Friendships First

First edition, one of 100 hors commerce numbered copies on BFK de Rives paper, the only grand papier (deluxe) copies with 662 other copies on BFK de Rives paper.
Precious copy inscribed and dated October 1966 by Beckett to his friend the painter Geer (Van Velde) and his wife Lise.
Nice copy.
“What to say of the sliding planes, the shimmering contours, the cut-out figures in the fog, the balance that any little thing can break, breaking and re-forming themselves under our very eyes? How to talk about the colors that breathe and pant? Of the swarming stasis? Of this world without weight, without force, without shadow? Here everything moves, swims, fells, comes back, falls apart, re-forms. Everything stops, non-stop. One would say it's the revolt of the internal molecules of a stone a split second before its disintegration. That is literature” (“The Van Veldes' Art, or the World and the Trousers”, in Cahiers d'Art n°11-12, Paris 1945).
Beckett here is not talking – despite how it may appear – about his literary oeuvre, but about the paintings of Geer Van Velde, going on to add a few lines later “[Bram] Van Velde paints distance. G[eer] Van Velde paints succession.” This elegy, published on the occasion of the double exhibition of the Van Veldes (Geer at Maeght's and Bram at the Galerie Mai) is the first important text on these painters, more or less unknown to the public at the time: “We've only just started spouting nonsense about the Van Velde brothers, and I'm the first. It's an honor.” This is also the first critical text written directly in French by a young Irish writer who had not, as yet, published anything in France.
Thus, the first and most important of Beckett's writings on art, composed at the dawn of his literary career, establishes – right from the start – a fundamental relationship between his developing work and his friends' art: “Thus this text has often been read in a hollow or in the mirror, as one of the rare designations of Beckett's poetry (to come) by the man himself, a sort of anamorphic program of writing,” (Un pantalon cousu de fil blanc : Beckett et l'épreuve critique by Pierre Vilar).
A real statement of dramaturgical intent, this fundamental text whose introspective value Beckett lays out from the introduction on (“one does nothing but tell stories with words”) ushers in the writer's most fruitful creative period. In essence, like Apollinaire and Cendrars, Beckett draws from the artistic problems of his contemporaries the catalyst of his own future writing through “the deepest questioning of narrative, figurative or poetical presuppositions” (Pascale Casanova in Beckett l'abstracteur).
The major influence of modern painting on the narrative structure – or destructuring – of Beckett's drama and novels would be pointed out and examined by a number of thinkers, among them Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva and Maurice Blanchot. It was, in fact, with the art of the Van Veldes (first Geer then Bram) that Beckett began to formalize this desire to translate the pictorial question into dramaturgical terms. Thus it was that he rejected Nicolas de Staël's set design for Godot, since: “the set must come out of the text without adding anything to it. As for the visual comfort of the audience, you can imagine how much I care. Do you really think you can listen with the backdrop of Bram's set, or see anything other than him?” (Letter to Georges Duthuit, 1952).
When he met Geer in 1937, “Beckett was going through a major existential crisis and had just been reworking his first novel, Murphy, which had been rejected by a great many publishers. He was lost in alcohol, leaving Ireland and moving once and for all to Paris” (Le Pictural dans l'œuvre de Beckett, Lassaad Jamoussi). He returned from a long artistic journey in Germany, where he was marked by classical works as well as contemporary art – it was during this journey that he discovered Caspar David Friedrich's Two Men Contemplating the Moon, his source for Waiting for Godot.
Art was thus at the heart of his creative thinking and the friendship that would tie him to Geer and later his brother Bram and their sister Jacoba (with whom his relationship may have been more than merely friendly), and which would profoundly influence his life and writing. His first writing on art is a short piece on Geer Van Velde, whose works he pressed on his new lover Peggy Guggenheim when she set up her new London gallery. Despite the relative failure of the exhibition (which followed Kandinsky's), he got his friend a one-year scholarship from Peggy. James Knowlson even thinks that “if Beckett maintained close links with Peggy for a long time, it was first and foremost because she could be convinced to give his artist friends a serious helping hand, starting with Geer Van Velde” (in Beckett, p. 474). Enigmatic, the little piece that Beckett wrote at the time at Peggy's request already contained a dramaturgical kernel of thought: “Believes painting should mind its own business, i.e. colors. i.e. no more say Picasso than Fabritius, Vermeer. Or inversely.”
Slower to develop, his friendship with Bram and interest in the latter's painting slowly changed Beckett's outlook on Geer's art and when, ten years after his first meeting the brothers, he wrote The World and the Trousers, Beckett brought up to date a duality symbolized by the title, taken from an anecdote given as a legend to the article. The world is the “imperfect” work of God, made in six days, to which the tailor compares the perfection of his trousers, made over six months.
The link between this anecdote and the Van Velde brothers is perhaps to be found in the second essay Beckett devoted to them, in 1948, “Peintres de l'empêchement” [Painters of the Problem] (Derrière le miroir n° 11/12): “One of them said: I cannot see the object in order to represent it because I am who I am. There are always two sorts of problems – the object-problem and the ‘eye-problem'…Geer Van Velde is an artist of the former sort…Bram Van Velde of the latter.”
Resistance of the object or impotence of the artist, this tale, the “true primary narrative core in kôan zen form,” (P. Vilar) would later find itself scattered throughout Beckett's work and would more specifically take center stage in Endgame, whose similarity, by the by, with the art of Geer Van Velde was noted by Roger Blin. “At the time, he was friends with the Dutch brothers Geer and Bram Van Velde, both painters. Geer was a painter in the style of Mondrian. I have the feeling that Beckett saw Endgame as a painting by Mondrian with very tidy partitions, geometric separations and musical geometry,” (R. Blin, “Conversations avec Lynda Peskine” in Revue d'Esthétique).
Beckett's growing affinity for Bram Van Velde's work and the energy he put into promoting his work, especially to the galerie Maeght or his friend the art historian Georges Duthuit, was no doubt to the detriment of his relationship with Geer. Nonetheless, despite some misunderstandings, their friendship remained unbroken; as did the silent but anxious dialogue that the writer maintained with the art of the younger Van Velde brother, two of whose large canvases he owned. “The big painting by Geer finally gave me a sign. Shame that it should have turned out so badly. But perhaps that's not true after all” (letter to Georges Duthuit, March 1950). “Geer shows great courage. Ideas that are a little cutting, but maybe only in appearance. I have always had a great respect for them. But not enough, I think” (letter to Mania Péron, August 1951)

The death of Geer Van Velde in 1977 affected Beckett deeply and coincided with a period of intense nostalgia during which the writer decided to give himself over to “a great clear-out” of his house so as to live between “walls as grey as their owner.” Confiding his state of mind to his friend, the stage designer Jocelyn Herbert, Beckett bore witness to the indefatigable affection he had nurtured for the painter over forty years: “more canvases on display, including the big Geer Van Velde behind the piano.”

A precious witness to the friendship of these fellow travelers who had, ever since checking the veracity of the game of chess played by Murphy and Mr. Endon for Beckett's first novel, tackled together the great challenges of modernity: “It's that, deep down, they don't care about painting. What they're interested in is the human condition. We'll come back to that” (Beckett on the Van Velde brothers in The World and the Trousers). + de photos

New quarto edition, revised and corrected by the author, with numerous decorated headpieces, initials and tailpieces.

Full brown calf, spine in six compartments with five raised bands richly gilt-tooled, red morocco lettering-piece, triple blind fillet border to boards, double gilt fillet to board edges, red edges, marbled pastedowns and endpapers.

