Mode d’emploi

André Pieyre de Mandiargues wrote of the engravings in this book: “L’Anglais décrit dans le château fermé inspired Hans Bellmer to create a series of seven engravings in burin and drypoint, among the finest known to be by him […]. Nearly fifteen years later, in 1967, these engravings were published with a text by Bellmer. Various characters and scenes from L’Anglais are readily recognizable in them.” (Preface to the first N.R.F. edition of L’Anglais).

The text had previously appeared in 1944 from Documents Surréalistes under the title Trois tableaux, Sept dessins, Un texte, then accompanied by original photographs of works by Bellmer. The drawings, engraved nearly ten years later, in 1953, had originally been intended for an edition of André Pieyre de Mandiargues’s L’Anglais décrit dans le château fermé, which never came to fruition: “This project failed to materialize because of the artist’s demanding requirements and his delay in delivering the copper plates. Pauvert subsequently ceded the plates to Georges Visat.” (Dutel)

The whole was then brought together for the present edition, which belongs to the same line of work carried out on the texts of Georges Bataille, Pauline Réage or Sade: anatomical, erotic and subversive.