Sifflets dans le temple

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.

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.

The first edition of a rare Michaux booklet: twelve pages of text followed by a suite of reproduced black drawings by the author. A compact atlas where observation meets inner theatre; shapes root and levitate at once. Printed on héliona de Navarre, which lends a satiny edge to the lines. This copy is luxuriously rebound by Miguet in red morocco with balsa boards and slipcase. Sources usually count 18 to 19 drawings, depending on method. A crisp, lucid book in which Michaux quite literally writes in images.