Light scratches and scuffing to boards, corners slightly bumped, otherwise a very fine copy.

Paper flaw causing marginal tears on pp. 49, 571 and 595, light scattered foxing affecting a few gatherings towards the end of the volume, minor wormhole to lower corner of pp. 253 onwards, ending in a charming emoji.

First edition, one of 10 lettered copies on Holland paper, the only deluxe copies.

Illustrated on the cover with a portrait of Max Jacob by Pablo Picasso.

A rare and handsome copy.

A remarkable autograph poem of youth by André Breton dedicated to Guillaume Apollinaire entitled «Décembre». 20 verses in ink on vergé d'Arches paper, composed in December 1915. This manuscript was copied between March 1917 and the beginning of 1918.

This poem is presented in a chemise and case with paper boards decorated with abstract motifs, the spine of the chemise in green morocco, pastedowns and endpapers of beige suede, a sheet of flexible plexiglass protecting the poem, case lined with green morocco, piece of green paper with caption «poème autographe» to bottom of upper cover of case, the whole by Thomas Boichot.
Key poem of the author's pre-Dadaist period, it formed part of the set of 7 manuscript poems by Breton (known as coll. X. in the Œuvres complètes d'André Breton, volume I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1988, p. 1071). Thiese poems of his juvenilia are carefully copied out in black ink on watermarked vergé paper. The small collection was addressed to his circle of friends and writers, most notably including Valéry, Apollinaire, Théodore Fraenkel, and his brother in arms André Paris. They were later published in his first collection, Mont de piété, which appeared in June 1919, published by Au Sans Pareil, established not long before by his friend René Hilsum.
The precise dating of this set of autograph poems is made possible by the composition of the final poem in the set («André Derain»), written on 24 March 1917, which provides a definitive terminus post quem. An earlier version of the poem «Age», dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, appears in our collection under its original name, «Poème». Dated by the author 19 February 1916, the day of his 20th birthday, and composed 10 days previously (according to his letters), it was not retitled and reworked until its publication in July 1918 in Les Trois Roses. Judging by the similarities to things published before this last poem, the seven autograph poems were probably written during 1917 or at the beginning of 1918, while Breton was doing his residency in Val-de-Grâce and where, significantly, he made the acquaintance of Louis Aragon.
The poems that make up Mont de piété represent a rare and valuable insight into his youthful influences at the dawn of his joining the Dada movement and his discovery of automatic writing. Quite short and sometimes sibylline, one detects Symbolist highlights borrowed from Mallarmé, whom he rediscovered at poetry mornings in the théâtre Antoine and the Vieux-Colombier accompanied by his schoolfriend Théodore Fraenkel. During the first month of the War, Breton also dedicated himself to Rimbaud, plunging into Les Illuminations, the only work he carried with him in the confusion and haste that followed the outbreak of war. From his readings of Rimbaud were born the poems «Décembre», «Age», and «André Derain», while he borrowed Apollinaire's muse Marie Laurencin to whom he dedicated «L'an suave». The author's poetic inheritance was particularly marked by Paul Valéry, with whom he corresponded from 1914. Valéry played a considerable role in the writing of the poems of Mont de piété with the advice he gave the young poet. Admiring his disciple's audacity, who addressed each of these poems to him, he characterized the poem «Façon» (1916) thus: «The theme, language, scope, meter, everything is new, in the style, the manner of the future» (Letter of June 1916, Œuvres complètes d'André Breton, vol. I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1988, p. 1072).
These essential buds of Breton's youth were written between his seventeenth and twenty-third year. Taken by surprise in Lorient by the declaration of war, he became a military nurse, serving in several hospitals and on the front during the Meuse offensive. In Nantes, he met Jacques Vaché, who inspired him to undertake a project of collective writing, as well as encouraging him to have illustrated the future collection that was to become Mont de piété, a task eventually undertaken by André Derain. His intimacy with this «dandy revolting against art and war» who shared his admiration for Jarry and his contact with the mental patients of the Saint Dizier neurological and psychiatric centre, marked a decisive stage in the birth of Surrealism. Posted to the Val-de-Grâce from 1917, Breton found in Paris the necessary literary vibrancy for his poetic quest and began reciting Rimbaud in the company of Aragon. It was thanks to Apollinaire that he became friends with Soupault, the future co-author of Champs magnétiques, and Reverdy, founder of the review Nord-Sud, which went on to publish the poems of Mont de piété. The seven poems of the collection were printed in avant-garde reviews (Les Trois Roses, Solstices, Nord-Sud) between 1917 and the beginning of 1919.
Four of the seven poems were dedicated to friends and masters of the author: Léon-Paul Fargue, and above all Apollinaire, to whom Breton devoted a paper in L'éventail. Breton also paid homage to Marie Laurencin and André Derain, creators of «plastic works that are still completely new, exposed to an almost unanimous rejection and intolerance» that were dear to Breton throughout his life (XXe siècle, n°3, June 1952). With these dedications, he increased the number of complex allusions, dedicating to one a poem inspired by the other, as in for instance «Age», dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, which echoed Rimbaud and his poem «Aube» (Les Illuminations, 1895).

The correspondence and friendship between the two poets began with the dedication of this poem, which Breton wrote in 1915. Apollinaire immediately spotted, in these lines that Breton had entrusted to him «a striking talent» (letter of 21 December 1915). Still under the spell of Rimbaud and the late Symbolism of Valéry when he wrote this poem, Breton found in Apollinaire a new poetic direction and told him a year later: «I confessed without protest the attraction you held for me. The seduction was so overwhelming that I cannot, for the moment, write about it.» The fractured structure of «Décembre» is testimony to a change that was already proceeding in the young poets work, 21 at the time. Alexandrines were set beside verses of a few syllables that dismantled meter. «At 25, the hotel with its [plug of [mistletoe I dodge the unjust spawn, O [white [soil! Hello – Europe languishes in [next [year's flames The song of the fennel – and [there [you are! We stay silent.» Breton also sent the poem to Valéry on the 14th December, who remarked on his new technique: «As to the very singular verses with their bold breaks, their allure broken and illuminated by the flash of the soliloquies at the corner of the fire, I find them an interesting study of something else, a new test of yourself.» The poem is set on the 25th December, a strange Christmas peopled by «flowering missals», «Mages» and «mangy clocks». Breton inserted another subtle dedication to his model (the «plug of mistletoe»), playing on Apollinaire's surname (Gui), which figures in his poems and his letters. «Décembre» is also the first poem by Breton directly to mention the War, and finishes on a dark image. «Private, Over there, conscript of the earth and [the standard, to be! And my arms, their warm creepers [that held you fast? - I would have savaged the life of your [poor angel breast.» This mark of admiration from Breton was followed by a study devoted to the poet's work, shortly after the publication of «Décembre» in L'Éventail on the 15 February 1919. As well as his influence as a poet and an art critic, Apollinaire posthumously contributed significantly to the birth of the post-War avant-garde movements: for if Breton was to be the theoretician behind Surrealism, it was nonetheless Apollinaire who invented the word, not to mention introducing Breton and Soupault. An extremely rare and fascinating manuscript from the young André Breton, dedicated to Apollinaire, the first Surrealist and guide for the new generation of post-War poets.

