Jacqueline Nonkels’ correspondence

Jacqueline Nonkels met Marcel Mariën at the home of Georgette and René Magritte. The charm exerted by the young woman over the youngest member of the surrealist group (he was 17 and she 4 years older), was soon translated into an intense correspondence, in which the suitor’s delicacy competed for her favours. Whilst Marcel Mariën’s passion was not reciprocated, it nevertheless proved to be very fecund. Between December 1937 and August 1938, the young suitor addressed thirty-five letters and postcards to Jacqueline, accompanied by collages and poems. These were the first of what was to become a lengthy output of erotic works, spiced with humour, for which this young love served as a sort of crucible. Jacqueline Nonkels was aware of this and it explains why she wanted the letters to be published after her death, as a sort of posthumous homage to the person for whom she was the first muse.(Marc Quaghebeur, Véronique Jago-Antoine, Les lettres du désir, AML, 2012)

Site Archives et Musée de la littérature