Letters to Marcel Jouhandeau about Braque

The following extracts from letters were published in the exhibition catalog Jean Paulhan through his painters organized by André Berne-Joffroy

dated: Sunday (circa 1939)

The Braques are admirable. Perhaps you will love, more than anything, three purple grapes and, at a window, a blue sky, embarrassed to find yourself at Braque's house.
This goes far beyond Picasso.
I'm going to write to Braque. I think I like in him, even in this reversal of secrets (the sky, the grapes becoming what is hidden), a patience, a meticulousness of a French craftsman.
We are never more sensitive than in front of Braque to the Cocteau side of Picasso.

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dated: Monday circa 1939-1940

It was rarely me who first spoke about it to Braque. He found the studies on him by Einstein and Raynal remarkable. I had to tell him that they were stupid (besides, I suspect he hardly read them; and he speaks about himself in a tone that makes the metaphysical constructions of E. or R. useless or absurd). Hence I told him that you alone...
How to talk about Braque without talking about a state of the soul. (Without which there remains only a trumeau or door top, perfectly delicate).
But you are also capable of a serenity that nothing comes close to.

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dated: Thursday circa 1942

Yesterday at Braque's. His latest paintings are wonderful. What serenity, what presences. I remain enchanted by it.
(Ah, he's not a con artist. He knows something. I don't just mean painting).

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dated: Saturday October 16, 1943

Braque may escape me one day. But I'm happy with what I wrote about him; so, happier if I continue it. If I add a new chapter every year. Then I believe I have considered in B. what everyone until then neglected: the metaphysician (the metaphysician before the Greeks, who only passed through Jerusalem). And I believe that in each of us all men succeed one another, except the metaphysician who remains.

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dated: Tuesday certainly 1943

Marie Laurencin... Note that she only makes the common mistake about Braque: she believes him to be a good craftsman, with taste, not very intelligent. It's quite the opposite: even taste only comes to him after a metaphysical sense of the world, a sort of genius, comparable to Heraclitus or Lao Tse, which he himself discovers only insensibly and in fragments, and moreover almost undiscoverable, inexpressible...
Above all, don't reconcile me with Marie at this moment. The Fautrier will seem even more absurd to him than the Braque, and everything would have to start again.