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L’Orestie is one of Georges Bataille’s most concentrated and unsettling poetic books. Its title invokes Orestes and the tragic inheritance of guilt, blood and madness, yet Bataille offers no classical retelling. The book is instead a brief, severe cycle in which poetry places itself under pressure and almost turns against its own possibility. Published shortly after the war by Les Éditions des Quatre Vents, it retains the tension of the years in which it was written: hunger, fear, desire, religious emptiness and bodily dread. The edition is austere, but bibliographically precise in its limited printing on tinted nacreous paper. This copy belongs to the 175 copies issued for commerce and bears the very early number 7. Its uncut state heightens the sense of an intact, still-closed object from Bataille’s rare poetic production.

Far Rockaway is a rare first edition by Pierre Alechinsky published by Fata Morgana, a press especially attuned to the meeting of literature, image and bibliophile restraint. The title refers to Far Rockaway, a place-name both concrete and almost dreamlike, as though a geographical point had become a mental edge-zone. Alechinsky, shaped by Cobra yet always independent in his writing of line and sign, brings together here his world of travel, memory, margin and graphic rhythm. The 1977 edition belongs to Fata Morgana’s refined small-scale objects, where paper choice and typographic restraint heighten the relation between text and image. This copy is especially desirable because it belongs to the tirage de tête: one of only 30 numbered copies on Ingres d’Arches. Number 26 therefore stands clearly above the ordinary issue. For a collector of Alechinsky, it is a small but important bibliophile object from his mature period.

*Nouvelles Hébrides, Nouvelle Guinée* is a very rare first PAB edition by René Char, printed in Alès in 1962. As often with Pierre-André Benoît, the book’s intensity lies in its sobriety, small format, and extremely limited edition. The text would later be included in the second edition of *Recherche de la base et du sommet*, giving this first edition a special place in Char’s textual history. This copy is one of 44 on Arches, signed by both author and publisher. The inscription to Edmée Maus and her bookplate make it a meaningful association copy.

*Lettre contre la cabbale adressée à Jacques Prevel* belongs to Artaud’s late, incandescent texts, where letter, accusation, and conjuration converge. Its addressee, Jacques Prevel, was one of the intimate witnesses of Artaud’s final years and recorded his words and gestures at close range. This 1949 edition appeared shortly after Artaud’s death and carries the tension of a text at once personal, polemical, and visionary. The edition on white vellum makes the text less inaccessible than manuscript material or deluxe issues, while preserving the force of an autonomous Artaud publication. This copy is number 420 of 1,800.

*L’An 1964* is an exceptionally intimate PAB publication by René Char, printed in Alès on 2 January 1964. The text is a new edition of *Pages d’ascendants* and appears here for the first time under this title. As often with Pierre-André Benoît, the book is small in format but intense in bibliophile presence. This copy is one of seven on Chine, signed by PAB. The bound-in autograph card by PAB, announcing misprints and the reprinting of a leaf, gives the copy exceptional documentary value. Since both the faulty and corrected states of the leaf are preserved, the book reveals its own making at close range.

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.