Almaïde d'Etremont

LIMITED EDITION of 500 numbered copies. This is one of 50 copies numbered on Imperial Japan paper containing AN ORIGINAL DRAWING in black.

Almaïde, along with Clara d’Ellebeuse and Laure d’Anis, forms the trio of these young girls in bloom that Proust had so admired in Jammes and from whom he had drawn inspiration for the second volume of his Recherche. In Les Caprices du poète, Jammes confides about the birth of these charming characters:

“If Clara d’Ellébeuse had enveloped me with her snow, and the pale sun of her spring, Almaïde d’Étremont reigned over me by the power of a beauty like a flame in the night. A poet said that it is hard to fight against the ghosts of one’s mind. Such is the violence of Almaïde, Almaïde concentrates the ardor of my youth to such an extent that I must silence my soul so as not to hear on certain days the light muslin of her dress rustling.”