Outrages
One of 40 copies on Rives paper (no. 8), justified and signed by Pierre-André Benoît and René Char. The drypoint here is exceptionally heightened with a blue and red border (as for the copies on Japanese paper), signed by René Char. The proof copy preserved at the BnF also carries this heightening, as does the copy in the Villepin library (no. 9 on Rives) and that of Anne Reinbold, unnumbered.
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Jean Bélias ces temps qu'on dit de chien ; de truand serait plus juste. Son ami René Char. oct. 1967.”
“This booklet is connected to René Char’s rediscovery, in November 1965, of two notes written in Algiers, hostile to General de Gaulle, the text of which he then sent to P. A. Benoit. On 3 September 1967, he sent him Outrages, which reprises them, extended with recently written notations. […]. To illustrate this hors commerce printing, Char thought of ‘a kind of Ubu as frontispiece’, which PAB would draw, before proposing, three days later, the ‘scribble’ he had just made with a ‘bad point’ on a celluloid plate […]” (Antoine Coron).
The text was reprinted two years later in Le Chien de cœur (GLM, 1969).
Jean Bélias, a discreet and erudite collector devoted to poetry, knew many post-war writers and poets. Char became his friend and inscribed several collections to him. The dispersal of part of his library in 2008 revealed the staggering extent of a collection he had literally been amassing for sixty years in his Paris apartment.
A magnificent copy, in a delightful box by Julie Nadot.