Pierre LOUŸS (1870-1925). L.A.S., Fontaine-Bleue near Algiers 11 January 1897 [to Émile ZOLA] 3 pages in-8 (cracks at the folds). Beautiful letter to Zola about Aphrodite. He thanks him for his comments in Le Gaulois of 2 January: "you say very kind things about my Aphrodite. The same day a little note appeared in the Mercure de France in which I asked for you and a few other great writers to create a third Académie. I am very happy about the coincidence that brings together your expression of interest and my tribute of admiration". It even surprised him, "because up to now, if the playwrights and poets have been excellent to me, the novelists are very fond of saying that they haven't even opened my book, and I no longer hoped that any of them would reach out to me without knowing me. I therefore felt very deeply the honour I was receiving from a writer who is undoubtedly, along with TOLSTOY, the most important of our time"... Another L.A.S. is attached (2 pages oblong in-12): "I was 21 or 22 when I wrote Aphrodite. At that age, I believed that the artist should push the cult of art to the point of despising everything that was not Beauty. - But two years later, when I recopied my manuscript for printing, Demetrios had become so unsympathetic to me that I introduced [...] the character of Timon, with the sole intention of making a friend of him. Timon no doubt has no pretensions to asceticism, but he is sensitive to tenderness and pity: two feelings I no longer disdain"... - Plus a Mercure de France publicity poster for the launch of Aphrodite (cracks in the folds).