Following the sales of Antiquarian books, Illustrated Modern Books and Art Nouveau/Art Deco Books, the
fourth instalment of the Library of R. & B. L. will be devoted to the 20
th
Century and focus purely on literature,
and on the works themselves.
Illustrations, bindings – however brilliant – are of secondary importance, if not superfluous: the authors stand
centre stage. Their private lives and their work are vividly called to mind with letters, manuscripts and first
editions, whether in deluxe format, dedication copies, or with corrections and revisions, all of which reveal
the work’s never ending evolution.
The sale takes us on a 20
th
century journey marked by writers of genius, from Apollinaire and Jarry to Céline
via Joyce, Proust, Gracq, Malraux and Cohen, ending with Les Mots of Sartre.
The others, the dreamers, the poets reveal as arabesques their multifarious talents. Cocteau, Max Jacob,
Larbaud, Prévert, Radiguet, Reverdy and Saint-John Perse stand under the incomparable brightness of
Cendrars and his Transsibérien.
A new, exuberant spirit springs to life in short-lived literary reviews-cum-manifestos in which blaze the words
of tomorrow from some Jarry, Apollinaire, Cocteau, Reverdy or Gilbert-Lecomte.
A whole world of words and drawings, those of Apollinaire – watercolours and calligrammes –, Cocteau,
Malraux, Proust, Saint-Exupéry. Or still search conjunctions: Jarry with Gustave Kahn; Apollinaire with
Marie Laurencin and Lou; Proust with Fernand Gregh, Anna de Noailles and Paul Morand; Saint-Exupéry
with Consuelo; Cocteau with Stravinsky, Eluard, Hugnet and Soupault; inter-connected destinies which draw
the slow waltz of the inscriptions and the secret of manuscripts.
From the Alcools of Apollinaire to the opium hinted at by Segalen in his manuscript, ‘artificial paradises’ still
spangle the lives of several generations of rebels ; whereas the destiny of others seems promised by Sartre to
his Nausée, to the Sabbat of Maurice Sachs, or to the amours terribles of Jean Genet.
The impeccable bindings of Paul Bonet, Martin or Miguet are by no means neglected, but do not overshadow
their rare, luxuriously printed contents or the inscriptions which enhance them. Listing all the artists would
be an exercise in vanity. However, when a Picasso etching captures the spirit of the age, it is because he is
illustrating poems of a friend; and, when we encounter woodcuts by Derain, it is because they were conceived
for Apollinaire’s first book, those of Fernand Léger’s illustrations for the first work of the young André
Malraux.
Thus these characters, and many others, whom we know and love, and who reveal to us their own soul, are
engaged in a never ceasing ballet: therein lies the magic of a literary collection.
Dominique Courvoisier
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