Je ne veux pas qu'on tue cette femme

First edition, one of 90 numbered copies on vellum, ours one of the few hors commerce copies, the only issue after 20 copies on orange paper.

Spine slightly sunned as usual, with a small tear to head of spine; a fine copy.

Illustrated with a frontispiece by Max Ernst.

Whimsical inscription on a presentation copy to Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy: "in memory of a past not unlike a Henri III sideboard. Lély." (A monsieur Yves Tanguy en souvenir d'un passé pareil à un buffet Henri III)

"Lely's poems reveal the fascination he feels for events in which beings appear who are truly other than himself, while he nonetheless experiences toward them a genuine emotion that engages his entire being. For instance, in Je ne veux pas qu'on tue cette femme, as early as 1936, his mind fixes on the moment of Mata Hari's execution (the young woman accused of espionage) and it is to make of that instant, whose fatality he imagines might be reversed, "the rifles will not fire" he writes magnificently, "her fury has disabled the crude machinery of time": yes, to make of that instant the central object of the poem's thought and a genuine mystery."

Emmanuel Rubio, Gilbert Lely, la passion dévorante, 2007, p. 18

The collection was met with great enthusiasm by Lély's fellow members of the Surrealist movement: according to Jean-Louis Gabin, André Breton was particularly fond of the dream-like narrative "L'Anniversaire", and René Char sent warm congratulations upon reading the Sade-inspired scene "Le 9 août 1914..." later known as "Les Roses de Picardie".

A rare copy, inscribed in typical Surrealist fashion: "The Surrealist 'like' (comme) defies its ordinary meaning. Rather than a mere means of comparison, it underscores a gap, a dissimilarity. It is the agent of a polarization between the terms and objects it brings together. It magnetizes the space soon traversed by a shower of sparks: the electric arc of a relationship that defies reason." (Didier Ottinger)."