À toute épreuve

Published by the Éditions surréalistes in 1930, *À toute épreuve* is an exceptionally concise yet important publication from Paul Éluard’s central Surrealist period. This palm-sized booklet gathers thirteen poems in which love, jealousy, loss, desire and physical presence are compressed into highly concentrated poetic language. It emerged during an emotionally turbulent phase of Éluard’s life, shortly after the crisis and eventual breakdown of his marriage to Gala. The material simplicity of the publication stands in striking contrast to the intensity of its contents: eight leaves, without illustrations, issued in an almost ephemeral form. Several of the poems had already appeared in periodicals closely associated with Surrealism. The present copy is printed on Lafuma Navarre paper, giving it additional material distinction. The 1930 edition also acquired an extraordinary afterlife when the same title became, in 1958, the basis of the celebrated artist’s book created by Éluard and Joan Miró.

This large-format programme sheet for the Bal de la Grand Ourse is one of the most vivid survivals from the Parisian artistic scene of the mid-1920s. It was issued by the Union des Artistes Russes à Paris for the event held at the Salle Bullier on 8 May 1925, an occasion that was at once social, performative, and programmatic. The document announces not merely a ball, but a total event in which modern architecture, decorative arts, and stage design converged. Henri Laurens's contribution gives the sheet a direct connection to the international avant-garde and to the sculptural language of cubist and post-cubist Paris. The programme also includes a facsimile musical score and an additional illustration, bringing text, image, and rhythm together within a single printed object. Its full roster of participating artists reads like a snapshot of the École de Paris, with names such as Braque, Chagall, the Delaunays, Foujita, Man Ray, Marinetti, Matisse, Picabia, Picasso, and Zadkine. This copy also retains the accompanying slip Le 8 mai 1925. La Grande Ourse Bal, bibliographically and materially part of the same ensemble. That completeness makes the piece especially appealing to collectors of avant-garde ephemera.

Le Jeu de la Chouette is a pataphysical game-object by R. Gil, Régent de Catachimie, issued in 1976 as the second number of the Cymbalum Pataphysicum’s Otium series. The work is not a conventional book block, but a folder containing a folded illustrated game sheet: a readable object to be handled, viewed and interpreted at once. The title belongs to the ludic logic of the Cymbalum, where play, ritual, pseudo-science and bibliography constantly overlap. This record focuses on the purple copy bearing the manuscript indication “Le Christ d’Or”, one of the 52 deluxe copies on papier diurne under couverture crépusculaire, marked with the 52 figures of César-Antéchrist. That reference gives the Jarry connection particular force, since César-Antéchrist belongs to the early mythological and grotesque foundation of Jarry’s universe. The second copy present, the brown-orange variant, appears to belong to the 444 luxury copies on papier nocturne under couverture aurorale and forms a valuable comparison copy. Together, the two examples show how the pataphysical hierarchy of issue becomes part of the game itself.

A rare plaquette of *Le La*, where Breton’s late surrealist voice is pared to crystal. Printed at Alès by P.A.B. in 1961, in a small square format with a stark black wrapper. It includes an original lithograph by Jean Benoît, which condenses the ritual, talismanic mood of the text. The pairing of Breton’s concentrated note and Benoît’s image forms a miniature in which word and image mutually enchant. For bibliophiles this is a model of the French private-press ethos: clean typography, exact pitch, and a minute limitation. This copy is from the Arches issue and bears PAB’s signature.