La Parole en archipel
La Parole en archipel is one of the major collections of René Char’s mature period and was published by the NRF in Paris in 1962. It is not merely a new gathering of poems, but a collective edition bringing together several earlier sequences, sometimes in revised form or with variants. The volume thus takes on the character of a poetic constellation: not a closed cycle, but an archipelago of voices, flashes, and tensions. Its title expresses that principle perfectly, since Char allows the individual parts to coexist without dissolving their singularity. The result is a broad yet highly concentrated view of his poetry from the 1950s and early 1960s. The deluxe issue on Madagascar Navarre further underscores the bibliophile prestige of the first edition. This copy, number 12 of the 18 de tête, thus combines literary substance with marked rarity.
Quantity
Char, Rene
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
La Parole en archipel
1962 | Paris | NRF
A major work of Char’s maturity, in the sought-after 1962 collective edition and in the extremely scarce deluxe issue on Madagascar Navarre.
La Parole en archipel is one of the major collections of René Char’s mature period and was published by the NRF in Paris in 1962. It is not merely a new gathering of poems, but a collective edition bringing together several earlier sequences, sometimes in revised form or with variants. The volume thus takes on the character of a poetic constellation: not a closed cycle, but an archipelago of voices, flashes, and tensions. Its title expresses that principle perfectly, since Char allows the individual parts to coexist without dissolving their singularity. The result is a broad yet highly concentrated view of his poetry from the 1950s and early 1960s. The deluxe issue on Madagascar Navarre further underscores the bibliophile prestige of the first edition. This copy, number 12 of the 18 de tête, thus combines literary substance with marked rarity.
€1,400
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of the 18 deluxe copies on Madagascar Navarre; wrappers slightly sunned.
Print Run
143
Copy Number
No. 12
Paper
Madagascar Navarre
Inscription
No inscription
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Condition Report:
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Product DETAIL
This collective volume brings together several poetic groupings by René Char, including Lettera Amorosa, La Paroi et la prairie, Poèmes des Deux Années, La Bibliothèque est en feu et autres poèmes, Au-dessus du Vent, and Quitter, together with a few previously unpublished poems. There is no linear narrative and no fixed cast of characters; at the centre stands a lyric voice moving among love, nature, violence, memory, moral vigilance, and knowledge. Each section has its own rhythm and emphasis, yet together they form a broad field of experience and meditation. The poems shift between brief aphoristic concentration and more expansive lyrical passages. The result is a book that is both retrospective and new, since Char rearranges earlier work while placing it beside other poems. The reader is thus given not a simple selection but a carefully composed ordering of autonomous ensembles. Its dominant themes are tension, clarity, resistance, and an intense bond with the visible world.
Bataille, Georges
La littérature et le mal
La littérature et le mal is one of Georges Bataille’s most penetrating books on the moral and metaphysical stakes of literature. In these essays he examines how major writers approach the boundary between law and transgression, guilt and sovereignty, eroticism and destruction. The volume brings together Emily Brontë, Baudelaire, Michelet, Blake, Sade, Proust, Kafka and Genet in a radical reading of literature as an experience of the forbidden. For Bataille, the literary work is not a polite mirror of morality, but a place where human beings encounter their most dangerous freedom. This copy is remarkable for its paper issue: one of only 25 on vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, the sole large-paper issue.
Book
€1,600
Ferry, Jean
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.
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€750
Aragon, Louis
Mes caravanes
Mes caravanes is a poetic publication from Aragon’s post-war period, issued in 1954 by Seghers. The collection no longer stands at the centre of historical Surrealism, yet it bears the name of one of the major figures who helped shape that adventure. Here Aragon is the poet of engagement, memory and political conviction rather than the young Surrealist provocateur of the 1920s. For The Hidden Page, the appeal lies in the combination of a major avant-garde author with an extremely small deluxe limitation. This copy, number 15 of only 40 on Hollande, belongs to the sole large-paper issue. A post-war poetry booklet thus acquires particular bibliophilic sharpness and collector interest.
Book
€520
Pissarro, Lucien · Ricketts, Charles
De la typographie et de l’harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers
De la typographie et de l’harmonie de la page imprimée is a refined fin-de-siècle publication devoted to the art of the printed page. Lucien Pissarro and Charles Ricketts place William Morris at the centre as a reformer of the book, printing and the applied arts. The work belongs to the circles in which the Arts and Crafts movement, private press ideals and the renewed valuation of typography meet. The title makes clear that typography is not treated as a technical accessory, but as an harmony of type, margin, paper and page design. The edition appeared in 1898, in London from Ricketts and in Paris from Floury, standing between English private press culture and French bibliophile reception. This copy belongs to the issue of 250 copies on Arnold handmade laid paper within a total edition of 256 copies. The present errata slip and only slight corner wear make it bibliographically attractive and complete.
