Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve
Wednesday, 26th March, 1856.
You well knew that this scrap of good news would enchant me. Lalanne had been warned by Asselineau, and it would have been necessary for the book to have been given to another person if you had not been able to write the article. Lalanne has received a volume.
I can, with respect to the remainder of your letter, give you some details which will perhaps interest you.
There will be a second volume and a second preface. The first volume is written to draw the Public: “Juggling, hypotheses, false rumours,” etc. “Ligeia” is the only important piece which is morally connected with the second volume.
The second volume is more markedly fantastic: “Hallucinations, mental maladies, pure grotesqueness, the supernatural,” etc.
The second Preface will contain the analysis of the words that I shall not translate, and, above all, the statement of the scientific and literary opinions of the author. It is even necessary that I should write to M. de Humboldt on this subject to ask him his opinion on a little book which is dedicated to him; it is “Eureka.”
The first preface, that you have seen and in which I have tried to comprise a lively protestation against Americanism, is almost complete from the biographical point of view. We shall pretend to wish to consider Poe only as a juggler, but I shall come back at the finish to the supernatural character of his poetry and his stories. He is only American in so far as he is a juggler. Beyond that, the thought is almost anti-American. Besides, he has made fun of his compatriots as much as he could.
Now, the piece to which you allude makes part of the second volume. It is a dialogue between two souls, after the destruction of the earth. There are three dialogues of this kind that I shall be happy to lend you at the end of the month, before delivering my second volume to the printer.
Now, I thank you with all my heart; but you are so kind that you run risks with me. After the Poe will come two volumes of mine, one of critical articles and the other of poems. Thus, I make my excuses to you beforehand; and, besides, I fear that when I shall no longer speak with the voice of a great poet, I shall be for you a brawling and disagreeable being.
Yours ever.
At the end of the second volume of Poe I shall put some specimens of poetry.
I am persuaded that a man so careful as yourself would not wish me to ask him to take note of the orthography of the name [Edgar Poe]. No “d,” no diæresis, no accent.