First edition.
Contemporary half red shagreen over marbled paper boards, (a few discreet repairs), spine in six compartments, date to foot, marbled paper-lined endpapers and pastedowns, covers preserved, top edge red.
A very handsome autograph inscription signed by Victor Hugo to Alphonse Daudet.
Mrs. Daudet's collection stamp to first endpaper.

Victor Hugo represented for Alphonse Daudet, as for the other writers of his generation, the incontestable master of the Pantheon of the arts. His benevolent attention runs through Daudet's work, often listed side by side with Rousseau, Byron, Sand and Delacroix.
If during Daudet's childhood and youth, Hugo, an exile of enormous stature in Guernsey, remained a distant ideal, "almost above humanity", his return to France allowed him finally to meet the master. Around 1875, just after his first works appeared, Alphonse and Julia Daudet were thus invited to Hugo's house; Hugo was living with Juliette Drouet at the time.
From then on, they become frequent visitors to the house right up to the poet's death. Hugo helped with the young Léon Daudet's education, his grandson Georges' best friend and, later, for a short while, Jeanne's husband.
In her Souvenirs d'un cercle littéraire [Memories of a Literary Circle], Julia Daudet talks of their friendship of ten years with "the idol of lyric France":
"I can see Victor Hugo at the end of his great table: the aged master, a little cut off, a little deaf, presiding with god-like silence, the little absences of a genius on the verge of immortality. His hair all white, his face colorful, and his eyes like an old lion's that would occasionally flash with ferocious bursts of force. He is listening to my husband and Catulle Mendès, between whom there is a very animated discussion on the subject of the youth and celebrity of famous men and their charm for women...During the debate, we moved through to the salon, with Hugo musing beside the fire, famous, omni-present and a demi-god, but perhaps still missing his youth a little, as Mme Drouet sleeps softly."
The friendship between this great Romantic writer and one of the masters of the nascent naturalist school is testimony to Hugo's sharpness who, even during his glory days, preserved a special and benevolent attention for modern literature, no matter how far removed it was from his own lyricism.

This inscription from Hugo to Daudet on a work considered - along with Le Pape [The Pope] and La Pitié suprême [The Supreme Compassion] - a "philosophical testament" by Henri Guillemin, resonates strongly, the passing of the writer's political and moral responsibilities to a devoted disciple.

Provenance: Alphonse Daudet, his sale at Sicklès (1990, IV, n°1200) then Philippe Zoummeroff's sale (2 Avril 2001).

An extract from Memories of a Literary Circle by Julia Daudet :
"How could I forget that first visit to his, in the rue de Clichy, in a modest apartment so out of proportion to his glory, to the image of his glory that we had, which would have filled entire palaces. He got up out of his chair beside the fire, opposite Madame Drouet, his old friend...I was shocked by how small he was but soon, after he had greeted me and begun talking to me, I felt him very big indeed, very intimidating. And this timidity that I felt then, I would always feel towards him, the result of my great admiration and respect, something akin to that for an absent god, that my parents had inculcated within me for inspired poets. I could never overcome that wobble in my voice whenever I would reply to his kind words, and I was shocked to hear women, over the course of almost ten years, when admitted to his presence, regale him with their personal matters and their everyday chatter.
That evening, when he had introduced me, all in a flutter, to Madame Drouet, she said to me with her most charming grace: 'This is the old people's bit, you know, and you're far too young for us. But Monsieur Victor Hugo will introduce you to his daughter-in-law, Madame Lockroy; only he is qualified to do so.'
So I was conducted to the other end of the room, of an average size, but which seemed to be cut in two by a table bearing a bronze elephant, most majestic - Chinese or Japanese, I think. In any case, it served to make two little most distinct groups which nonetheless communicated easily without blending one into the other.
At this moment of his return, Victor Hugo was feeling exulted and was full of stories which he told with an inexhaustible verve whenever politics did not invade his dinner table too much. And how graceful his welcome, what noble manners and what a fine grandfatherly smile under his hair, that I saw grow whiter and whiter as he approached eighty. All the poets used to come to the salon in the rue de Clichy, and later to the house in the Avenue d'Eylau. But was this change of scene really necessary? It seemed to be a step down in the health and then in the spirits of the grand old man. And yet, he always loved to host his friends and the welcome in this open house was not the least of its charms for, gathered around the table, garnished at one end with the Master's two grandchildren, the company still looked for direction from their host's eyes and he himself sometimes struck a vein of memories so vibrant, so wonderfully recounted, that we were all bowled over the entire evening. Mme Drouet grew quietly older beside him, covered by two bandanas whose aspect was a little faded and melodramatic, right up until the day where a merciless illness broke her delicate beauty and made her the suffering effigy painted by Bastien Lepage, who died under the same tortures. Towards the end, the Master would glance sadly at her empty plate and noble, ravaged face during these intimate dinners.
'Madame Drouet, you're not eating, you must eat, take heart.'
Eat! She was dying. Did he know it? Was the great old man, so strong and so hardy, trying to fool himself, as he saw his companion of fifty years go?
In the big living room, a handsome portrait by Bonnat hung, with a paternal attitude, and an immense bust by David presided. The little living room was decorated with striped and colored wallpaper, which seemed to have been chosen for Dona Sol. In the garden connected to the verandah by a platform of two steps, Leconte de Lisle, Meurice and Vacquerie, Paul de Saint-Victor, the smiling Banville reappeared, Flaubert and Goncourt talked, Mallarmé, Léon Cladel, François Coppée, Catulle Mendès, and Clovis Hugues, shadows in a vanished Eden. Then there were Léon Glaize, Gustave Rivet, Pierre Elzéar, and tiny Mme Michelet distributing roses at a party, as well as ambassadors, diplomats, the Emperor of Brasil, and painters, sculptors, and so many politicians I can't remember all their names!
These are my direct impressions of one of the soirees we attended, Alphonse Daudet and I, one snowy evening, when our horse stumbled three times during the trip over as we were crossing the Esplanade des Invalides:
I can see Victor Hugo at the end of his great table: the aged master, a little cut off, a little deaf, presiding with god-like silence, the little absences of a genius on the verge of immortality. His hair all white, his face colorful, and his eyes like an old lion's that would occasionally flash with ferocious bursts of force. He is listening to my husband and Catulle Mendès, between whom there is a very animated discussion on the subject of the youth and celebrity of famous men and their charm for women. Alphonse holds that in a salon full of all sorts of talented people of all ages a very young man, the unknown author, the overlooked poet will get female attention if he is handsome. Catulle Mendes answers that he would, firstly, remain unnoticed, and that all women went in for celebrity, which seems to me more correct. Fortunately, women not only have the eyes in their heads, but also the eyes of their souls and their hearts. For intellectual women, the looks of an artist or a great poet don't matter - it's the reflective aspect, the tormented features of a man who lives his emotions. They go for talent, to suffering that passes, and they hardly think about physical beauty. Now you could say that they seek out famous authors motivated by personal ambition, but the other feeling, that attracts them to tempting youths, seems to me even less respectable.
And I laugh at the pretention of these two charming debaters in labeling and analyzing us. Talking about 'women' is like talking about 'birds': there are so many different species and types, whose song and feathers are so completely different!
During the debate, we moved through to the salon, with Hugo musing beside the fire, famous, omni-present and a demi-god, but perhaps still missing his youth a little, as Mme Drouet sleeps softly. Her fair white hair covers her delicate head like the two wings of a dove, and the buttons of her blouse follow the pattern of the soft, almost resigned, breathing of an old woman sleeping.

