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Xylophonie contre la grande presse et son petit public belongs to the militant and polemical printed works of Antonin Artaud’s final years. This brief 1946 publication, co-signed by Henri Pichette, has the sharp force of a pamphlet directed against the press and its public. The text should be understood against the background of Artaud’s post-war return to Parisian literary life, where his voice was being rediscovered, celebrated and misunderstood at once. Its austere physical form — an in-8 pamphlet issued loose in wrappers, only eight leaves long — perfectly matches the cutting directness of the intervention. The printing was extremely small: 53 copies on heavy vélin fort, comprising 50 numbered copies and 3 nominative A.P.L. copies. Copy XXI therefore belongs to the series of 50 numbered copies and preserves the full rarity of that original issue.

With Le Théâtre et son double, Antonin Artaud shaped one of the most consequential theatrical manifestos of the twentieth century. The book appeared in 1938 from Gallimard / NRF as the fourth volume in the Collection “Métamorphoses”. In this first edition, theatre is no longer treated as literary interpretation, but as a physical, ritual and destabilising force. Artaud’s thought on voice, gesture, cruelty, myth and presence would profoundly influence post-war avant-garde theatre, experimental performance and performance art. The modest petit in-8 format sharply contrasts with the radical force of the ideas it contains. The edition was limited to 400 copies, issued as a single printing on papier de châtaignier.

Poèmes et prose choisis is one of the decisive collected volumes from René Char’s middle period and was published by the NRF in Paris in 1957. It is not a simple reprint, but a carefully considered edition with many variants, in which Char reorders and reframes his own work. The book therefore becomes a kind of self-chosen gateway into his poetic universe. For readers and collectors alike, it marks an important moment: the poet presents a concentrated image of his work up to that date, while the first edition was also conceived as a bibliophile object. The small issue on vélin de Hollande underscores that double status. This copy, number 18 of the 23 on that paper, gains further significance from the autograph inscription to Dr Zara, dated July 1970. It is thus not only a rare first state, but also a personally marked copy.

John Cage’s contribution to S.M.S. No. 4 is one of the most characteristic printed works from his broad practice between music, language, and conceptual art. It was published in 1968 by The Letter Edged in Black Press in New York, within William N. Copley’s experimental portfolio-magazine S.M.S., whose fourth issue appeared in August 1968. Cage’s piece takes the form of a small artist’s booklet with a transparent cover, printed in color and conceived as a self-contained multiple within a larger ensemble. As so often with Cage, form is not merely the vehicle of the text but part of the thought itself: fragmentation, typographic spacing, and sequence turn reading into an experience. Within the context of S.M.S., the work stands beside contributions by Roy Lichtenstein, On Kawara, and Robert Watts, underscoring its place in the interdisciplinary avant-garde of the late 1960s. For collectors, it is at once a Cage item, an artist’s book, and a document of New York multiple culture. Small in format, it is large in intellectual reach.

Trois coups sous les arbres is René Char’s major collected theatrical volume, published by the NRF in Paris in 1967. For the first time it gathers his complete theatre in a single book, from Sur les hauteurs to La Conjuration, thus revealing a lesser-known yet essential side of his oeuvre. Though Char is usually read as a poet, this edition shows how powerfully his voice also works in dramatic form: fragmentary, incantatory, lucid, and enigmatic at once. The survival of the wraparound band announcing “Le théâtre complet de René Char en un volume” adds a valuable layer of original presentation and publishing context. The deluxe issue on Hollande van Gelder underscores the bibliophile importance of the first edition. This copy gains still more significance from the autograph inscription to Dr Marcel Zara, whose wording resonates closely with the theatrical subject of the book. For collectors, it is a major Char work in a rare and personally charged state.

Dehors la nuit est gouvernée is one of René Char’s early and decisive collections, published by GLM in Paris in 1938. It was issued as the second volume in the series Poètes d’aujourd’hui, a collection that held a distinct place in modern French poetry of the 1930s. Char stands here at a turning point: still close to Surrealist intensity, yet already shaping a denser, harsher, more oracular voice of his own. GLM’s restrained design suits that concentrated force perfectly. As so often with Guy Lévis Mano, the object is modest in means yet remarkably present: a refined typographic book for readers who value poetry as a material form as well as a text. The small number of deluxe copies on Hollande Pannekoek heightens its bibliophile appeal. For collectors, this is an edition where poetic modernity and publishing finesse meet with unusual precision.

La Parole en archipel is one of the major collections of René Char’s mature period and was published by the NRF in Paris in 1962. It is not merely a new gathering of poems, but a collective edition bringing together several earlier sequences, sometimes in revised form or with variants. The volume thus takes on the character of a poetic constellation: not a closed cycle, but an archipelago of voices, flashes, and tensions. Its title expresses that principle perfectly, since Char allows the individual parts to coexist without dissolving their singularity. The result is a broad yet highly concentrated view of his poetry from the 1950s and early 1960s. The deluxe issue on Madagascar Navarre further underscores the bibliophile prestige of the first edition. This copy, number 12 of the 18 de tête, thus combines literary substance with marked rarity.

This edition of *L’Amour absolu, suivi de L’Autre Alceste* brings together two key texts from Alfred Jarry’s singular imaginative world. It was issued by Mercure de France in 1952 with a preface by Maurice Saillet, at a moment when Jarry’s rediscovery was closely tied to the Collège de ’Pataphysique. For the bibliophile, it is more than a neat post-war reissue: it is a material witness to Jarry’s continuing influence on twentieth-century avant-garde culture. *L’Amour absolu* is among his most inward and elusive prose works, where autobiography, mysticism, and parody become inseparable. *L’Autre Alceste* adds a dramatic and mythological counterpoint. This copy is made more significant by its strongly marked pataphysical provenance. The red circular stamps of the Ordre de la Grande Gidouille, together with name-stamps associated with Eugène Ionesco, Raymond Queneau, and Noël Arnaud, give it an exceptional collegiate resonance. It is therefore not merely a reading copy, but an object that visibly circulated within Jarry’s living afterlife.

*Lettres d’Espagne*, published in 1944, marks a pivotal moment in Antoni Clavé's career and is among the most sought-after 'livres d'artiste' from the war years. The Catalan artist, having recently fled to Paris, found in Prosper Mérimée's texts the perfect opportunity to express his nostalgia and passion for Spanish culture. The 27 original lithographs burst with color and baroque energy, showcasing Clavé's legendary mastery of lithography. This specific copy is of museum-grade rarity: it is enriched with an original gouache by the master himself, as well as two complete suites of the lithographs. The combination of Mérimée's classic prose and Clavé's spirited imagery creates a visual spectacle that captures the Spanish soul in all its facets. For the discerning bibliophile, this copy represents the ultimate synthesis of unique artistry and high-end bookmaking.

*Une aventure méthodique* brings together Pierre Reverdy’s concentrated poetic prose and Georges Braque’s austere visual language. It belongs among the major post-war French livres d’artiste, where text, lithography and typography meet as equal forces. Braque contributed 27 original lithographs, supplemented by colour reproductions after his paintings, giving the volume both intimacy and monumentality. Printed by Mourlot, the celebrated Paris lithographic workshop, the book has exceptional technical refinement. This copy, on vélin d’Arches and signed by both author and artist, preserves a rare encounter between modern poetry and pictorial invention.