Non vouloir

Éditions Jeanne Bucher | Paris 1942 | 14 x 19.5 cm | original wrappers

Part first edition, one of 400 numbered copies on featherweight vellum.
Illustrated with 4 original engravings by Pablo Picasso.
Discreet restorations to the margin of the second board.
Beautiful copy.
Beautiful signed, handwritten presentation by Georges Hugnet to his close friend, Parisian bookseller and member of the resistance, Pierre Berger: «à mon ami Pierre Berger en souvenir de tout ce qui nous lie par la pluie et le beau temps. De tout coeur. Georges Hugnet. 1953.» («To my friend Pierre Berger in memory of everything that joins us through rain and good weather. With all my heart, Georges Hugnet. 1953.»)
his moving tribute to their common fight in the resistance could only be late, since on the publication of this work, Pierre Berget was imprisoned at the Buchenwald camp, where were he had been deported in 1941 after having been denounced by his partner to the Gestapo.
Pierre Berger, friends with Desnos, Picasso, Dali, Tanguy, Hugnet, Salmon, Max Jacob, was also a writer and a journalist. After the war he contributed to the «Poètes d'aujourd'hui» collection, published by Pierre Seghurs. He is notably the author of the portrait-memories of resistant poets such as René Char and Robert Desnos.
First published in 1940 with a frontispiece by Joan Miro, «Non-vouloir» was the first resistance poem openly published and signed by its author without being subjected to censorship. Composed between March and June 1940, Hugnet's poem claims to be a poetic manifesto of the refusal of defeat and occupation, which echoes Général De Gaulle's well-known call on 18th June.
Resistant from the start, Hugnet joined the «La Main à plume» group who print numerous clandestine leaflets. He uses his binding workshop to produce false passes and, under the pseudonym «Malo le Bleu,» he participated in particular in L'honneur des poètes, a collection of fighting poems published secretly in 1943 by the famous Editions de Minuit.
At the height of the occupation, Georges Hugnet reaffirmed his affront to the occupier with this illustrated edition of original engravings by the author of Guernica, leader of degenerate art, ostensibly staying in Paris.
Both of them brazenly mock Nazi authority through a violent poetic and
artistic pamphlet:
«Le wagon inlassable emporte la [femme évanouie
Nue parmi ses bagages outragés
Et la lumière et la fourrure
Courent dans un air de tous les jours.
Indifférent comme ce ciel mobile au [fond du puits
Indifférent comme ce campement qui [fume sous l'orage
Plus indifférent que jamais
L'homme attend ce qu'il doit découvrir.
Je porte en moi ma détresse et ma [joie
Tout ce qui est bien dans l'une et dans [l'autre
Toute la mesure d'un refus.
Je ne réclame aucune libération
Toute libération est en moi
Je porte mon rêve
Je porte en moi tout ce que j'attends.
Un non pour un oui.»