It was soon after this evening that that great gathering took place in which all Paris marched past, on the Avenue d'Eylau, the windows of this little bedroom that was now home to a deathbed, in May 1885, full of roses and plainly furnished, as it is represented in the Victor Hugo Museum in a room in the poet's former apartment on the Place Royale.
Very evocative, this old corner of the Marais, especially if we consider that Victor Hugo wrote almost all his historical works there. We can picture the poet at work in the early morning hours, to which he kept, the high windows of the houses all identical and in the same style, stretching all the way around the square, guarding the memory of the tournaments, the duels, promenades and uprisings of several generations now vanished beneath these thick, ancient arcades, which keep no trace of fleeting humankind.
We had dinner at Victor Hugo's house the week before he died. He told us as we were coming in, more pale that usual, and tottering as he walked:
'I'll be going soon, I can feel it'. Then he squeezed Georges' shoulder: 'Without this one, I would have gone long ago.'
I will never forget his slightly solemn and prophetic tone - I was struck by a sadness and presentiment. I felt the dispersal of this unique centre of the world that could never come together again!"

First edition, one of the review copies.
Bradel binding in full wood-patterned boards, smooth spine, red morocco title-piece, covers and spine preserved, binding signed by Thomas Boichot.

A fine copy, handsomely bound.
Precious autograph presentation signed by Jacques Chardonne to Henri Béraud.

First edition, one of the press copies.
Half brown shagreen binding, smooth spine with gilt floral panels, gilt initials C.T. at foot, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers, covers preserved, gilt edges, one upper corner slightly rubbed, binding dating from some years later.
Inscribed by Charles Terrasse (son of Claude) in ink at the head of a flyleaf.

Discreet restorations to the joints.
Precious presentation copy signed and inscribed by Alfred Jarry: "A Claude Terrasse son admirateur et son ami. Alf. Jarry" [his admirer and friend]

 

First edition of which there were no grand papier (deluxe) copies, an advance (service de presse) copy.
Bradel binding, spine slightly faded with a small spot to head, small stains on the covers, covers and spine preserved,
Contemporary binding signed by M.P. Trémois.
Exceptional and handsome autograph inscription signed by André Breton to Man Ray: “à Man Ray, dans la lumière qu'il a recréée, de tout cœur. André Breton” (“To Man Ray, in the light that he recreated, with all my heart. André Breton”)

Autograph manuscript signed by the painter and writer Jacques-Émile Blanche, entitled « Serge de Diaghileff ». Five leaves written in black ink, with numerous corrections in blue. Autograph foliation in black ink, later foliation in blue pencil. Leaf 4, originally in two parts, was joined with a strip of adhesive affixed to the verso.

Crossed-out passages and corrections.

A very fine funeral oration by Jacques-Émile Blanche for his friend Serge Diaghilev, director of the celebrated Ballets Russes.
The painter and writer Jacques-Émile Blanche pays tribute to the genius of Serge Diaghilev, shortly after his death in Venice in 1929. Chosen as a « godfather » to the Ballets Russes, the painter followed closely the choreographer’s work as a regenerator of the performing arts and applauded Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps. He also produced numerous portraits of the Ballets Russes dancers, which he presented at the Venice Biennale in 1912.
At the beginning of the century, Diaghilev’s company, the « Ballets Russes », had dazzled audiences across Europe with a rich and vigorous art which, moving from one new form to another, remained at the avant-garde for twenty years. The painter recalls his first encounter with Diaghilev, a figure of undeniable charm: « j'éprouvai qu'on ne pouvait lui résister. Son autorité, ses caprices d'enfant gâté, on les subissait, tant son intelligence éclatait dans ses paroles d'adolescent. Il ressemblait, alors, assuraient ses compatriotes, au Tzar Alexandre Ier ». He evokes the impresario’s troubled existence and his dazzling triumphs with the Ballets Russes: « Eh quoi ! vingt ans d'expériences, vingt ans d'incomparables spectacles - et la perfection d'une technique de plus en plus déconcertante, ne nous conseilla-t-il pas d'accorder crédit illimité à notre cher ami, le plus artiste des hommes - et somme toute, le plus sûr de soi-même, malgré l'extravagance, le paradoxe de la vie qu'il menait et qu'il imposait à sa troupe ? ».
Blanche highlights Diaghilev’s taste for French culture, which he shared with his friends and collaborators. This passion, inherited from Russian aristocratic circles, made him « Le plus parisien des cosmopolites, croyant au prestige de Paris comme un boulevardier du second Empire ». We also learn of Diaghilev’s unrealized plan to travel to Moscow and stage ballets in the young USSR, then regarded as a land of political and artistic avant-garde. The letter closes with a moving evocation of Venice, where Diaghilev passed away on 19 August 1929:
« voici qu'un funèbre cortège de gondoles accompagne sur la lagune torride [...] les restes de notre cher camarade. Il est bien - puisqu'il devait nous quitter - qu'il fermât les yeux sur la cité du Sang, de la volupté et de la Mort ».

A remarkable panegyric to the creator and impresario Serge de Diaghilev by Jacques-Émile Blanche, his loyal friend and portraitist of the Ballets Russes.

Fine autograph letter signed by Colette to her friend Bolette Natanson. Two pages written in ink on blue paper. Horizontal folds inherent to the mailing of the letter.
As ever protective and maternal with her friend, Colette compliments her: "Comme tu es gentille, - comme tu es Bolette". Nineteen years her senior, she praises the youth of "[her] child": "Tu es ma 'provision d'hiver', la jeunesse dont j'aurai besoin, plus tard, bien plus encore qu'à présent. Soigne-toi bien ma jeunesse en grange".
Having grown up from early childhood in artistic circles—she was the daughter of Alexandre and the niece of Thadée Natanson, the founders of the celebrated Revue Blanche—Bolette Natanson (1892-1936) formed friendships with Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, Georges Auric, Jean Hugo, and Colette.
Passionate about dressmaking, she left Paris for the United States with Misia Sert, a close friend of Coco Chanel, and was employed at Goodman. With her husband Jean-Charles Moreux, they opened in 1929 the gallery Les Cadres on boulevard Saint-Honoré and moved in the company of numerous artists and intellectuals. Their success was immediate and they multiplied commissions: the fireplace for Winnaretta de Polignac, the decoration of the Château de Maulny, the arrangement of Baron de Rothschild’s townhouse, the creation of frames for the industrialist Bernard Reichenbach, and finally the design of the shopfront for Colette’s beauty institute in 1932. Bolette Natanson also framed the works of her distinguished painter friends: Bonnard, Braque, Picasso, Vuillard, Man Ray, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and others. Despite this dazzling ascent, she took her own life in December 1936, a few months after the death of her father.

New edition.
Contemporary binding in half green shagreen, spine in four compartments set with gilt stippling, gilt fillets and gilt fleurons in the corner pieces, multiple blind tooled frames on the boards, white iridescent paper endpapers, all edges gilt.
Some leaves shorter in the bottom margin.

Handwritten inscription signed by George Sand on the first endpaper: “à mon bon ami Edmond Plauchut. G. Sand".

Today the only outsider to the family buried in the cemetery of the Nohant house, is Lucien-Joseph-Edmond Plau
chut (1824-1909) who began an epistolary relationship with George Sand in the autumn of 1848 when he was a voluntary expatriate after the fall of the Republic. Leaving for Singapore, he was shipwrecked off the coast of the Cape Verde Islands and was able to save only one cassette containing Sand's letters that he had preciously bound. These missives were his salvation: they allowed him to be collected, fed and laundered by a rich Portuguese admirer of the Lady of Nohant, Francisco Cardozzo de Mello.

