Le ressassement éternel

First edition, one of 990 copies on Ghaldwill, the only deluxe copies after 10 on pur fil.
Half blue morocco binding, smooth spine, gilt date at foot, covers with marbled paper, blue paper endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved (spine slightly sunned with small filled losses), top edge gilt, binding signed by Goy & Vilaine.
Exceptional and moving signed autograph inscription from Maurice Blanchot to his mother and sister: "Pour vous mes très chères, ces pages, hélas bien anciennes, en toute affection. Maurice. / Mais avant le commencement, il y a le recommencement qui fait de la lumière une fascination, de toute chose une image et de nous le coeur vide du ressassement éternel" ["For you my very dear ones, these pages, alas quite old, with all my affection. Maurice. / But before the beginning, there is the re-beginning which makes light a fascination, everything an image and us the empty heart of eternal rehearsal"].
Half-title page bearing the inscription very slightly and marginally shaded. Marguerite Blanchot, renowned organist at Chalon cathedral, remained all her life in the family home, with her mother and aunt. "She gradually became, for the family, like the memory of origins." Very close to Maurice, she corresponded regularly with the writer who showed her great gratitude for her devotion to their disabled mother. While Blanchot's intense affection for his mother and sister shows through in his dedications, we know almost nothing of their relationships. In the only biographical essay on Blanchot, Christophe Bident reveals however: "Marguerite Blanchot venerated her brother Maurice. Very proud of him, (...) she attached great importance to his political ideas (...). She read extensively (...) They telephoned each other, corresponded. From a distance, they shared the same natural authority, the same concern for discretion." Blanchot indeed sent her numerous works from his library, maintaining with her a continuous intellectual bond. As for Blanchot's passion for his mother, it is in the course of his work that we discover the most beautiful testimonies: "Perhaps the power of the maternal figure borrows its brilliance from the very power of fascination, and one could say that if the Mother exercises this fascinating attraction, it is because appearing when the child lives entirely under the gaze of fascination, she concentrates in herself all the powers of enchantment". Cultivating absolute discretion, Blanchot pushed the art of effacement even into his manuscript dedications generally succinct and written almost systematically on cards attached to the rare works he offered to his close friends. In contrast, in these precious inscriptions to his mother and sister, Blanchot offers himself in all his fragility and reveals a hitherto unknown intimacy.
Fine copy perfectly established.