Impuissant à t’aimer
*Impuissant à t’aimer* belongs to the finely judged small-format books through which Pierre-André Benoit shaped a distinctive bibliophilic identity for his press. This 1953 edition brings together a text by PAB and a reproduced drawing by Georges Braque, a meeting that lends the volume a quiet but unmistakable artistic charge. Its modest format heightens the intimate, concentrated quality of the whole. As so often with PAB, its strength lies in restraint, proportion, and sensibility rather than display. The very small limitation and PAB’s signature make this a desirable postwar illustrated book.
Quantity
Benoit, Pierre-André
Braque, Georges
Impuissant à t’aimer
1953 | Alès | Éditions PAB
A rarefied PAB production in which literary intimacy and modern art meet with exemplary economy.
*Impuissant à t’aimer* belongs to the finely judged small-format books through which Pierre-André Benoit shaped a distinctive bibliophilic identity for his press. This 1953 edition brings together a text by PAB and a reproduced drawing by Georges Braque, a meeting that lends the volume a quiet but unmistakable artistic charge. Its modest format heightens the intimate, concentrated quality of the whole. As so often with PAB, its strength lies in restraint, proportion, and sensibility rather than display. The very small limitation and PAB’s signature make this a desirable postwar illustrated book.
€600
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-16 (approx. 16,6 x 13,5 cm)
Edition Particulars
One of 35 signed copies of the first illustrated edition.
Print Run
35
Copy Number
No. 3
Inscription
Signed by the Author
1
Edition Particulars:
We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests. Each message is treated with discretion and respect. We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests.
1
Print Run:
Condition Report:
1
Copy Number:
Condition Report:
1
Paper:
Condition Report:
1
Signed:
Condition Report:
Product DETAIL
The title suggests a text of restrained emotion in which love appears under the sign of helplessness, distance, or insufficiency. Within the brief space so characteristic of PAB, every phrase gains unusual density. The work seems less narrative than lyrical or meditative in nature. The tension between desire and inability gives the book a sober intensity. Its very brevity invites slow, repeated reading.
Char, Rene · Pierre Andre Benoit (PAB)
Les Dentelles de Montmirail
Les Dentelles de Montmirail is one of the characteristic small masterpieces born of the collaboration between René Char and PAB. It was published in 1960 between L’Isle-sur-Sorgue and Alès, two places that immediately evoke the geography of Char and that of Pierre André Benoit. The edition joins Char’s brief, aphoristic lyric voice to five natural impressions from Montmirail, so that text and matter quite literally meet. With PAB, poetry often takes on an intimate, almost handmade form, and that quality is especially palpable here. The limited issue on Arches heightens the book’s discreet yet unmistakable bibliophile character. This copy gains further importance from the autograph inscription to Dr Marcel Zara, far more than a routine dedication and almost readable as a small autonomous poem. For collectors, it is an exemplary PAB production in which landscape, trace, inscription, and poem become a single object.
Ill Book
€2,250
René Char, Georges Braque · Lachaud, Mariette · Pierre Andre Benoit (PAB)
Ainsi va l'amitié
What makes this copy especially memorable is not only its tiny limitation but the way it fixes three friendships at once: that between Char and Braque, that between Char and PAB, and that of all of them with the image that outlives them. The eight original photographs are not an illustrative supplement but the true bearers of presence; they preserve gazes, workspaces, and silences. The fact that PAB and Mariette Lachaud signed this copy gives it an almost confidential status, as though the circle of makers were still present within the book. In such editions, bibliophily becomes more than rarity alone: it becomes a form of shared memory.
Ill Book
€4,500
Dorgelès, Roland · Dunoyer de Segonzac
La Boule de gui
This first edition brings together three war episodes omitted from Les Croix de bois: La Boule de gui, Permissionnaires, and Le Prisonnier bénévole, formerly titled L’Ennemi des vieux. Published in 1922, it is also the first illustrated issue of these texts. André Dunoyer de Segonzac accompanies Dorgelès’s front-line prose with 42 reproduced drawings and five original drypoints hors texte, including the frontispiece. His nervous, direct line closely matches the stories’ hard observation and comradeship. This copy, number 401 on tinted Lafuma paper, belongs to the regular yet still limited issue of 519 copies on this stock. Devauchelle’s exceptional artist’s binding translates trenches, crosses, and explosions into a forceful modern design, turning the volume into a distinctive bibliophile object.
Ill Book
€1,150
Char, Rene · Stael, Nicolas de
Arrière-histoire du poème pulvérisé
*Arrière-histoire du poème pulvérisé* is a later illustrated edition of a key text in which René Char looks back on the genesis and inner background of *Le Poème pulvérisé*. Published in 1972 by Imprimerie Union, it opens with a colour frontispiece by Nicolas de Staël. The pairing of Char and de Staël is especially charged: two post-war voices, each seeking concentration, clarity, and rupture in his own medium. This copy is one of only six hors commerce copies on Arches and is signed. The autograph presentation inscription to Doctor Marcel Zara, with poetic quotation and October 1972 dating, makes it a deeply personal copy.
