Dehors la nuit est gouvernée
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.
Quantity
Char, Rene
Dehors la nuit est gouvernée
1938 | Paris | GLM (Guy Lévis-Mano)
An early and essential Char in a GLM edition of great restraint and exemplary precision. This copy on Hollande Pannekoek belongs to the sought-after deluxe issue of a collection in which Char’s own voice is already distinctly audible.
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.
€1,100
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-4 (Quarto) approx. 25 × 32 cm
Edition Particulars
One of the 25 deluxe copies on Hollande Pannekoek.
Print Run
275
Paper
Hollande Pannekoek
Inscription
No inscription
Product DETAIL
This collection gathers a sequence of short, concentrated poems in which René Char works through images of night, landscape, the body, fire, and movement. There is no continuous plot and no fixed cast of characters; at the centre stands a lyric voice perceiving the outer world through shocks, visions, and abrupt correspondences. The poems unfold in an undefined yet intensely present universe where nature, desire, threat, and brightness constantly intersect. Char builds each text through compact image-fields rather than narrative development. The movement of the book therefore proceeds by association, recurrence, and contrast. The volume shows the poet shifting from Surrealist imagery toward a more personal and condensed mode. Its atmosphere is tense and visionary, in a language that is at once sensuous and aphoristic.
Gracq, Julien
Au château d'Argol
Julien Gracq’s debut novel, issued by José Corti, sets a gothic castle on the Breton coast as the stage for a charged, almost dream-logic encounter between three figures. The prose is musical and image-rich, favouring symbolic landscapes and metaphysical weather. Born near Surrealism yet distinctly independent, the book establishes Gracq’s lucid enchantment from the start. For bibliophiles this is a key title: an early Corti publication, scarce in appealing condition, and the opening note of a major twentieth-century voice. Its limited print-run and initially slow reception add to the sense of discovery. This copy is on publisher’s stock.
Book
€610
Michaux, Henri
Ailleurs
*Ailleurs* is a keystone in Michaux’s imaginary ethnographies—an atlas of inner geographies, issued by NRF in 1948. Miguet’s sober bordeaux morocco binding matches the text’s clarity and restraint. With dry precision and wry humor, Michaux details peoples, rituals, and languages that are both alien and oddly familiar. The airy layout paces attention and thought. This copy belongs to the small head issue on vélin pur fil and is notably fresh. A book that relocates the reader in place—a cartography of the mind.
Book
€1,050
Bousquet, Joë
Traduit du silence. Proses
Traduit du silence. Proses is one of Joë Bousquet’s rare pre-war publications, issued in the poetic series of Les Cahiers du Journal des Poètes. Its title already contains the central paradox of the book: writing as if translated from silence, seclusion and inward intensity. This copy is notable for its deluxe issue on Featherweight fort, numbered with the crowned-heart device, but above all for its signed autograph inscription to Jeanne and James Ducellier. The Ducelliers were among Bousquet’s closest confidants in Carcassonne and belonged to the circle where literature, friendship and surrealism converged. This is therefore not merely an early and refined edition, but a tangible document of a personal and artistic network. The book connects Bousquet’s enclosed room with the broader surrealist constellation of Max Ernst, Paul Éluard, Yves Tanguy and Raymond Roussel.
Book
€250
Ribemont-Dessaignes, Georges
Ariane
A remarkable copy of *Ariane*, published in the *Les Cahiers Nouveaux* series, inscribed with a poetic and enigmatic message by Ribemont-Dessaignes to Jacques Matarasso. This deluxe Japan paper edition was elegantly rebound in 1994 by Georges Leroux, in a restrained style that echoes the work’s Dadaist spirit.
Book
€1,100
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