After several journeys toward the Far East, and several exotic presents sent to his distant and yet so close friend, Plauchut finally met George Sand in
1861. In 1870, she paid a vibrant tribute to him in the preface of her novel Malgrétout.

Despite everything, she recounts the shipwreck of which he was a victim and expresses with emotion her friendship for this courageous friend. Plauchut, much loved by the Sand family – and particularly George's granddaughters who nicknamed him Uncle Plauchemar – was an integral part until his death in January 1909.

The handwritten signed inscriptions on La Mare au Diable are very rare, this one is from a superb provenance.

First edition of the French translation, for which no deluxe copies were issued.
Precious autograph presentation inscription signed by Italo Calvino to his friend, the Argentine photographer José María “Pepe” Fernández.
Our copy is further enriched with an original photograph by Pepe Fernández depicting Italo Calvino leaning on a stack of books.
Signed by the photographer at the foot of the image, with handwritten notes and Pepe Fernández’s stamp on the verso.
Double autograph signature of Pepe Fernández on the front endpaper and the title page as presentation inscriptions, spine faded.

First edition, one of 100 numbered copies on alfa, the only grands papiers (deluxe copies) after 5 pur-fil paper.

Bound in half green morocco, paste paper boards, marbled paper endpapers, wrappers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, contemporary binding signed Lucie Weill.
Skilful and discreet repair to the top of a joint.
Illustrated with 6 vignettes by André Derain.

Handsome inscription signed by Antonin Artaud: “à Alice & à Carlo Rim que j'aime beaucoup parce que j'aime dans la vie tout ce qui est nature, franc et sans fard et la vie d'Héliogabale aussi est franche et sans fard et dans la ligne de la grande Nature. Antonin Artaud leur ami.” (“To Alice & Carlo Rim whom I love very much because I love in life all that is nature, frank and unvarnished and the life of Elagabalus is also frank and unvarnished and in line with the great Nature. Antonin Artaud their friend.”)

First edition, one of the review copies.

Spine slightly sunned, minor marginal spots on the front cover.
Precious autograph inscription signed by Maurice de Vlaminck to his Montmartre friend Pierre Mac Orlan: "... son vieux copain..."

Second edition only one month after the first edition.
Spine lightly wrinkled, small signs of folding in the margins of the boards, a light mark on the second board.

Claude Couffon, a French specialist and translator of the major Spanish-speaking writers of the second half of the 20th century, translated Chronicle of a Death Foretold a few years later.
On the last page, below the colophon, Gabriel García Márquez specified an address in Barcelona, that of his famous literary agent for Spain: “c/o Agencia Carmen Ballcells Urgel 241, Barcelona, 11.”

Rightly considered as one of the most important works op the Spanish language, the novel by García Márquez, however, had difficult beginnings after a first refusal by the avant-garde Barcelona publisher Seix Barral: “This novel will not be successful [...], this novel is useless.”
García Márquez sent it from Mexico to the Argentinian publisher Francisco Porrúa who immediately perceived the power of this unknown Colombian writer: “It wasn't a question of getting to the end to find out if the novel could be published. The publication was already decided from the first line, in the first paragraph. I simply understood what any sensible publisher would have understood: that it was an exceptional work.”
Finished printing in May 1967, Cien Años de Soledad appeared in bookshops in June with 8,000 copies selling out in a few days. The second print on 30 June will have the same success, as will the editions that follow week after week. More than half a million copies were sold in three years.

Several copies were later inscribed by Gabriel García Márquez who over the years has become one of the most famous South American writers, translated into 25 languages. However, contemporary autograph inscriptions on the first prints are extremely rare, even more so to one of his French translators who will contribute largely to his international renown.

Autograph letter from George Sand to Gustave Flaubert dated December 21, 1867, 8 pages on two lined leaves. Published in Sand's Correspondance, XX, pp. 642-645.
From one of the finest literary correspondences of the century, this letter written on Christmas Eve 1867 is a sublime testament to the frank friendship between George Sand, the “old troubadour”, and Gustave Flaubert, christened “cul de plomb” [leaden ass] after declining his invitation to Nohant to complete L'Éducation sentimentale.

Despite their seventeen year-age gap, opposing temperaments and divergent outlooks on life, the reader is gripped by the tenderness and astonishing verve of George Sand's long confession to Flaubert. At the height of her literary fame and enjoying her theater in Nohant, Sand talks at length about politics, their separation, their conception of the writer's work, and life itself.

In this “stream-of-consciousness” letter, Sand naturally and freely sets down on paper eight pages of conversations with Flaubert who made only too rare and brief appearances in Nohant: “But how I chat with you! Do you find all this amusing? I'd like a letter to replace one of our suppers, which I too miss, and which would be so good here with you, if you weren't a cul de plomb [leaden ass] who won't let yourself be dragged along, to life for life's sake”, whereas Flaubert's motto, then busy writing L'Éducation sentimentale, was rather art for art's sake. In the end of 1867, Sand grieved the death of an “almost brother”, François Rollinat, which Sand appeased with letters to Flaubert and lively evenings at Nohant: “This is how I've been living for the last 15 days since I stopped working [...] Ah'! [...] Ah! when you're on vacation, work, logic and reason seem like strange swings.” Sand was quick to criticize him for working tirelessly in his robe, “the enemy of freedom”, while she was running up and down mountains and valleys, from Cannes to Normandy, even to Flaubert's own home, which she had visited in September. On this occasion, Sand had happily reread Salammbô, where she picked up a few lines for her latest novel, Mademoiselle Merquem.

Their literary and virile friendship, similar to Rollinat's, defied the old guard of literati who declared the existence of a “sincere affair” between man and woman utterly impossible. Sand, who has been described in turn as a lesbian, a nymphomaniac, and made famous for her resounding and varied love affairs, began a long and intense correspondence with Flaubert, for whom she was a mother and an old friend. She called herself in their letters “old troubadour” or “old horse” and no longer even considered herself a woman, but a quasi-man, recalling her youthful cross-dressing and formidable contempt for gender norms. To Flaubert had compared the female writers as Amazons denying their femininity: “To better shoot with the bow, they crushed their nipples”, Sand replied in this letter: “I don't share your idea that you have to do away with the breast to shoot with the bow. I have a completely opposite belief for my own use, which I think is good for many others, probably for the majority”. A warrior, yes, but a peaceful warrior, Sand willingly adopted the customs of a world of misogynistic intellectuals, while remaining true to herself: “I believe that the artist should live in one's nature as much as possible. To the man who loves struggle, war; to the man who loves women, love; to the old man who, like me, loves nature, travel and flowers, rocks, great landscapes, children too, family, everything that moves, everything that fights moral anemia,” she then adds. A fine evocation of her “green period”, this passage marks the time of Sand's country novels, when, mellowed by the years, she gave herself over entirely to contemplation to write François le Champi, La Mare au diable and La Petite Fadette. But her love of nature didn't stop her from conquering language over men, even though at 63 she was still “scandalizing the inscandalizable”, according to the Goncourt brothers.

