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.
Quantity
Aragon, Louis
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
Mes caravanes
1954 | Pierre Seghers
A rare large-paper copy of Aragon’s post-war poetry, important through its author and extremely small limitation. Not central to Surrealism, but valuable as a later witness to a former avant-gardist.
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.
€520
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 40 numbered copies on Hollande, the only large-paper issue.
Print Run
40
Copy Number
No. 15
Paper
Hollande
Inscription
No inscription
1
Edition Particulars:
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1
Print Run:
Condition Report:
1
Copy Number:
Condition Report:
1
Paper:
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1
Signed:
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Product DETAIL
The collection consists of poems from Aragon’s post-war communist and engaged phase. Its central concerns are movement, journeying, collective memory and the relation between the personal voice and a historical horizon. The title suggests travelling groups, displacement and a poetic community on the move. The poems are probably not narrative in a strict sense, but build a lyrical itinerary in which political conviction and figurative language meet. Aragon connects personal cadence with broader social and historical themes. The atmosphere is more solemn and rhetorical than in his early Surrealist work, while retaining his great technical command of rhythm, image and address.
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
Vian, Boris
L’Herbe rouge
L’Herbe rouge is one of Boris Vian’s most singular novels, born of the nervous imagination of post-war Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The first edition appeared in 1950 with Toutain and belongs to the group of Vian publications that often met with limited success during his lifetime before acquiring cult status. The book combines science-fiction-like invention, existential anxiety, absurdist humour and emotional disarray. That mixture makes it especially relevant to The Hidden Page: it is not part of a strict historical avant-garde, but it breathes the pataphysical and experimental spirit of post-war literature. This copy is materially weak, with a reglued spine, pasted-down first leaf and lacking final blank. It nevertheless remains bibliographically and literarily meaningful as the original edition of a central Vian text.
Book
€250
Bataille, Georges
L’Orestie
L’Orestie is one of Georges Bataille’s most concentrated and unsettling poetic books. Its title invokes Orestes and the tragic inheritance of guilt, blood and madness, yet Bataille offers no classical retelling. The book is instead a brief, severe cycle in which poetry places itself under pressure and almost turns against its own possibility. Published shortly after the war by Les Éditions des Quatre Vents, it retains the tension of the years in which it was written: hunger, fear, desire, religious emptiness and bodily dread. The edition is austere, but bibliographically precise in its limited printing on tinted nacreous paper. This copy belongs to the 175 copies issued for commerce and bears the very early number 7. Its uncut state heightens the sense of an intact, still-closed object from Bataille’s rare poetic production.
Book
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Char, Rene
Nouvelles Hébrides, Nouvelle
Guinée
*Nouvelles Hébrides, Nouvelle Guinée* is a very rare first PAB edition by René Char, printed in Alès in 1962. As often with Pierre-André Benoît, the book’s intensity lies in its sobriety, small format, and extremely limited edition. The text would later be included in the second edition of *Recherche de la base et du sommet*, giving this first edition a special place in Char’s textual history. This copy is one of 44 on Arches, signed by both author and publisher. The inscription to Edmée Maus and her bookplate make it a meaningful association copy.
