Investigations

“In a word, it is a long ribbon of humanity, neither better nor worse, which runs all along the very cradle of the one and true great Paris of art and history”

Rosetta Stone, Decree of Alexandria, Decree of Canopus, Decree of Memphis, the Tell el-Amarna Tablets, the Book of the Dead... Le Feu Follet takes you this week to the heart of the archives of a renowned Egyptologist: Auguste Baillet.

“For any work, there is an infinite number of possible versions.” This is how Maurice Blanchot introduced, in 1950, the new version of his novel Thomas the Obscure, “written […] from 1932 onward, submitted to the publisher in 1940, published in 1941.” Already reduced by three quarters in 1950, that first version—unavailable during Blanchot’s lifetime—has come to be regarded by many readers as a less mature stage in his writing, seemingly confirming Jean Paulhan’s witticism from 1942 about Aminadab: “What [Blanchot] writes is almost unbearable over 400 pages and perfectly beautiful in ten.” The discovery of Thomas le solitaire compels us to revise that judgment.

Heureux qui comme Léry, a fait un beau voyage,Et au contraire de cestuy-là, a conquis les TupinambasPuis s'en est retourné plein d'humanisme et raison,Conter son aventure et célébrer les « sauvages »Quand reverrons-nous hélas, de ce superbe ouvrage,Un si bel exemplaire en précoce éditionQui inspira Montaigne, Rousseau, Voltaire et compagnons…

"The admission of women to perfect equality would be the surest mark of civilization; it would double the intellectual powers of humankind and its chances of happiness." Although she claimed to have experienced every facet of love, Valerie Solanas likely never read these lines by Stendhal. With no hope and no compromise toward the male gender, she conceived a misandrist utopia of staggering violence. Edition-Originale presents the genesis and history of SCUM, a virulent feminist pamphlet that stands in stark contrast to the egalitarian humanism of Olympe de Gouges, yet is grounded in a sociological diagnosis of formidable acuity. Oscillating between revolutionary political programme, paranoid delirium, and poetic text, Solanas’s manifesto ultimately sketches a world in which the lives of most men would be harsher than those of Saracen slaves.

“For a long time, Blanchot defied the efforts of photographers and caricaturists in the literary press. Over the years, illustrations remained minimal and exceedingly rare: in 1962, L’Express depicted a hand holding a book against the backdrop of a page; in 1979, Libération printed a blank square in the middle of the page, captioned only with the name Maurice Blanchot and a quotation from The Infinite Conversation (‘a void of universe: nothing that was visible, nothing that was invisible’).” (C. Bident, Maurice Blanchot)

It was a pamphlet of a few pages, without date or publisher. He was lying around among newspapers and leaflets from the 1930s, in the cellar of a pavilion whose name I don't remember...

In 2022, Thomas the Solitary, the first novel by Maurice Blanchot, was finally published thanks to the rediscovery of the original manuscript preserved at Harvard’s Houghton Library. Long thought lost for over 80 years, this foundational novel was identified and catalogued in 2016 by Librairie Le Feu Follet before being acquired by Harvard University. Discover the original manuscript and the very first in-depth, previously unpublished study of this singular work.

The Gazette du bon ton was an important step in the history of fashion. Combining aesthetic demands with the physical whole, it brought together – for the first time – the great talents of the artistic, literary, and fashion worlds; and imposed, through this alchemy, a completely new image of women: slender, independent and daring, which was shared by the new generation of designers, including Coco Chanel, Jean Patou, Marcel Rochas, and so on…