Faithful to her socialist ideals, she openly criticizes Adolphe Thiers in the letter: “Étroniforme [shithead] is the sublime word that classifies this species of merdoïde [shitty] vegetation [...] Yes, you'll do well to dissect this balloon-like soul and this cobweb-like talent!” As the leader of the liberal opposition to Napoleon III, Thiers had just delivered a speech in defense of the Papal States, turning his back on Garibaldi, future father of unified Italy. Everyone in Sand's home of Nohant had had a good laugh at Flaubert's logorrhea, sent three days earlier: “Let us roar against Monsieur Thiers! Can one see a more triumphant imbecile, a more abject scoundrel, a more etroniform [shit-like] bourgeois!” he wrote. Sand echoed his sentiments: “Maurice [Sand] finds your letter so beautiful [...] He won't forget étroniforme, which charms him, étronoïde, étronifère”. Against this backdrop of intense political debates, Sand also warned Flaubert, who risked jeopardizing his novel by including his criticism of Thiers in L'Éducation sentimentale: “Unfortunately when your book arrives, [Thiers] may be over and not very dangerous, for such men leave nothing behind. But perhaps he will also be in power. You can expect anything. Then the lesson will be a good one.”

Their shared socialist and anti-clericalist opinions did not prevent them from holding widely divergent views on the essence of the novel and the work of the writer: “the artist is an instrument which everything must play before it plays others. But all this is perhaps not applicable to a mind of your kind, which has acquired a great deal and only has to digest". Flaubert's detachment, his open cynicism for his characters, like a Madame Bovary harshly judged by the narrator, differed sharply from Sand's emotional and personal relationship to writing. Flaubert's almost schizophrenic attitude readily confused her and made her fear for her sanity: “I would insist on only one point, and that is that physical being is necessary to moral being, and that I fear for you one day or another a deterioration of health that would force you to suspend your work and let it cool down.” Flaubert never betrays or reveals himself through his novels, unlike Sand, who throws herself body and soul into her writing: “I believe that art needs a palette always overflowing with soft or violent tones, depending on the subject of the painting”.

While Flaubert, hard-working and full of literary anxieties, was secluded in Croisset, Sand enjoyed her freedom at Nohant, a place of family bliss but also of egalitarian living, where she “[had] fun to the point of exhaustion”. She willingly swapped tête-à-tête sessions with the inkwell for her little theater in Nohant: “These plays last until 2 a.m. and we're crazy when we get out. We eat until 5 am. There are performances twice a week, and the rest of the time, we do stuff, and the play (which) goes on with the same characters, going through the most unheard-of adventures. The audience consists of 8 or 10 young people, my three grand-nephews and the sons of my old friends. They're passionate to the point of screaming”. Persevering, she once again urged her “leaden ass” Flaubert to come out of his voluntary confinement: “I'm sure you'd have a wonderful time too, for there's a splendid verve and carelessness in these improvisations, and the characters sculpted by Maurice seem to be alive, with a burlesque life, at once real and impossible; it's like a dream.” Two years later, Flaubert would make a sensational entrance at Nohant, and Sand would leave “aching” after days of partying. During his memorable stay at Sand's he read his Saint-Antoine aloud in its entirety and danced the cachucha dressed as a woman!

Exceptional pages of George Sand in spiritual communion with her illustrious colleague; Flaubert was one of the few to whom she spoke so freely, crudely, but tenderly, sealing in words her deep friendship with the “great artist [...] among the few who are men” (letter to Armand Barbès, 12 October 1867).

Our letter is housed in a half-black morocco folder, with marbled paper boards, facing pastedown in black lambskin felt, Plexiglas protecting the letter, black morocco-lined slipcase, marbled paper boards, signed P. Goy & C. Vilaine.

Autograph postcard signed and addressed to his friend Ariel Denis from his summer residence in Vendée, 22 lines in black ink.

The postcard shows a general view of the coastal cliffs of Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez in Vendée.

Julien Gracq expresses his satisfaction with the advice he had given his friend, while lamenting the petty calculations of administrative life: "j'avais décidément raison de vous recommander une saine stratégie syndicale : faute ce cet appui je crains qu'il n'y ait plus de belle carrière dans l'enseignement ! J'espère tout de même que la stabilité au moins va venir couronner vos efforts (il y en a un de ma part sous le beau style ! malgré les vacances)"

The writer then mentions a televised adaptation of Wagner's *Das Rheingold* he recently watched: "bonne direction d'acteurs, costumes qui en définitive ne gênent pas, décors plutôt catastrophiques, aussi bien le barrage style Génie Rural, que le Walhalla dont on espère tout de même qu'il n'a pas épuisé l'imagination du décorateur. Mis à part l'excellent jeu des acteurs, que la télévision met en relief, il n'y pas de quoi se récrier. (Comme vous je ne pourrai voir le reste du Ring, et je m'en consolerai ! )"

Julien Gracq ends with a final recommendation to his friend: "tâchez d'aller voir Saint François du Désert que j'ai manqué autrefois et dont Barrès dit merveille."

Deluxe issue, enhanced by a remarkable original drawing presented to Léon Werth.

First edition under this title with illustrations by Saint-Exupéry, one of 20 numbered copies on Madagascar paper, a deluxe issue. Published just days after the original edition without illustrations, issued by Gallimard (Lettres de jeunesse 1923–1931).

The work features 10 colour illustrations by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, as well as a cover vignette after a drawing by the author.

This copy is further enhanced by an exceptional blue and red pencil drawing by Saint-Exupéry on watermarked paper, inscribed in pencil on the verso: “Given to Léon Werth [dedicatee of The Little Prince].” A horizontal fold and a minor rust mark at the lower section, neither impairing the artwork.

Autograph letter signed with his real surname, Fargonne, addressed to his friend Pierre Louÿs, 7 pages written in black ink on two bifolia bearing the letterhead of the Reina Christina Hotel in Algeciras.

Folding marks inherent to mailing, envelope included.

After postponing his reply, Claude Farrère finally decides to write to his friend: "Et plutôt que d'attendre toute ma vie (on ne sait jamais, affirmait la Mirabelle du roi Pausole), je préfère vous dire aujourd'hui que je ne sais rien." He takes the opportunity to evoke a recently deceased mutual friend: "j'ai eu une vraie désolation, en apprenant que la pauvre Nite était morte - je vous jure que je serais bien le dernier à rire du vers moliéresque - n'importe en quelle circonstance - mais en celle-ci, c'est très pire ; figurez-vous que j'adorais cette petite bête blanche pour l'avoir vue peut-être douze fois en tout"

He wryly comments on the military diligence that earned him favor with his superiors: "Et j'ai su d'autre part, - voie féminine - que mon empressement et mon enthousiasme à rallier le Cassini furent remarqués et commentés à Toulon - Qu'est-ce qu'on va dire quand on me verra revenir, mein Gott !!!! Il va falloir que je cherche un home à quadruple sortie. Nous chercherons ensemble, le mois prochain, entre Tamaris et Mourillon."

Autograph letter signed, addressed to his friend Thierry Maulnier, 14 lines in blue ink on Revue universelle letterhead, concerning an article soon to be published and requesting another one in response to Pierre Drieu la Rochelle.

Henri Massis, editor-in-chief of the journal, summarizes the situation for his friend: "Votre \"Réveil de l'héroïsme ? \" passe dans le n° du 1er février. Je crois qu'il serait intéressant de répondre à l'article que Drieu la Rochelle a publié, ce matin, dans les Nouvelles littéraires. Qu'en pensez-vous ? Donnez-moi cela pour le n+ du 15... L'heure du déjeuner (vers une heure) est la plus propice pour notre rendez-vous."

