Poète… vos papiers !
One of the first 50 copies on vélin pur fil, this one hors commerce (no. II).
Inscribed and signed: “à Gwen Bolloré, sans qui ces [papiers] ne seraient encore qu'enfouis au fond d'un grenier… le grenier que chaque poète entretient, en attendant le valeureux éditeur ! Avec ma reconnaissance, qui n'est pas que d'occasion ! Léo Ferré, 25 janvier 1957.”
Poète… vos papiers! was Léo Ferré’s first published collection of poetry. The title was later reused in 1970 for a song on the first volume of the album Amour Anarchie. Eight of the twenty-eight poems were set to music and recorded a few months before the collection’s publication; others followed at the end of the 1960s and then during the 1980s. The poem “L’Amour,” sent to Benjamin Péret in 1955, was included in his Anthologie de l’amour sublime. Originally, however, none of the texts had been written to be sung, and Ferré had great difficulty persuading a publisher to bring them out. André Breton had initially agreed to write the preface, before withdrawing, put off by the content of the poems. At this date Ferré did not yet own the Fort du Guesclin, near Cancale, which he only acquired in 1959.
It was, in fact, thanks to another Breton that the book found its publisher: Gwenn-Aël Bolloré, who had developed a genuine passion for the singer-songwriter after hearing his 78 rpm record Paris Canaille, released in 1953. Vice-president of the Bolloré paper company and president of La Table Ronde from 1953 to 1988, he published Poète… vos papiers! at the end of 1956. After Breton’s refusal, Ferré wrote the preface himself, a vehement text published in the journal Arts alongside the collection in January 1957. In it he attacked automatic writing and literary cliques, denouncing the sorry state of poetry and the mediocrity and failure of art. Breton, feeling targeted and disparaged, broke with him.
A precious copy, of perfect and important provenance.
From the library of Gwenn-Aël Bolloré (inscribed; sale, Sotheby’s, 12 February 2002, no. 156).