After five years’ intense labour Roussel renounced this project too, and began work on another poem also to be called Nouvelles impressions d’Afrique which – aside from eighteen months spent writing his two plays, of which no manuscripts exist – absorbed him for the remainder of his creative life. The manuscript pages of the final Nouvelles impressions d’Afrique that have…
Though he tidied up many personal affairs, and drew up a new will, he left no instructions concerning the thousands of pages of rough drafts, fair copies, typescripts and proofs left behind in the apartment he occupied in the family house on the rue Quentin Bauchart. His theatrical extravaganzas, legendary generosity and eccentric lifestyle had consumed the bulk of his…
To leave these papers lying about would have sent out rays of light as far as China and the desperate crowd would have flung themselves upon my house … Was surrounded by rays of light; I would close the curtains for fear the shining rays that were emanating from my pen would escape through the smallest chink; I wanted to…