AUGUST 1914-APRIL 1915

PREFACE BY ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON




PREFACE BY ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON

The letters that follow are those of a young painter who was at the
front from September [1914] till the beginning of April [1915]; at the
latter date he was missing in one of the battles of the Argonne. Are we
to speak of him in the present tense or in the past? We know not: since
the day when the last mud-stained paper reached them, announcing the
attack in which he was to vanish, what a close weight of silence for
those who during eight months lived upon these almost daily letters! But
for how many women, how many mothers, is a grief like this to-day a
common lot!

In the studio and amid the canvases upon which the young man had traced
the forms of his dreams, I have seen, piously placed in order on a
table, all the little papers written by his hand. A silent presence--I
was not then aware what manner of mind had there expressed
itself--revisiting this hearth: a mind surely made to travel far abroad
and cast its lights upon multitudes of men.

It was the mind of a complete artist, but of a poet as well, that had
lurked under the timid reserves of a youth who at thirteen years of age
had left school for the studio, and who had taught himself, without help