Le Poids du ciel

A precious, unique copy, bound in a design that anticipates the later NRF boards decorated by Paul Bonet. In the past we have encountered only two other books bound on this same model, veritable “incunables” of the future cartonnage series: one on Malraux’s L’Espoir (a China-paper copy), and another on a set of À la Recherche du temps perdu (also on China paper). It is likely that the commission came from Raymond Gallimard: both copies mentioned bore the initials “R.G.” in pencil on the endpapers, and the Malraux copy included a letter from Malraux addressed to Raymond Gallimard.

In 1938, as war loomed, Giono adopted resolutely pacifist positions, gathered here in three essays: “Danse des âmes modernes,” “Les Grandeurs libres” and “Beauté de l’individu,” which “extend the meditation of Les Vraies richesses, the critique of mechanization and the exaltation of natural life.” After illustrating Les Vraies richesses with Kardas’s photographs, Giono chose once again to illustrate his text, this time with photographs of constellations and nebulae supplied by Marcel de Kérolyr, an amateur astronomer at the Forcalquier station and a pioneer of astrophotography. Kérolyr had visited him in 1936, bringing him a photograph of Orion. “His interest in astronomy had been awakened in childhood by his visits to Father Fabre’s Théâtre astronomique, a showman who named his children Orion, Uranie, Sirius, Phoebus and le Centaure, and his wife la Voie Lactée” (Pierre Citron, Giono, 1969).

A magnificent and spectacular copy.

Provenance: [Raymond Gallimard]; Pierre Bergé (bookplate).