914 - SULLY-PRUDHOMME, René Armand François (1839–1907), Parnassian poet, member of the Académie Française (1881), winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature in history (1901). Set of 6 autograph letters: 3 are signed and 3 are unsigned (drafts, including one that is incomplete). Paris, 1884–1894. Approximately 15 pp. in-8

SULLY-PRUDHOMME, René Armand François (1839–1907), Parnassian poet, member of the Académie Française (1881), winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature in history (1901). Set of 6 autograph letters: 3 are signed and 3 are unsigned (drafts, including one that is incomplete). Paris, 1884–1894. Approximately 15 pp. in-8 -October 4, 1884, [to Mrs. Le Roy], Sully-Prudhomme regrets that he cannot accept her invitation during his stay in Rouen, as he must stay with his friend, Prefect Hendlé, “whose persistent urging alone convinced me to undertake the daunting task of writing verse on Corneille [...].” -October 25, 1885, Sully-Prudhomme thanks a colleague for his review in the *Revue littéraire et artistique* on the philosophical nature of his poetry, which so sensitively captures “the state of my mind in the face of the formidable problems that the Universe poses to our intellect. I have never believed I possessed the solution; I have merely felt my way toward the Sphinx and gazed with anxiety at the shifting color of its eyes [...].” -January 30, 1890: Sully-Prudhomme recommended their friend Mme de Grandval to an eminent colleague for the Chartier Prize of the Academy of Fine Arts, along with a list of her performed and published works. -January 7, 1894. Three revised versions of a response to a survey on the memory of emotions: “It is in the practice of my art that I have observed its existence [...] I am by no means an improviser; I almost never immediately have the word I need to express the feelings I experience with a precision that satisfies me. For me, the function of language does not determine other cerebral functions [...] in fact, it is precisely because I have a very clear awareness of my ideas or feelings beforehand that I am rarely satisfied with the first words that come to mind to convey them [...].”