Valery Larbaud and Hispanist women of Letters I. A friendship and literary committments with Mathilde Pomès, signs of an advanced mind for the time

Martine Reid in her work Women in Literature (2010) signals the need for a revision of literary history, which has always been written from a masculine point of view, to restore the place of women of letters who, having been for long invisible, nevertheless played a role in it. Valery Larbaud was very early interested in their contribution to literature, and if the number of studies he published on them reflects the imbalance of the literary field of his time, he nevertheless gave them a place in his journal and in some of his correspondence. His long stay in Alicante, and his total immersion in Levantine life and culture allowed him to rediscover his passion for the literatures and cultures of the Hispanic worlds, a fervent passion that he will share with numerous colleagues or acquaintances at his return to Paris. Our analysis focuses on the friendship and literary commitments with Mathilde Pomès, the first agrégée of Spanish in France, at that time opening her path in the world of Hispanicism. We plan to demonstrate from the analysis of their correspondence how our author, critic and translator demonstrates against the current an advanced mind because, enjoying an undeniable notoriety and prestige in Parisian literary circles in the aftermath of the First World War, he grants his collaborator equal treatment, ensuring her visibility and notoriety in the literary field.