The Revue universelle, a monarchist-leaning periodical, was founded by Jacques Bainville and Henri Massis.

Autograph letter signed, addressed to his friend Thierry Maulnier, 26 lines in blue ink on letterhead of the Revue universelle, in which he urges him to contribute an article on André Gide's political stance.

Henri Massis, editor-in-chief of the journal, presses his friend: "Il me faudrait très rapidement votre prochaine chronique. Il me semble qu'il y aurait quelque chose à tirer de l'article de Ramon Fernandez sur l'évolution d'André Gide dans la N.R.F. du 1er juillet". Il faudrait saisir ce qui concerne proprement Gide pour s'attacher à certaines réflexions sur le socialisme., le marxisme ou à une phrase comme celle-ci qui mériterait quelques commentaire : "Les jeunes gens d'aujourd'hui (dont Gide est soucieux de ne point se désolidariser) vont à la révolution comme leurs aînés de 1914 allaient à la guerre..."

The Revue universelle, a monarchist-leaning publication, was founded by Jacques Bainville and Henri Massis.

Autograph letter signed to a friend named Alfred, 18 lines in black ink on a bifolium, in which the author urges him to help find employment for his brother, applying insistent pressure on his correspondent.

"Mon cher Alfred,
vous avez été excellent pour mon frère ... Il faut absolument qu'on le place. il est père de famille et sans emploi depuis un an. - Il y a 20 places qui auraient encore plus besoin de lui qu'il n'a besoin d'elles. Demandez formellement à votre illustre père un appui efficace et immédiat - pour un homme capable ... Votre père sera heureux de trouver une occasion de rendre service en rendant justice où je ne le connais pas. Tout à vous. Alph. Karr."

Fierce autograph letter signed, addressed to Jacques Chardonne—though not named—comprising 30 lines in black ink on letterhead of the journal Le Nouveau Fémina, concerning cultural life and current political affairs.

Folding marks inherent to mailing, a black ink stain not affecting the text, and two small holes: the first causing the loss of one letter—the second "e" in Hecquet; the second resulting in the loss of the word "il".

"Les dernières lettres sont épatantes. Et courtes, comme il fallait pour ne pas trop s'éloigner du drame. Les oeuvres complètes de Léon Blum vont paraître chez Albin Michel. On va voir. Anatole de Monzie, homme d'une très belle intelligence n'a rien écrit de fameux. Aujourd'hui, le moins ignare s'appelle Ramadier (Paul Ramadier, several times a minister after the Liberation) Il n'a pas été réélu. C'est un franc-maçon acharné. Mendès-France est un marchand de cravates me dit Stephen Hecqu[e]t. [Il] faut supprimer son nom de ma dernière lettre (celle qui est si longue, où je parle des hommes politiques susceptibles d'écrire). A bientôt. Roger Nimier."

Autograph letter, dated and signed, sent from Toulon to his friend Pierre Louÿs, four pages penned in violet ink on a bifolium.

Folding crease from mailing, manuscript envelope included.

Through this correspondence, Claude Farrère reproaches his friend for deepening his sadness and distress: "Votre petite lettre de l'autre jour m'a très bien fait comprendre que vous avez dix mille ennuis en ce moment. Et vous en ajoutez un de plus, pour m'envoyer plus vite cette bêtise à laquelle je ne songeais pas du tout , Pourquoi, encore ! Je suis votre ami, enfin ! Et je vous jure que cela m'a fait de la peine, de songer que j'avais involontairement augmenté cette fois vos embêtements."

He longs to express the depth of his friendship: "Surtout, je vous en suplie, n'oubliez pas ceci : que mon meilleur jour sera celui où vous me permettrez de vous rendre un vrai service... ne l'oubliez jamais, je vous en supplie."

Claude Farrère recalls a Christmas Eve filled with female quarrels: "A propos, réveillon d'une gaieté inouïe, ici - on en aurait pleuré... Vers minuit, on a soupé sur des nattes, après scission en deux bandes, scission nécessitée par le dissentiment de deux de ces dames, dont chacune 'n'était un société' pour l'autre. Du côté où j'étais resté, ça a failli recommencé entre deux autres, - la célèbre Edith et la belliqueuse Lulu, - toutes deux ayant constaté que je m'étais permis d'embrasser l'une et l'autre. L'orage s'apaisa cependant."

Autograph letter signed, addressed to his friend Pierre Louÿs from Toulon, 16 lines written in violet ink, expressing concern about a mutual friend nicknamed Augusto, almost certainly Auguste Gilbert de Voisins.

Folding crease from mailing, envelope enclosed. A handsome copy.

"Friday,

my dear friend, it's mail time. Quickly, quickly! I received your telegram this morning and have replied. Your opening words were very sweet to me. Thank you. I'm forwarding you a letter from Augusto. It frightened me terribly. I’ll telegraph you as soon as I know more. Yours with all my heart. C.B."

Fine autograph letter, dated and signed, addressed to his friend Pierre Louÿs; 7 pages in violet ink on two bifolia, with the original envelope preserved.

Folds from original mailing.

Soon to be on leave from the Moroccan Expeditionary Corps, Claude Farrère announces to his friend his imminent return to France following an Andalusian journey: "je pendrai au plus tardle train du 4 juin, à Algéciras ; lequel train, après escales à Grenade, Cordoue, Séville et Tolède, me déposera, le 11 au matin, à Toulon - Voilà !"

He mentions a book that struck him and evokes two women: "feuilletez, vous comprendrez l'in térêt que j'attache au cas, intérêt tout à fait analogue à celui que vous inspire une jeune personne à ui je vais dédier mon prochain conte au journal intitulé : 'sur le Boul' Mad'... La préface du bouquin en question est un chef d'oeuvre d' (je ne sais pas de quoi ! Fichtre ! On va bien, de nos jours... [...] voyez-vous qu'on publiât des histoires comme ça sur notre... dos- quatre ans après notre mort ???"

Claude Farrère ironically comments on his literary and epistolary activity shared with his friend: "J'aurais tellement besoin de regarder vos Hok'saï avant d'écrire certaines pages de mon sale bouquin ! ... Mon Maroc n'est pas du temps perdu. Je l'ai considéré comme dix mois de travail forcé. Et je vous en rapporte un manuscrit qui en est aujourd'hui à sa 392e pages, - qui toutes ensemble ne valent pas une ligne de Psyché !"

His rebellious and independent spirit draws suspicion from the military establishment: "Votre lettre datée du 8 mai, ne m'est arrivée qu'hier 18. J'ai lieu de croire que ma correspondance est très surveillée depuis quelque temps."

First edition on ordinary paper.

Small loss and a stain to the lower left margin of the lower cover, folding marks to the right margin of the upper cover.

Preface by Jacques Laurent.

Inscribed and signed by Antoine Blondin: "Pour Philippe Patrice Cazenave leur ami Antoine Blondin".

First edition, printed in a small run of numbered copies.

With two photographic portraits: one of Charles Pathé and the other of his brother Émile, and a view of the Kodak-Pathé and Pathé-Cinéma factories.
3/4 beige sheepskin binding, spine with four raised bands decorated with black typographical motifs, date at foot of spine, marbled paper boards, endpapers and flyleaves.
Discrete restorations to spine, some rubbing to upper corners of boards.

Signed by Charles Pathé on his photographic portrait.

Autograph letter dated 3 June 1941, signed and addressed to Frédéric Lefèvre, comprising 40 lines in blue ink on two pages of a bifolium, written from Lyon.

