TASTU Amable Poésies Nouvelles

Vicaire, 761 ; Fléty, 38.

First edition, nicely illustrated with woodcut vignettes engraved by Henri-Désiré Porret, one of the pioneers of the Romantic bookillustration.

Amable Tastu is an author of works for young people as well as a poet. This book seems to bring together these two strands of literature, with Tastu redrawing the verses of the greatest authors, including Perrault, Dante and Chateaubriand. The book opens with La Fontaine’s famous lines ‘If Peau d’Âne were told to me. I would take extreme pleasure in it’. This poetic extract became a leitmotif in 19th-century publications, repeated in every new edition of fables and tales. Far from being anodyne, La Fontaine’s quotation took on its full meaning in a 19th century that was fighting for the recognition of a literature that was often disparaged as outdated or frivolous.

Madame Tastu is part of this movement and extends it, taking literary markers and making them her own. The aim was also to provide children with a multi-faceted education, using subjects that would serve as a basis for a sound upbringing. The poems in this collection borrow from several genres, not forgetting the biblical with ‘Le tentateur’ (The tempter), ‘Le temps pascal’ (Easter time) and ‘La passion’ (The passion). More surprisingly, they are not grouped together but interspersed with other more fanciful or moralistic pieces, discussing in turn ‘The Horoscope’, ‘Time’ or ‘La Fayette’.

Illustrious figures are well present. Madame Tastu gave in to the fashion of glorifying great men. A tribute is paid to Chateaubriand, albeit somewhat overshadowed by the headband vignette. Although it presents a profile in the form of a medal, as is customary, Chateaubriand is hardly recognisable, and for good reason, it is undoubtedly a reuse of the worn-out wooden matrix. This clumsiness is accentuated by a spelling error in the great man’s name, which is spelled with a ‘t’ instead of a ‘d’.

Madame Tastu only paid tribute to her friends whom she met in the Parisian salons. Thanks to her literary success, she was admitted to Madame Récamier’s salon, then to the Cénacle presided over by Charles Nodier. There she met Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, who dedicated poems to her. Béranger became one of her best friends.

These Nouvelles Poésies follow on from the Poésies of 1826, which had the same layout: a series of poems dealing with history, religion and literature.

A very fine copy, well preserved in its handsome contemporary binding.

Provenance: Édouard Rahir (bookplate, catalogue VI, lot 2083).