La Machine Infernale. Pièce en 4 actes

An exceptional oblong in-16 volume bound in a single tome, comprising three editions of Au dépens des mots, including the exceedingly rare tête-de-tête edition on nacré japon.

Au rendez-vous allemand is one of the emblematic collections of Éluard’s wartime poetry. The book appeared in 1944 from Les Éditions de Minuit, the publishing house that, under the Occupation, became a moral landmark of the French literary Resistance. The volume gathers poems in which love, mourning, revolt and hope appear not as abstractions but as immediate necessities under German rule. The frontispiece, a portrait of the poet after Picasso, gives the book a powerful artistic signature: two voices of modern France, poet and artist, stand here in the same struggle. This is an ordinary, unnumbered copy, but signed by Éluard on the first page. That signature makes the book more than a Resistance document: it becomes a tangible witness to literary presence in a historically charged year. For the collector, it unites the clandestine aura of Minuit, Picasso’s name and Éluard’s own hand.

This first separate edition of *Les Amis nouveaux* combines Paul Morand’s swift, ironic prose with nine original copper drypoints by Jean Hugo. The brief novella compresses a love triangle into the tense intimacy of a single dinner. Morand’s controlled dialogue and incisive observations reveal how rivalry can unexpectedly turn into mutual understanding. Hugo accompanies the text with a refined linear vocabulary that heightens its worldly lightness and psychological ambiguity. The bistre or sanguine tones give the prints a warm, almost intimate presence on the page. As a numbered large-paper copy on vergé d’Arches, the book has considerable bibliophilic appeal.

An elegant *livre d’artiste* pairing Brillat-Savarin’s witty gastronomic aphorisms with twenty full-page original etchings by Raoul Dufy. Dufy’s airy, musical line lends the text a radiant cadence, turning the maxims into vignettes of conviviality and taste. Limited to 200 copies on Rives wove; this is no. 19, for the subscriber Mr Bernard-Beaumaine. Untrimmed copy with original covers and spine preserved, luxuriously rebound by F. Rousseau in 2001. Clear provenance enhances its appeal. Wrapper slightly toned; box with only the faintest rubbing. A refined encounter between culinary letters and modernist design.