1877 Original Letter by French Poet Emma Mahul to Aimé Giron with Literary Gossip on Mario Rapisardi, Women’s Creative Ambitions & Bellini

On offer is a substantial six-page handwritten letter signed by the French poet and translator Stéphanie Emma Élisabeth (Dejean) Mahul (1815-1879), written from Livorno, Italy, on April 7, 1877, to the poet, novelist, and journalist Jean Antoine Aimé Giron (1836-1907). 

Bringing together Mahul, Giron, the outspoken Sicilian poet Mario Rapisardi (1844-1912), his wife Giselda Fojanesi, and the commemoration of composer Vincenzo Bellini, this lively literary correspondence explores the personal relationships, creative ambitions, and private opinions behind nineteenth-century cultural life in France and Italy.

Mahul writes with affection, impatience, humour, and considerable confidence on subjects ranging from Rapisardi’s poetry and married life to her hopes of earning money from music, the frustrations of illness, and her anxiety over Giron’s health. Although their correspondence has already developed an easy familiarity, the two writers have yet to meet. She anticipates that occasion explicitly: “La première fois que j’aurai le plaisir de vous voir (et ce sera bien la 1ère fois)” [The first time I have the pleasure of seeing you—and it really will be the first time].

The letter preserves a friendship sustained through the exchange of writing, opinions, and personal confidences.

A particularly engaging passage concerns Mario Rapisardi and his Lucifero, published in the same year as this letter. Mahul moves readily between literary criticism and personal teasing, commenting on the poem’s irreverence, personal jibes, and bawdy humour. She finds evidence of the childishness Giron has apparently detected in its author: “...je crois trouver trace de cette puérilité que vous dites deviner (je ne relève pas l’autre substantif)”  [I think I can find a trace of that childishness you say you detect (I shall pass over the other noun)]. The discussion has the unmistakable flavour of private literary gossip.

Her acquaintance with Rapisardi reaches back well before this discussion. Recalling a poem she wrote for him in 1864, described as the Disciple de la Muse céleste, she remembers reproaching him for adopting the manner of a young man already disillusioned by experience: “ je me permis de lui reprocher de se poser en garçon revenu de ses erreurs lorsqu’il n’avait encore erré que sur les flancs de l’Etna” [I ventured to reproach him for posing as a young man who had put his mistakes behind him, when his only wanderings had been on the slopes of Etna]. She goes on to speculate that the pleasures of married life have encouraged some of his more risqué verse.

These comments offer a contemporary reader’s response to Rapisardi at an important moment in his career, expressed by a woman who knew him well enough to criticize him directly. His reaction, she suggests, is sometimes silence:  “Mario, qui ne répond pas aux lettres où je le gronde” [Mario, who does not answer the letters in which I scold him]. This is a particularly appealing glimpse of the everyday behaviour behind a poet’s public reputation.

Mahul shares with Giron the story of Vincenzo Bellini’s remains being returned to Catania, an event that had taken place in 1876, and a “Bellini medal” Rapisardi and his wife had sent her way.

Equally compelling is Mahul’s account of her own creative ambitions. She hopes to earn income from the music she wrote for twenty-five romances, or songs, rather than their lyrics: “c’était de la musique et non des paroles, de ces 25 romances que je voulais tirer et un gain, fort supérieur à celui des vers, et un petit lustre de gloire” [It was from the music, not the words, of those twenty-five songs that I hoped to obtain both an income, considerably greater than that from verse, and a little lustre of fame]. 

This discussion gives the letter particular interest for the history of women’s writing and music. Still a woman of her time, Mahul follows up with a typical expression of modesty: “ma science bornée me devait, comme femme, interdire ces fortes tentatives” [My limited learning ought, as a woman, to have ruled out such ambitious undertakings]. 

Illness runs through the correspondence without extinguishing its energy. Mahul describes the discomforts of iodine treatment, the fatigue of writing, and the use of ether. She compares her suffering with that of several female cousins and recalls an Italian physician who, “me sauva en me condamnant à la mer” [saved me by condemning me to the sea]. She details her symptoms, family history, treatment and even turns her experience into poetry, writing a verse that begins, “Se perdre dans l’éther ! ah ! l’agréable chose!” [To lose oneself in ether! Ah, what a pleasant thing!]

She expresses concern for Giron (a man 21 years her junior), and tells him she had consulted “cards” about his condition, writing: “elles m’ont dit six ou sept fois de suite malade et mort : peu logiques, mais peu gai”  [Six or seven times in succession they told me “ill” and “dead”: not very logical, but not very cheerful]. The confession combines genuine anxiety with self-mocking humour. She closes by asking him once again to confirm that he has not suffered a relapse.

