Van Gogh le suicidé de la société

First edition on ordinary paper.
Tiny and very discreet restorations to the verso of the first blank leaf.

Significant and fine signed autograph inscription by Antonin Artaud:
« à M. Fernand Pouey qui a voulu comprendre mon aride effort. Antonin Artaud. 13 décembre 1947. »
Signed autograph inscriptions by Antonin Artaud are exceedingly rare in this text.

This grateful tribute is addressed to the libertarian and committed journalist Fernand Pouey, then director of dramatic and literary programmes at French Radio, at whose instigation Artaud wrote Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu, recorded for the programme La Voix des poètes. The two men maintained a long correspondence about this project, which was fully completed but censored on the eve of its broadcast, on 1 February 1948. A few months earlier, Fernand Pouey had already faced the same censorship for L'Enfant criminel, which he had commissioned from Jean Genet, and he had the courage to resign immediately.
However, Artaud’s gratitude for the understanding of his “arid effort” came earlier and
refers to the first day of recording, when the poet expressed concern that “the producer [...] and [...] all those with whom [he has] had to deal [sic] understand what [his] intentions and aims were” (letter to Fernand Pouey, 11 December 1947). The correspondence with Pouey, like this eloquent dedication, attests to the intellectual complicity between the two men. Together they lived intensely this ultimate radio venture, scuttled by the director of French Radio – himself the son of a poet – Wladimir Porché.