L’esprit contre la raison

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.

Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques is one of Blaise Cendrars’ striking early publications, bringing together poetry, modernity and typographic boldness. The collection appeared in 1919 with Au Sans Pareil, a publisher closely associated with the literary avant-garde of post-war Paris. Its frontispiece, a portrait of Cendrars by Amedeo Modigliani, gives the book exceptional artistic resonance. The encounter between Cendrars’ mobile, cosmopolitan poetry and Modigliani’s restrained line makes this more than a book of poems: it is a document of friendship, milieu and moment. This copy is an unnumbered exemplaire de passe on vélin d’Alfa, outside the numbered justification. Its partly unopened condition further enhances its character as a preserved bibliophile object.

With Le Pèse-Nerfs followed by Fragments d’un Journal d’Enfer, Antonin Artaud emerges in 1927 as a writer of inner derangement. This early edition was published in Marseille by Les Cahiers du Sud as the fifth title in the Critique series. It belongs among the first books in which Artaud’s broken, nervous and visionary voice appears in full force. The text moves between prose, note, incantation and self-investigation. André Masson’s frontispiece places the work in direct proximity to the Surrealist milieu. As a Lafuma copy, numbered 14 of 321, this edition carries both literary and bibliographical importance.

Port d’eaux mortes is a particularly strong encounter between Pierre Mac Orlan’s literary world and the incisive visual language of Georges Grosz. Published in 1926 by Au Sans Pareil, it belongs to an interwar catalogue marked by modernity and bibliophilic daring. Mac Orlan’s imagination of ports, marginal lives and moral twilight is here set against Grosz’s nervous, satirical and metropolitan graphic art. The eight original lithographs make the volume more than an illustrated novel: it is a fully fledged modernist artist’s book. This copy, number 615, is one of 1000 on vélin Lafuma de Voiron within a total edition of 1260 copies. For The Hidden Page, its appeal is clear: a numbered original edition with original prints by a key figure of Berlin Dada and Neue Sachlichkeit.