Rich in personality and exceptionally varied in content, this letter offers a substantial encounter with Mahul as a working writer, a critical reader, and a woman determined to maintain her creative life through physical discomfort. Its combination of literary gossip, musical ambition, embedded verse, medical experience, and Sicilian cultural connections gives it appeal across French and Italian literature, women’s history, music, and the collecting of personal correspondence.

Additional excerpts provide a greater sense of the style and content of the letter:

"Vous prétendez comprendre Mario (avouez qu’il vous intéresse) le comprendre sur son écriture, une écriture d’enveloppe…" [You claim to understand Mario (admit that he interests you) to understand him from his handwriting, the handwriting on an envelope…]

"Je ne serai jamais à votre hauteur comme poète, mais j’ai toujours comme improvisé et cela me paraissait la chose du monde la plus simple." [I shall never equal you as a poet, but I have always more or less improvised, and that seemed to me the simplest thing in the world.]

"Il me tournoie dans le crâne toutes sortes de jolies choses qui sont dans votre lettre et toutes sortes de jolies choses que je voudrais répondre, mais si je voulais les écrire ça me fatiguerait horriblement." [All sorts of lovely things from your letter are swirling around my head, along with all sorts of lovely things I would like to say in reply, but writing them down would exhaust me terribly.]

"Celle qui m’avait été décernée par le Sindaco s’était évaporée dans les formalités : la légalité nous tue, comme disait un politique de mon temps." [The one awarded to me by the mayor had evaporated in the formalities: legality is killing us, as a politician of my day used to say.]

"Si vous ne voulez pas, vous, être de l’Académie française, il faudra ériger le mont Aris en Parnasse." [If you do not wish to belong to the Académie française, we shall have to turn Mount Aris into Parnassus.]

This substantial letter will appeal to collectors and researchers of nineteenth-century French and Italian literature, women’s writing and musical ambitions, and the private friendships and candid exchanges that shaped literary life.

Biographical Notes:

Emma Mahul (1815–1879)

Born Stéphanie Emma Élisabeth Dejean in Paris, Emma Mahul was a French poet, translator, and author whose life connected the military and administrative elite of France with the literary culture of Italy. Her father, Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean (1780–1845), was a Napoleonic general and distinguished entomologist, known for his important beetle collections and catalogues. Her paternal grandfather, Jean François Aimé Dejean (1749–1824), was a general and imperial statesman, while her brothers Benjamin Barthélémy and Pierre Charles pursued careers in public administration and the army. In 1833 she married Jacques-Alphonse Mahul (1795–1871), a politician, journalist, and historical writer. His appointment as prefect of Vaucluse brought her to Avignon in 1837, where she participated in literary and artistic society. Her family also furnished subjects for her writing: she composed a memoir of her maternal aunt Aurore Barthélémy-Dejean, who, through her marriage to Emma’s grandfather, was also her step-grandmother. Mahul later travelled in Italy, lived in Sicily, and settled permanently in Livorno in 1864, remaining there until her death in 1879.

Her most sustained literary achievement was the translation of Petrarch’s sonnets into French. Beginning with an anonymous publication in 1847, she developed the undertaking through further publications in 1867, 1869, 1872, and 1877, together encompassing the complete sonnets alongside selected poems in other forms. Her wider output included political poetry concerning Italy, Album sicilien (1865), and Traduction inédite de poètes siciliens (1876), which included work by the woman poet Agatina Abbate Bianchi. Recognition from Italian learned societies included honorary membership in the academies of Arezzo and Acireale. She also used poetry to communicate natural history: L’Entomologie en cent distiques (1869) honoured her father’s scientific interests, while La véritable anthologie (1873) treated horticulture in mnemonic verse. Her other work included a verse adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, Roman et histoire ou La victime de la trahison. Vie du général Roze (1868), and unpublished fiction. Her literary relationships, including those with Giron and Rapisardi documented here, place her within an active exchange of writing and ideas between France and Italy.

Aimé Giron (1836–1907)

Jean Antoine Aimé Giron was a French poet, novelist, journalist, and dramatist born at Le Puy-en-Velay. Trained in law, he served as secretary of the town’s academic society before developing a literary career that extended into Parisian journalism. His contributions appeared in publications including the Revue de Paris, Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, and La France illustrée. His books ranged from poetry to regional stories, children’s literature, and drama: among them were Le Sabot de Noël (1863), Les Amours étranges (1864), Les Cordes de fer (1873), and La Béate (1884). He also collaborated with Albert Tozza on dramatic works. His brother Léon Giron was a painter, and his son Noël became the Egyptologist Noël Aimé-Giron. He died at Bois-Colombes in 1907.

