Fresnes (Val-De-Marne)

First edition of Jean Genet's debut work, written at Fresnes, printed in a few copies and published at the author’s expense, which appeared clandestinely while he was serving a prison sentence for book theft. The pamphlet, thirteen pages, unbound and unpaginated, was printed on brown paper under a pink or white cover.
Our copy is housed in a half old-rose box chemise, boards of geometrically patterned paper, slipcase trimmed in old-rose box, the ensemble signed by Thomas Boichot.

« J'ai dédié ce poème à la mémoire de mon ami Maurice Pilorge, dont le corps et le visage radieux hantent mes nuits sans sommeil... ». Thus Jean Genet explained the genesis of this poem, a tribute to « l'assassin de 20 ans », guillotined, with whom he shared the last forty days. According to François Sentein, biographer of Maurice Pilorge (L'Assassin et son bourreau), the two men never actually met and Jean Genet would make him into an imagined companion, « mort avec l'insouciance d'un dandy » (Edmund White, Jean Genet). Jean Cocteau, who would become both friend and guardian angel to Jean Genet—saving him from life imprisonment a few years later—wrote in his Journal: « Parfois, il m'arrive un miracle. Par exemple, Le Condamné à mort de Jean Genet. Je crois qu'il n'en existe que quatre exemplaires. Il a déchiré le reste. Ce long poème est une splendeur. Jean Genet sort de Fresnes (la plaquette est datée de la prison, « Fresnes, septembre 1942 »). Poème érotique à la gloire de Maurice Pilorge, assassin de vingt ans, exécuté le 12 mars 1939, à Saint-Brieuc. L'érotisme de Genet ne choque jamais. Son obscénité n'est jamais obscène. Un grand mouvement magnifique domine tout. La prose qui débute est courte, insolente, hautaine. Style parfait. »
Extremely rare and very attractive copy as published.

Set of 10 original photographs taken at Fresnes prison in April 1945, reproduced in Henri Calet’s Les Murs de Fresnes, except for one unpublished print. Numerous editorial notes and measurements on the versos in preparation for publication, two bearing the stamps “Bernès, Marouteau & C^ie”; black felt-tip retouching visible on five prints, pencil retouching marks on the two photographs of the food tins.

A set of images taken at Fresnes prison in April 1945, which give voice to a place where under the Occupation too many lives came to an end. These photographs reveal the mute history of the imprisonment of French and foreign resistance fighters—graffiti by those condemned or awaiting judgment, bare cells, and endless corridors.

Two photographs preserve the last traces of the Resistance heroine and feminist Berty Albrecht at Fresnes: her death certificate bearing the chilling words “condamnée par autorité Allemande / Décédée cause inconnue” (condemned by German authority / Died by unknown causes) and a view of her burial site, a simple stake marked with the number 347 in the prison’s vegetable garden, among countless anonymous graves.

With the exception of one unpublished photograph, the images were used to illustrate Henri Calet’s major investigation, Les Murs de Fresnes, in which, even before the armistice was signed, he strove to trace “ceux qui sont passés par là,” (those who were there) particularly the victims of the Nacht und Nebel policy.