Guillaume APOLLINAIRE. Autograph manuscript, Simon Mage 15 pages in-8. Complete manuscript of this tale from L'Hérésiarque et Cie. Simon Mage was not published in any review, but directly in L'Hérésiarque et Cie (1910). Apollinaire reserved a special place for this text. He wrote to Madeleine on 23 August 1915: "I like Simon Mage, difficult for most people. I think this is the 1st time that angels have been used in such a precise way - scientific, even, and so divine - and they play the real role for which they were imagined". Michel Décaudin emphasises the extent to which "this struggle between the true apostle and the impostor, between spirituality and magic, this victory of truth called into question in the last lines, which are themselves parodies of the death of Christ, as well as details such as the magician's cloaked mask, the words that can be read in both directions, etc., make up par excellence the ambiguous and illusory universe, where true and false never cease to interfere". The text of this manuscript is complete, and, like the definitive text (Pléiade, p. 130-136), contains fairly substantial variants, with erasures and corrections. It is accompanied by an unpublished "note" (a word written in red pencil in the centre of the page), the primitive outline of the story. We quote the beginning: "Simon Magus - Samaritan, St Peter pursues him to Antioch in Rome, wants to rise before Nero, Peter breaks the spell. Deacon Philip meets a sorcerer diviner in Samaria, Simon is struck by the prodigies performed by Jesus' disciples, asks for and receives baptism when Peter arrives and John wants to buy the right to confer the Holy Spirit [...] Simon is Peter himself"... Former Guillaume Apollinaire collection (sale 18 May 1988, no. 16).