About the Corsican poet Petru Santu Leca, his Fiori di Machja, and an unpublished correspondence with Paul Valéry (1924-1933)
Résumé
Pierre Leca, or Petru Santu Leca, Corsican poet and writer, had the project to gather his poetic designs in a bilingual collection he would have entitled Les Parcs in his French version, and Fiori di Machja in Corsican version. Doubtless he would have made it in echo to the Fiori di Cirnu his uncle Santu Casanova wrote. Time was lacking. The pad of poetries and verses which he holds from 1895, written in Corsican, Italian and French languages, accompanied of one other notebook personal, would have thrown very most probably the foundations of such a publication. A publication moreover, which is lacking in the library of the Corsican literary works nowadays. Because the work of Petru Santu Leca, as well as asserts Béatrice Elliott, “seems to have scattered with a malicious pleasure”. Some of his papers, which we know their existence because they have been relayed by contemporanean press and magazines, leave no trace after the World War the First, or during successive movings. Paul Valéry in particular, maintains a correspondence with Petru Santu Leca. In 1927, L’Annu Corsu publishes in its French part a letter extracted from this serie. Paul Valéry sits then since November 19th, 1925 to the Académie française, to Anatole France’s armchair for which he competed successfully against Léon Bérard and Victor Bérard. On July 25th, 1924, Paul Valéry answers to Petru Santu Leca. In a first letter we didn’t found, Leca probably asked Valéry to draft a poem or some other writes on Corsica? We don’t know more about… Did he want to publish in L’Aloès or maybe even in The L’Annu Corsu? We learn moreover in the course of this original letter, that Paul Valéry came on Corsica during year 1876. And that he would like to go back to this island so as to know it better, to fill a lack of imagination. He finallly returned there a second time in the year 1929, during a cruise he made aboard the yacht “Tenax” belonging to Countess de Béhage: during their trip they visited Ajaccio, Bonifacio, Bastia, Corte and Calvi.
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