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Réf : 85979

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Henri d' ARGIS & Paul VERLAINE

Sodome

Alphonse Piaget, Paris 1888, 14,5x19,5cm, relié.

First edition, one of 20 numbered cop­ies on hollande, the only deluxe issue (grand papier) after 10 copies on japon.
Bound in gray half morocco in panels, smooth spine, gilt date at foot, abstract decorative paper boards, black onion­skin pastedowns and flyleaves, original wrappers preserved, pastedown book­plate, top deckled edge gilt, binding signed Boichot.
Small tears with small lacks of paper to the margin of an endpaper and on the front cover.
The work is dedicated to Paul Verlaine who wrote the preface “which was a way of advertising to gay readers” (Gra­ham Robb, Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, p. 210).
Precious signed and inscribed copy to Catulle Mendès who will go on to write six years later “the first descrip­tion of a male homosexual orgasm” (Graham Robb) in his novel La Maison de la Vieille.
This novel, although still tinged with a moralistic, guilt-ridden view of ho­mosexuality, features the first gay sex scene in a French novel. It takes place near the Opera, in a palatial Turkish bath house, one of Paris' most famous cruis­ing spots at the time when the influence of the Arabian Nights and the prospect of hedonistic pleasures were all the rage: “In this overheated atmosphere, Jacques savors the pleasures of body reflection and massage. Then comes the 'unpleasant brusqueness of the shower' before entering the steam bath, where several bodies lie naked and immod­est. Suddenly, a young man of twenty appears with 'an aristocratic bearing, a blond head, the fat, bulging chest of the Capitoline Antinous statue'. It was love at first sight. Jacques looks out for him, follows him ‘panting' and thus succumbs to 'unnatural vice'” (François Buot, Gay Paris, Une histoire du Paris interlope entre 1900 et 1940).
Neil Bartlett even suggests Oscar Wil­de might have read the novel based on the plea he wrote to the Home Secretary from Reading Gaol, which features a similar description of his erotomania (Paul Hallam, The Book of Sodom, 1993).
This deluxe copy is exceptionally in­scribed to Catulle Mendès, who also pi­oneered the writing of novels centered around gay and lesbian protagonists.
Provenance: library of Comte René Philipon, specialist in occult sciences, collector, entomologist and patron of the arts, with his pastedown bookplate featuring the Rosicrucian symbol of the Phoenix rising from the ashes.
An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexual­ity, II, 6694.

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