Les Dentelles de Montmirail
Les Dentelles de Montmirail is one of the characteristic small masterpieces born of the collaboration between René Char and PAB. It was published in 1960 between L’Isle-sur-Sorgue and Alès, two places that immediately evoke the geography of Char and that of Pierre André Benoit. The edition joins Char’s brief, aphoristic lyric voice to five natural impressions from Montmirail, so that text and matter quite literally meet. With PAB, poetry often takes on an intimate, almost handmade form, and that quality is especially palpable here. The limited issue on Arches heightens the book’s discreet yet unmistakable bibliophile character. This copy gains further importance from the autograph inscription to Dr Marcel Zara, far more than a routine dedication and almost readable as a small autonomous poem. For collectors, it is an exemplary PAB production in which landscape, trace, inscription, and poem become a single object.
Quantity
Char, Rene
Pierre Andre Benoit (PAB)
Les Dentelles de Montmirail
1960 | L'Isle-sur-Sorgue et Alès | Éditions PAB
A highly characteristic Char-PAB book in which landscape, imprint, and poetic concentration coincide perfectly. The inscription to Dr Marcel Zara raises this copy still further, giving it personal, intellectual, and almost autonomous literary value.
Les Dentelles de Montmirail is one of the characteristic small masterpieces born of the collaboration between René Char and PAB. It was published in 1960 between L’Isle-sur-Sorgue and Alès, two places that immediately evoke the geography of Char and that of Pierre André Benoit. The edition joins Char’s brief, aphoristic lyric voice to five natural impressions from Montmirail, so that text and matter quite literally meet. With PAB, poetry often takes on an intimate, almost handmade form, and that quality is especially palpable here. The limited issue on Arches heightens the book’s discreet yet unmistakable bibliophile character. This copy gains further importance from the autograph inscription to Dr Marcel Zara, far more than a routine dedication and almost readable as a small autonomous poem. For collectors, it is an exemplary PAB production in which landscape, trace, inscription, and poem become a single object.
€2,250
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-4 (Quarto) approx. 25 × 32 cm
Edition Particulars
One of the 50 copies on Arches, with an important autograph inscription to Dr Marcel Zara.
Print Run
50
Copy Number
No. 17
Paper
Arches
Inscription
Envoi
1
Edition Particulars:
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1
Print Run:
Condition Report:
1
Copy Number:
Condition Report:
1
Paper:
Condition Report:
1
Signed:
Condition Report:
Product DETAIL
The work consists of a short sequence of poetic texts by René Char centred on the Dentelles de Montmirail, the jagged Provençal mountain range. Rather than a continuous narrative, the book is built from concentrated notations, images, and incantatory formulations. The place itself stands at the centre: stone, relief, light, wind, and trace are transformed by Char into a language of observation and animation. The five natural impressions strengthen that bond with the concrete world and make the landscape not only a subject but a physical presence within the book. The reader therefore moves not through a plot, but through a series of highly condensed encounters between word and terrain. In that sense, this is a topographical and lyrical meditation in which natural form and poetic form sharpen one another. Its atmosphere is lucid, tense, and mineral, typical of Char’s later poetic concentration.
Ruscha, Edward · Ruscha, Ed
Some Los Angeles Apartments
Some Los Angeles Apartments is one of Ed Ruscha’s iconic early artist’s books, devoted to the banal architecture of Los Angeles. Instead of monuments, drama or urban glamour, Ruscha shows ordinary apartment buildings, coolly photographed and without visible sentimentality. This second edition of 1970, printed in 3,000 unnumbered copies, confirms the wider circulation of his conceptual book form. The small format, sober wrappers and original glassine wrapper make it an essential Ruscha object.
Ill Book
€950
René Char, Georges Braque · Lachaud, Mariette · Pierre Andre Benoit (PAB)
Ainsi va l'amitié
What makes this copy especially memorable is not only its tiny limitation but the way it fixes three friendships at once: that between Char and Braque, that between Char and PAB, and that of all of them with the image that outlives them. The eight original photographs are not an illustrative supplement but the true bearers of presence; they preserve gazes, workspaces, and silences. The fact that PAB and Mariette Lachaud signed this copy gives it an almost confidential status, as though the circle of makers were still present within the book. In such editions, bibliophily becomes more than rarity alone: it becomes a form of shared memory.
Ill Book
€4,500
Mari, Paul · Goetz, Henri
L’emploi du temps
L’emploi du temps is a modest yet notably appealing poetry book from the late 1960s. Paul Mari’s text is given particular weight by the presence of Henri Goetz, whose signed original colour engraving moves the volume into the field of the modern artist’s book. Published by Éditions Chambelland in 1969, it appeared in a limited issue on pur fil paper. This copy, number 22 of 50, belongs to the deluxe variant with original print. It is made more distinctive by Paul Mari’s autograph presentation inscription to Susy Solidor, a figure with her own charged place in twentieth-century artistic and social culture. The combination of small limitation, signed print, inscription and avant-garde context makes the book relevant to The Hidden Page, even if Mari is less canonical than his illustrator.
Ill Book
€275
Dorgelès, Roland · Dunoyer de Segonzac
La Boule de gui
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.
