Scène de théâtre autographe et cartes postales commentées adressées à son meilleur ami Roger Nimier : "Voilà le mot qu'il ne fallait pas prononcer... Il a le don de titiller mes vieux sphincters"

Precious autograph playlet signed by Antoine Blondin along with five postcards with autograph annotations detailing the locations of the scene, addressed to the hussar Roger Nimier at his Parisian office at the N.R.F.
Blondin sends to his companion Nimier "Act II, Scene XXXII" of a play entitled "La Curée," a humorous and surreal dialogue in a bistro in Mayenne between a Boulevardier, a young girl accompanied by her little sister, and a waitress.
79 lines on two leaves (3 pages numbered by the author).
5 postcards of views of Mayenne numbered and annotated by the author (49 lines in total).
Envelope enclosed.
Published in À mes prochains: lettres, 1943-1984, ed. Alain Cresciucci, 2009, pp. 104-108.
Fine manifestation of the anarchic and zany spirit that guided the steps, not often steady but always inebriated, of Antoine Blondin, and of the fraternal and thunderous friendship that united him to Roger Nimier.
In the short scene of two leaves sent to Nimier, a bar regular (the "Boulevardier") attempts to approach a young girl ("La Jeunesse") leaving a cinema: "Excusez-moi Mademoiselle... [...] Je crois que je vous ai déjà vue quelque part... [...] Saperlipopette ! Voilà le mot qu'il ne fallait pas prononcer... Il a le don de titiller mes vieux sphincters" ["Excuse me Miss... [...] I think I've seen you somewhere before... [...] Good heavens! There's the word I shouldn't have said... It has the gift of tickling my old sphincters"]. The conversation continues in a bistro while in the postcards enclosed by Blondin with the leaves, Le Boulevardier watches and follows La Jeunesse through the city. His itinerary is carefully transcribed using the five cards of city views, which illustrate the scene, indicating the precise location of all events, as well as the times at which they occurred, written on the back of each: "Quand la jeunesse [la jeune fille] sort de l'épicerie en 1, le Boulevardier en 2 s'installe à un mirador de café en 3, la jeunesse après une fausse démarche en 4 revient sur ses pas et passe après une fausse démarche en 4 revient sur ses pas et passe près du boulevardier 4 bis dont le télémètre indique alors = d = trois mètres 50. Le Boulevardier règle sa bière et s'élance" ["When youth [the young girl] leaves the grocery store at 1, the Boulevardier at 2 settles at a café watchtower at 3, youth after a false move at 4 retraces her steps and passes after a false move at 4 retraces her steps and passes near the boulevardier 4 bis whose rangefinder then indicates = d = three meters 50. The Boulevardier pays for his beer and rushes off"].
The Boulevardier is surely inspired by Blondin himself, as this passage written on the back of the third postcard suggests: "Le Boulevardier feint de prendre des notes pour son prochain roman. En fait il établit un relevé topographique" ["The Boulevardier pretends to take notes for his next novel. In fact he is making a topographical survey"]. This famous topographical survey corresponds to the series of postcards itself, where Blondin indicates directly on the photographs using blue ink arrows the trajectory of the characters' gazes and their movements.
Blondin worked in all genres, and worked on a play, Un garçon d'honneur, written with Paul Guimard and adapted from a subject by Oscar Wilde. Himself credited on dozens of adaptations, screenplays and dialogues for cinema, his masterpiece Un singe en hiver would five years later be interpreted and brought to screen by giants of the seventh art, the Gabin-Belmondo duo directed by Henri Verneuil. This other face-to-face in a bistro, addressed to Nimier, resembles film dialogue: the postcards indeed act as a story-board for Blondin's short manuscript scene, allowing visualization of the shots of his dialogue in the manner of a cinematic sequence.

Regarding the deep friendship that Blondin showed to Roger Nimier and the myth of the Hussards, the author declared to Emmanuel Legeard who questioned him: "It's the 'hussards' who are an invention. A 'Sartrean' invention. In reality, the story is my friend Frémanger, who had launched into publishing, who had one author, that was Jacques Laurent, and one employee, that was me. Laurent wrote, and I tied up the book packages. So we knew each other, we were friends, and on the other hand... on the other hand, Roger Nimier was my best friend. Nimier, I saw him every day. I saw him every day for thirteen years. But Laurent and Nimier didn't frequent each other at all. They had very different conceptions. We were only brought together once. We met on rue Marbeuf, at the Quirinal, for lunch. We discussed Italian wines and pasta cooking. For two hours."

Rare theatrical creation by Blondin, on the borders of vaudeville and cinema, composed for Roger Nimier, his lifelong friend and companion of memorable feasts.