L’Afrique des impressions. Petit guide pratique à l’usage du voyageur
L’Afrique des impressions is Jean Ferry’s pataphysical guide to Raymond Roussel’s imaginary Africa, published by the Collège de ’Pataphysique in 1967. Its title openly plays on Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique, yet transforms exegesis into travel writing, scholarship into itinerary and reading into expedition. Ferry approaches Roussel not as an outside commentator, but as an initiate of verbal machinery, secret procedures and comic precision. This copy belongs to the rare group of 166 “exemplaires capitaux” on Authentique Papier Tropical du Ponukélé, and it duly contains the original drawing and autograph material required for that deluxe issue. Its dedication to Raphaël Ossona de Mendez places it within the living network of the Collège rather than in a merely external provenance. The accompanying manuscript note on codes, letters and the number 472 further heightens its Roussellian resonance. As a bibliophile object, it is at once guidebook, homage, private signal and pataphysical field instrument.
Quantity
Ferry, Jean
L’Afrique des impressions. Petit guide pratique à l’usage du voyageur
1967 | Paris | Collège de ’Pataphysique
A deluxe Roussellian copy with an original Ferry drawing, autograph material and internal pataphysical provenance.
L’Afrique des impressions is Jean Ferry’s pataphysical guide to Raymond Roussel’s imaginary Africa, published by the Collège de ’Pataphysique in 1967. Its title openly plays on Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique, yet transforms exegesis into travel writing, scholarship into itinerary and reading into expedition. Ferry approaches Roussel not as an outside commentator, but as an initiate of verbal machinery, secret procedures and comic precision. This copy belongs to the rare group of 166 “exemplaires capitaux” on Authentique Papier Tropical du Ponukélé, and it duly contains the original drawing and autograph material required for that deluxe issue. Its dedication to Raphaël Ossona de Mendez places it within the living network of the Collège rather than in a merely external provenance. The accompanying manuscript note on codes, letters and the number 472 further heightens its Roussellian resonance. As a bibliophile object, it is at once guidebook, homage, private signal and pataphysical field instrument.
€750
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 166 exemplaires capitaux on Authentique Papier Tropical du Ponukélé, with the original drawing “Une côte dangereuse – 1er projet”, signed Jean Ferry 66, autograph inscription to Monsieur Raphaël Ossona de Mendez and a loose handwritten note concerning a code.
Print Run
1111
Copy Number
No. 41
Paper
Authentique Papier Tropical du Ponukélé
Inscription
Envoi
Product DETAIL
The book is conceived as a practical guide for the traveller through Raymond Roussel’s world, with Impressions d’Afrique treated as an imaginary continent. Ferry does not approach Roussel’s Africa as a realistic destination, but as a textual territory opened by names, procedures, routes, figures and correspondences. The reader is led through maps, diagrams, commentaries and mock travel instructions, as though literature itself were a field for exploration. The tone moves between learned annotation, guidebook pastiche and pataphysical seriousness. There is no single linear plot; instead, the book offers a method of reading, showing how Roussel’s inventions may be approached, crossed and rearranged. The added drawing, “Une côte dangereuse – 1er projet”, answers this fictional cartography and turns the copy into something close to a personal travel dossier. The whole is a playful yet precise introduction to Roussel’s imaginative universe and to Ferry’s own art of interpretation.
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