L’Amour absolu, suivi de L’Autre
Alceste
This edition of *L’Amour absolu, suivi de L’Autre Alceste* brings together two key texts from Alfred Jarry’s singular imaginative world. It was issued by Mercure de France in 1952 with a preface by Maurice Saillet, at a moment when Jarry’s rediscovery was closely tied to the Collège de ’Pataphysique. For the bibliophile, it is more than a neat post-war reissue: it is a material witness to Jarry’s continuing influence on twentieth-century avant-garde culture. *L’Amour absolu* is among his most inward and elusive prose works, where autobiography, mysticism, and parody become inseparable. *L’Autre Alceste* adds a dramatic and mythological counterpoint. This copy is made more significant by its strongly marked pataphysical provenance. The red circular stamps of the Ordre de la Grande Gidouille, together with name-stamps associated with Eugène Ionesco, Raymond Queneau, and Noël Arnaud, give it an exceptional collegiate resonance. It is therefore not merely a reading copy, but an object that visibly circulated within Jarry’s living afterlife.
Quantity
Jarry, Alfred
L’Amour absolu, suivi de L’Autre
Alceste
1952 | Parijs | Mercure de France
A numbered Jarry copy that visibly passed through the hands of his pataphysical heirs.
This edition of *L’Amour absolu, suivi de L’Autre Alceste* brings together two key texts from Alfred Jarry’s singular imaginative world. It was issued by Mercure de France in 1952 with a preface by Maurice Saillet, at a moment when Jarry’s rediscovery was closely tied to the Collège de ’Pataphysique. For the bibliophile, it is more than a neat post-war reissue: it is a material witness to Jarry’s continuing influence on twentieth-century avant-garde culture. *L’Amour absolu* is among his most inward and elusive prose works, where autobiography, mysticism, and parody become inseparable. *L’Autre Alceste* adds a dramatic and mythological counterpoint. This copy is made more significant by its strongly marked pataphysical provenance. The red circular stamps of the Ordre de la Grande Gidouille, together with name-stamps associated with Eugène Ionesco, Raymond Queneau, and Noël Arnaud, give it an exceptional collegiate resonance. It is therefore not merely a reading copy, but an object that visibly circulated within Jarry’s living afterlife.
€450
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-12 (Duodecimo) approx. 17 × 22 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 1900 numbered copies on alfa paper, bearing multiple pataphysical ownership and office stamps.
Print Run
1900
Copy Number
No. 1051
Paper
alfa
Inscription
Association Copy
Product DETAIL
In *L’Amour absolu*, the reader follows Emmanuel Dieu, a condemned prisoner who seems at once a child, a messianic figure, and a distorted self-portrait of Jarry. The book moves between a prison cell, memories of Brittany, religious scenes, and hallucinatory family tableaux. The relation to the mother is central, bound up with images of virginity, origin, childhood, and divine incarnation. Emmanuel does not pass through a linear plot but through a succession of visionary episodes in which education, faith, desire, and identity keep shifting. *L’Autre Alceste* reworks the classical myth in a free, ironic, and deliberately destabilising dramatic mode. Sacrifice, love, and substitution are treated not heroically but with strangeness and sharp intellectual tension. Together, the two texts show how Jarry transforms mythic and autobiographical matter into a radical literary form. The prevailing atmosphere is prophetic, playful, and unsettling, poised between symbolism and the absurd yet to come.
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
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
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
Dominique Fourcade, Pierre Buraglio · Buraglio, Pierre
Au travail ma chérie
First volume in the Préférence series: a focused encounter between Dominique Fourcade and Pierre Buraglio. The Imprimerie nationale produced an exemplary typographic edition on Rives wove, limited to 100 copies signed by both. Buraglio “illuminates” the book with spare, hand-made interventions—strokes, contours, accents—that let the page breathe. The plain wrappers in a sturdy case stress the workshop feel. This copy bears a presentation to Jacques Dauchez, adding a vivid bibliophilic provenance. A scarce, exact book where typography, gesture, and poetry hold each other in balance.
Book
€725
The Architecture of Absurdity: Alfred Jarry, Pataphysics and the Destructive Aesthetics of the Ubu Cycle
From schoolyard prank to cultural revolution: how Alfred Jarry created Père Ubu and the science of pataphysics, permanently transforming modern theater, literature, and philosophy.