Folds from original mailing, envelope present.

During these troubled times, Frédéric Lefèvre was difficult to reach for his friend Francis Carco: "J'ai appris par Raymond Millet - qui me donne ton adresse - que tu es à Vichy ! On m'avait dit que tu étais retourné à Paris... [...] c'est pour cette raison que je ne t'ai pas envoyé mon dernier livre mais je dois recevoir des exemplaires prochainement et le premier sera pour toi."

Francis Carco discusses his future plans: "J'irai me poser en Haute Savoie afin d'écrire le roman que je dois à Gringoire. [...] un éditeur suisse désire publier une petite plaquette de mes vers inédits. N'aurais-tu pas une copie de ceux que je t'ai envoyés à Cannes, l'automne dernier, et de ceux qui commencent par : C'est le pays de Gérard de Nerval..."

Printed calling card on which André Malraux added, in blue ballpoint pen, these few words for his friends Minka and Karl Hans Strauss:
"I am touched, dear friends, by the affectionate part you take in my grief... And what else is there to say?..."





 

Autograph letter dated and signed by Antoni Tàpies addressed to his close friend, art critic Georges Raillard, the greatest French specialist of his work (16 lines in blue ballpoint pen from Barcelona).
Fold marks inherent to the letter's mailing, envelope included.
Having directed the French Institute of Barcelona from 1964 to 1969, Georges Raillard befriended and collaborated with numerous Spanish and Catalan artists including Joan Miro and Antoni Tapies, whose biographies he would also write.
The Catalan artist regrets not being able to participate in the farewell dinner organized by his friends Georges and Alice Raillard but does not despair of seeing them again soon in order to maintain their friendship: "En réalité c'est pour vous dire un simple au revoir car nous espérons que bientôt nous aurons le plaisir de vous voir de nouveau à Paris où nous désirons vivement pouvoir continuer notre amitié..." ["In reality it is to say a simple goodbye as we hope that soon we will have the pleasure of seeing you again in Paris where we keenly wish to be able to continue our friendship..."]

Autograph letter dated and signed by Jacques Chardonne addressed to his friend Roger Nimier (54 lines in blue ink) regarding Paul Morand's style, spiritual father of the Hussards, Roger Nimier and Antoine Blondin being considered, much against their will, as leaders of this literary movement.
Fold marks inherent to the letter's mailing, envelope included.
Jacques Chardonne intends to challenge two false ideas concerning Paul Morand, the first being stylistic in nature: "There is a double misunderstanding regarding Morand. He has been seen as a 'modern'... but he is essentially a 'naturalist'; his artistic doctrine is exactly that of Maupassant and Flaubert." holding the latter as a major writer: "But he has infinitely more talent and intelligence than the writers of the naturalist school." ; the second of a psychological nature: "He is hygiene and wisdom incarnate, in his person. But through his work he has debased the youth who came after him. It is he who nearly killed Sagan."
Jacques Chardonne then ironizes about Françoise Sagan's talents while exalting the predominance and mastery of his friend Paul Morand in everything he undertakes: "It is Morand who bought Sagan's terrible cars. But he knows how to drive." while recalling the cautious advice that Bernard Frank gave to the author of Bonjour tristesse : "Bernard Frank says: your car doesn't hold the road... Sagan, vexed, accelerates. And everything capsizes."
As a literary elder brother, Jacques Chardonne reassures Roger Nimier about his own talent: "Morand is very pleased with you. I say that Gaston (Gallimard) seems to have much friendship for you." and congratulates his correspondent on the quality of Artaban, a review to which Roger Nimier contributes, Jacques Chardonne being honored in a recent issue: "... surprised to see myself on the front page; the text fills me with pride. I have scorned honors, in order to be honored. I could not have been better served than in this little text." and attributes the authorship of the text concerning him to one of his Hussard disciples: "... I tell myself: it's Nimier, or Hecquet, or Milliau. Truth be told, I don't know. And I thank the Lord."
Overwhelmed by so many tributes paid to him, Jacques Chardonne, lucid, prefers to avoid being too much in the spotlight: "That is why I no longer want to publish anything. As soon as one applauds you, you must leave."
Very handsome letter from Jacques Chardonne praising his friend Paul Morand, spiritual father of the Hussards, and evoking Françoise Sagan's terrible car accident in an Aston Martin on April 13, 1957. A premonitory evocation: Roger Nimier would kill himself five years later on the western highway, on September 28, 1962, also at the wheel of an Aston Martin.

Autograph letter dated and signed by Antoni Tàpies addressed to his close friend the art critic Georges Raillard, the greatest French specialist of his work (19 lines in blue ballpoint pen from Barcelona).
Fold marks inherent to the letter's envelope placement, envelope included.
Having directed the French Institute of Barcelona from 1964 to 1969, Georges Raillard formed friendships and collaborated with numerous Spanish and Catalan artists including Joan Miro and Antoni Tapies, whose biographies he would also write.
The Catalan artist relays the notion of "art impliqué" recently employed in Catalonia: "... je viens de voir une citation... dans laquelle on dit "art impliqué" - que nous avions pensé que était intraduisible, ou que n'avait pas de sens en français - " ["... I just saw a quote... in which they say 'art impliqué' - which we had thought was untranslatable, or had no meaning in French - "] and used previously: "... une expression qu'avait été employé par Etienne Souriau en France et que le jeune esteticien catalan Robert de Ventos s'aurait approprié..." ["... an expression that had been used by Etienne Souriau in France and that the young Catalan aesthetician Robert de Ventos would have appropriated..."]
Antoni Tapies would like to use this "new notion" that is ultimately old in order to make some modifications to their previous joint works: " ? Nous permettrait ça de remettre le titre au chapitre : "Academia del social i l'implicat (mot entouré) qu'on avait laissé par "art fonctionnel" ? Je ne suis pas sûr et je te laisse à toi de décider." ["? Would that allow us to restore the title to the chapter: 'Academia del social i l'implicat' (word circled) that we had left as 'functional art'? I'm not sure and I leave it to you to decide."]
Finally, he congratulates his friend Georges Raillard for his latest preface: "Merci encore une fois pour le préface que tu as fait, que j'ai aimé beaucoup ! " ["Thank you once again for the preface you wrote, which I loved very much!"]

Second illustrated edition.
Spine with some rubbing.
Illustrated with drawings by Horacio Cardo.
 
Rare presentation copy erroneously dated 1949 and signed by Jorge Luis Borges to his muse Ema Risso Platero : « à Emita, con afecto innumerable. »

Unpublished autograph letter signed by Max Jacob addressed to Fernand Pouey. One page written in black ink on a sheet.
Two transverse folds inherent to mailing.
Remarkable letter in which Max Jacob asks a strange favor of his friend: "Un de nos amis explose [sic] des tableaux 76 Fg St Honoré galerie Charpentier le 4 avril. J'ai des obligations à son endroit et je voudrais lui montrer des sentiments d'ailleurs plus ou moins sincères. Tu peux certainement signaler au critique d'art de la maison cette peinture sûrement honorable." ["One of our friends is exploding [sic] paintings 76 Fg St Honoré galerie Charpentier on April 4th. I have obligations toward him and I would like to show him feelings that are more or less sincere. You can certainly point out to the house art critic this surely honorable painting."]
The mysterious "friend" mentioned in this letter could be the painter Balthus, who exhibited at the Galerie Charpentier in early April 1935.