings, prints or photographic reproductions, laminated. Long and beautiful letter illustrated with an original collage and laminated documents: Gengenbach proposes his collaboration to Jean Vilar, director of the Théâtre national de Chaillot, for his erotic-mystical dramaturgy The Pope of Avignon. In dire straits and close to shipwreck, Gengenbach proposed to Vilar a theatrical project that he wished to take up again, The Pope of Avignon: "the adventure of a monk who was almost burned alive in Avignon at the time of the Popes... for having advocated a kind of sacred eroticism and religious sensualism". To convince him, he retraces part of his career, illustrating his words with press clippings, photographs, fragments of programs and an original collage from a pornographic photograph showing a clergyman and a nun. Gengenbach compares his fate to that of Abbé Urbain Grandier, victim of the affair of the possessed women of Loudun. He recommends himself to the spirits of Antonin Artaud, of whom he was a faithful supporter - he attended the evening given for his benefit at the Sarah Bernhardt theater on June 7, 1946, he recalls. His work Farewell to Satan is then under press in Brussels: "It will make noise obviously, since it will be the trial of surrealism ... but it will not allow my rescue." He had already thought of soliciting Vilar at the time of the creation of the Week of dramatic art in Provence, the future festival of Avignon, when he himself was composing The Demonic Experience, but "a crisis of illuminism, nostalgia of the cloister skillfully exploited has sunk everything in my projects. I am ready to take them again and that all the more since I attend with amazement this kind of "violation (theatrical) of "religious" residence by profane people who seek... epidemically... a new lyric theme: "Cocteau with Bacchus", T. Maulnier "The Profaner", Montherlant [...]. I lived in the cloister and the seminary. I wore the cassock. Then I frequented the occult sects, the esoteric churches and I can say that this field of religious wonder, of celestial or diabolical fantasy, of magic, is my specialty. Many times, I have been advised to bring to the stage the fruit of an ecclesiastical experience, surrealist of the richest... where the Rimbaldian revolution succeeds the Christian faith adoring and passionate." Attached: - an autograph letter signed to the bookseller Henri Matarasso, Carcassonne November 28, 1953, about this possible collaboration and thanking him for a financial help (1 ½ page in-4) - the autograph manuscript of his afterword for Adieu à Satan "which describes an enlightening and redeeming spiritual evolution", addressed to the printer J. J. Jespers (1 ½ page in-4, with envelope) - the subscription flyer for Judas ou le Vampire surréaliste, a screenplay adapted from Satan à Paris, published at L'Aigle noir, 1930.