Description

COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT OF A SATIRICAL TALE ABOUT EDUCATION in which Verlaine makes fun of the State's intervention in education; wanting to regulate everything, it only disorients pupils.

This text was published in November 1895 in the magazine Artewhich, according to Jacques Borel, is missing from the BNF.
The version published today, that of the Messein edition, is based on a manuscript kept in the Jacques Doucet collection: two sheets written in pencil with almost no erasures, bearing the title Anarchist tale.
Our manuscript appears to be the final manuscript which follows on from that of the Doucet fund. The word Anarchist of the title is crossed out and replaced by the definitive title, Educational.
This manuscript also contains a number of erasures, and several variants, such as this different final sentence:

• Version of the Doucet fund manuscript reproduced in Messein et la Pleiade:
  The State then declared that it didn't want to worry about anything else, and everything went back to normal..
• Version of our manuscriptt:
  The State then declared that it no longer wished to concern itself with any of this, and all was well again.

The manuscript, mounted on folios, was finely prepared by Claude Honnelaître.