In this correspondence, Giron appears as a fellow poet whose work Mahul reads closely, whose opinions she challenges, and whose health concerns her deeply. Her references to his verse, a song, and his observations about Rapisardi reveal an established literary exchange, while her anticipation of their first meeting shows how fully that friendship had developed through letters.

Mario Rapisardi (1844–1912)

Mario Rapisardi was a Sicilian poet, translator, and university teacher born in Catania, where he spent most of his life. His writing increasingly championed reason, science, and social reform. Major works included La Palingenesi (1868), Ricordanze (1872), Lucifero (1877), Giustizia (1883), and Giobbe (1884). In Lucifero, rebellion against religious authority becomes a vehicle for celebrating intellectual freedom and progress. The poem also furnished the grounds for his bitter literary quarrel with Giosuè Carducci.

Rapisardi married the Tuscan teacher and writer Giselda Fojanesi in 1872. Their troubled marriage ended in separation in 1883 following the discovery of her relationship with Giovanni Verga; his own attachment to the poet Evelina Cattermole, known as Contessa Lara, further complicated their domestic history. From 1885, Amelia Poniatowski Sabèrnich became his lasting companion. He also translated classical and English poetry, including Lucretius, Catullus, and Shelley. 

Mahul’s letter predates the marital rupture by six years. Its interest lies in her contemporary comments on his writing, his married life, and their personal dealings during the year of Lucifero’s publication.

Giselda Fojanesi (1851–1946)

Giselda Fojanesi was an Italian writer and educator born near Foiano della Chiana in Tuscany. Educated in Florence, she entered literary circles there before moving to Catania to teach in 1869. She married Rapisardi in February 1872. Following their separation in 1883, she supported herself through teaching, journalism, translation, and writing, later working in girls’ education and as an inspector of educational institutions. Her publications included Maria (1883), Cose che succedono (1886), Memorie di collegio (1898), and In Toscana e in Sicilia (1914). Her career gives her an independent place in the history of Italian women’s authorship and education, beyond her association with Rapisardi and Verga. She died at Lodi in 1946. 

Referred to here as Rapisardi’s wife, she participates in the arrangements that finally bring Mahul the Bellini commemorative medal.

Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835)

Vincenzo Bellini was a Sicilian composer and a leading figure in nineteenth-century Italian opera. Born in Catania and trained in Naples, he achieved international recognition through works including La sonnambula, Norma, and I puritani. His operas are particularly associated with expressive melody and the vocal demands of the bel canto tradition. He died near Paris in 1835, aged thirty-three. In 1876 his remains were returned to Catania and placed in the cathedral, an event commemorated by the medal discussed in Mahul’s letter.

Molière (1622–1673)

Born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, Molière was a French playwright, actor, and theatrical company leader whose comedies include Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, L’Avare, and Le Malade imaginaire. His portrayals of hypocrisy, vanity, social ambition, and human folly made him a central figure in French theatre. Mahul invokes him in a teasing comparison involving a portrait held by Giron, adding another detail to the letter’s discussion of literary personalities and their likenesses.

Condition:

French language. Two leafs, one approx 8.5x11" and one approx 11x17" folded in half to create two smaller pages. Writing on front and back of six sides of paper for six full pages of content. Good overall condition with age toning, intersecting fold lines, scattered handling creases, and minor edge and corner wear, including turned corners and a short split at one fold edge. Occasional small spots and ink marks are present. The brown ink remains generally clear, with noticeable show-through from writing on the reverse, particularly on the final leaf. Please review photographs carefully for condition as they form part of the description.

Sources Cited

D’Anna, R. (1997). Fojanesi, Giselda. In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Vol. 48). Treccani.

Dell’Erba, N. (2016). Rapisardi, Mario. In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Vol. 86). Treccani.

Livres anciens Ariane Adeline. (n.d.). Mahul, Emma: Notice nécrologique sur Madame la comtesse Aurore Dejean et roman commencé à Castellamare [Manuscript catalogue entry].

Museo Vincenzo Bellini. (n.d.). Birthplace.

Rushworth, J. (2017). Petrarch and the literary culture of nineteenth-century France: Translation, appropriation, transformation. The Boydell Press.

Wikipédia. (n.d.). Aimé Giron.