Le temps déborde

First edition which supposedly had an issue of 500 numbered copies. “Gallimard donated the paper required for the production of this book, but only 258 copies could be printed, rather than the 500 announced in the justification” (from a note by Paul Éluard). A slight crease to the covers, slight marginal sunning primarily affecting the rear cover.

Illustrated with 11 photographs of Nusch Éluard by Man Ray and Dora Maar.

Le temps déborde is a collection of eleven poems published in 1947, a few months after the sudden and unexpected death of Paul Éluard’s wife Nusch. A poignant ode to their seventeen years of life together, the work is illustrated with striking portraits of Nusch.

This exceptional copy is signed by Dora Maar beneath or directly on each of her five photographs. We are aware of only one other copy signed by the photographer, and none signed by Man Ray.

A rare and beautiful copy.

In 1965, paying tribute to his friend, Aragon recalled his discovery of this masterpiece: “He signed it with an invented name, Didier Desroches, because he had killed Paul Éluard. I let him talk. What he had shown me of Didier was of a confounding beauty. This slender book, which was to appear as the work of an unknown — to say merely that, in my eyes, it surpasses everything Éluard ever signed with his own name is to say too little. I thought so then, and I think so today.”

The attribution of each photograph in the collection to either Man Ray or Dora Maar has long been a source of confusion. Strangely, the question seems to attract little scholarly attention: as Mary Ann Caws notes, Dora Maar’s portraits of the Surrealists’ muse “were originally attributed to Man Ray, since they were so clearly superb in their construction and realization” (“These photographing women: The scandal of genius,” Angels of anarchy: women artists and surrealism, 2009). This misattribution was also a consequence of the systematic erasure of Dora Maar’s photographic work, which she abandoned at Picasso’s request. The two series by Dora Maar and Man Ray are further entwined by their shared style and by both artists’ fascination with Nusch. Audacious framing and subtle interplay of shadow and light reflect the two Surrealist photographers’ formal innovation. Beyond aesthetic alchemy, the three of them were very close at the time of these photographs (1935-1938). For several years, they all took part (with their partners Ady Fidelin and Paul Eluard) in late-summer gatherings in the rustic village of Mougins overlooking Cannes, at the invitation of Picasso, where they indulged in “role play, identity and couple exchanges” (Alicia Ortiz Dujovne, Dora Maar).

Some of the collection’s illustrations are well known: Man Ray’s “Nusch with mirror”, his diptych with her eyes closed and open, and the celebrated portrait by Dora Maar illustrating the poem L’Extase with “her carefully lit face floating in darkness, supported only with her fingers, an elusive expression in her eyes. In one unforgettable version of the same image Les années vous guettent [The years lie in wait].

Maar superimposes a silvery spider’s web over Nusch’s features” (Louise Baring, Dora Maar: Paris in the time of Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, and Picasso). “The resonance of the photograph is all the more powerful, since Nusch died early of a heart attack, just on the day she was to lunch with Dora Maar, for whom it was an irreparable loss.” (Mary Ann Caws)

For other photographs, attribution had remained uncertain, notably the portrait of Nusch bare-breasted and draped in foliage, illustrating En vertu de l’amour: the absence of a signature supports the attribution to Man Ray.

A sublime poetic and artistic tribute featuring the finest portraits of Nusch, central figure in Man Ray and Éluard’s shared imagery and graceful model for Dora Maar’s most accomplished portraits, at last restored to their rightful author by this copy signed five times in her hand.