22 - Sketch for "Sagesse" by Paul Verlaine, with music by Pierre Hermant

Sketch for "Sagesse" by Paul Verlaine, with music by Pierre Hermant Charcoal on paper 36.5 x 20 cm Vertical monogram stamp in the lower right corner: MAUD Annotated at the bottom: Enoch Editeur This drawing is a preparatory sketch that was not selected for the cover of Paul Verlaine’s “Sagesse,” set to music by Pierre Hermant; another design was chosen instead. In fact, in November 1889, Maurice Denis discovered Verlaine’s “Sagesse” and immediately decided to illustrate it. Our drawing belongs to this series created at that time. The project did not come to fruition but was revived in 1911 by Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned Jacques Beltrand to create the engraving. Beltrand worked from drawings that Maurice Denis had redrawn and colored in 1910. Provenance: Maurice Denis Collection Private collection “With some two hundred original works of his own hand and about fifty books illustrated by him to varying degrees, prints and books occupy a more than notable place in Denis’s multifaceted body of work: though still little known, this is in fact a central activity, spanning his entire career. At its origins lie a text, Verlaine’s *Sagesse*, and a doctrine, formulated in the first article published in 1890, in its twenty-first chapter: “But illustration is the decoration of a book! [...] To find this decoration without being bound by the text, without an exact correspondence between the subject and the writing; but rather an embroidery of arabesques on the pages, an accompaniment of expressive lines.” In fact, Denis did not apply this formula literally. But we understand what he means: not to illustrate literally, but to seek an “expressive equivalent” using the resources specific to the technique employed. The end of this short chapter clarifies: “In Maurice Denis’s drawings for Verlaine’s *Sagesse*, one can observe the intensity of expression in the drawings of forms and patches—and, conversely, the weakness of those in which the literary spirit introduces disparate elements.” Iconography and, a fortiori, the literal transcription of a literary text thus take a back seat to formal organization, in accordance with the opening sentence of the same text, which recalled the definition of the painting. Verlaine’s collection of poems, read in November 1889, is, along with *The Imitation of Christ*, the book that would nourish Denis’s sensibility for many years to come: the fervor of the poet’s return to faith, and the deliberate and carefully crafted naivety of his expression, resonated with the young painter’s own impulses. Denis had no prospect of publication, and despite repeated efforts, the project would not come to fruition until 1911, with the volume published by Vollard; yet the painter undertook the engraving of his preparatory drawings himself: bold woodcuts at first, then lithographs, culminating in the paradox, for the Vollard edition, of drawings that were once again reworked and engraved on wood by a professional, Jacques Beltrand. Both techniques—the simplification they necessitate, the emphasis on flat areas of color, and the essential play on sharp contrasts—fostered, perhaps even more effectively than painting, progress toward a new aesthetic. All of this provided Denis with the opportunity to later articulate, with great clarity, the nature of his “symbolism” at that time: “I find myself contemplating Sagesse’s drawings [...] between the music of a particular verse, between a certain image of the poet and an image of my own, arising in my consciousness; the more fortuitous, involuntary, and unexplained the connection, the more I become aware of it with joy and delight [...] This symbolism must suggest—and does, in fact, suggest—mysterious connections between man and things.” The woodcut intended for “O you, like one limping in the distance” has no direct connection to the poem, but this figure, absorbed and meditative before the highly stylized funeral procession receding behind the trees, evokes the serenity found in faith: “It is true, however, that it is over, that everything has fled/From our senses, both shadows and prey.” The communicants accompanying “You Are Calm” do not appear in the poem, but “Give them silence and the love of mystery” resonated with this vision of white figures kneeling before the hand holding the host—a motif that recurs like a leitmotif, embodying the contemporary aspirations of the *Journal*: “To be at the heart of the Mystery in the serenity of the Temple. [...] and white, vague things, beautiful things, very loud music.” (Maurice Denis, Journal, vol. I, p. 63) Jean-Paul Bouillon in Jean-Paul Bouillon (ed.), Maurice Denis: [exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, October 31, 2006 – January 21, 2007], Paris, Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2006, pp. 67–68.