Poèmes et prose choisis
Poèmes et prose choisis is one of the decisive collected volumes from René Char’s middle period and was published by the NRF in Paris in 1957. It is not a simple reprint, but a carefully considered edition with many variants, in which Char reorders and reframes his own work. The book therefore becomes a kind of self-chosen gateway into his poetic universe. For readers and collectors alike, it marks an important moment: the poet presents a concentrated image of his work up to that date, while the first edition was also conceived as a bibliophile object. The small issue on vélin de Hollande underscores that double status. This copy, number 18 of the 23 on that paper, gains further significance from the autograph inscription to Dr Zara, dated July 1970. It is thus not only a rare first state, but also a personally marked copy.
Quantity
Char, Rene
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
ILLUSTRATORS
Poèmes et prose choisis
1957 | Paris | NRF
Rare Char on vélin de Hollande, with a later inscription that gives the copy a personal resonance.
Poèmes et prose choisis is one of the decisive collected volumes from René Char’s middle period and was published by the NRF in Paris in 1957. It is not a simple reprint, but a carefully considered edition with many variants, in which Char reorders and reframes his own work. The book therefore becomes a kind of self-chosen gateway into his poetic universe. For readers and collectors alike, it marks an important moment: the poet presents a concentrated image of his work up to that date, while the first edition was also conceived as a bibliophile object. The small issue on vélin de Hollande underscores that double status. This copy, number 18 of the 23 on that paper, gains further significance from the autograph inscription to Dr Zara, dated July 1970. It is thus not only a rare first state, but also a personally marked copy.
€900
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of the 23 copies on vélin de Hollande, with autograph inscription to Dr Zara, dated July 1970.
Print Run
566
Copy Number
No. 18
Paper
Vélin de Hollande
Inscription
Envoi
1
Edition Particulars:
We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests. Each message is treated with discretion and respect. We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests.
1
Print Run:
Condition Report:
1
Copy Number:
Condition Report:
1
Paper:
Condition Report:
1
Signed:
Condition Report:
Product DETAIL
This collective edition gathers a selection of René Char’s poetry and prose, offering a broad view of the forms in which he moves between lyric, prose poem, note, and aphoristic concentration. There is no linear narrative and no fixed cast of characters; at the centre stands a voice approaching love, revolt, nature, memory, wartime experience, and moral vigilance through constantly shifting forms. The selection shows how Char alternates brief, highly charged poems with compact prose and meditative passages. The result is not a continuous narrative whole, but an ordered field of intensities and insights. The many variants make clear that this is also a moment of rereading and recomposition. For the reader, the book is both anthology and new composition. Its atmosphere is tense, lucid, and elemental, with Char’s characteristic blend of aphoristic hardness and lyrical openness.
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.
Book
€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
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.
