"I experience spasms, a sort of shivering, a lot of yawning, disgust, total despondency, the blood rushes violently to my head, then I feel dizzy, spinning, which makes me stumble, and a thousand other things proving a great tension in the body, and a great irritation in the nervous system."

"New York likes neither to sit nor to lie down. It's a city that sleeps standing"
Jean Cocteau wrote a dazzling textual portrait of the city that never sleeps for the newspaper L'Aurore, after a twenty-day stay in New York.

As 2024 marks the 100th year anniversary of Kafka's passing, it is an ideal time to explore his writings and persona from a different perspective.

“Denoël [My publisher], the three little dots didn't appeal to him. Frightened, he was. Reproving. We were leaving good tradition, repudiating all form: it was no longer attached to anything... Ah, this time, my publisher was no longer ensuring the novel's success! He had to absolve himself of any responsibility. To walk away from the gambling table...
‘Dear Céline', he began, ‘I'm afraid you've made a mistake... Let's see, even for a man like you, there are limits, a measure to be kept!'
His features were severe, his gaze perplexed, his voice anguished (but very dignified). Brave Denoël! ‘My good friend, I warn you. And then there was something else. These passages were too daring, really too daring! Of course, art has its rights, but still...' ”

He explored all manner of art forms, from drawing to ceramics. The insatiable genius even tried his hand at theater with his play Le désir attrapé par la queue. Yet there was one he seemed to shy away from: the "graphic" art of the letter!
Despite his prolific correspondence, Picasso's entirely autographed letters are extremely rare, as Laurence Madeline points out in her article on the confidential activity of the great artist:“The inertia paralyzing Picasso, who preferred his work as an artist to that of a secretary, made the letters he took pleasure in writing more essential and more touching” (Laurence Madeline, “Picasso épistolier”, L'Herne, n° 106).
And yet, when the immense artist puts pen to paper, he transforms the seemingly insignificant letter into a pictorial and multicolored masterpiece!

Exceptional collection of autographed and printed archives - the last in private hands - belonging to the founder of liberalism and modern economics, Léon Walras, preserved and annotated by William Jaffé. One of the 5 most important archival collections of a theorician Schumpeter considered "the greatest of all economists".

Edition-originale retraced the eventful journey of the manuscripts and printed works by France's greatest economist, repeatedly in danger of being completely lost, until these last archives were saved in-extremis from destruction.