Glossaire, j’y serre mes gloses
In 1924, at the request of Antonin Artaud, then director of the Bureau des recherches surréalistes, Michel Leiris began his “glossaire du merveilleux,” the first fragments of which appeared in La Révolution surréaliste. It would take nearly fifteen years for the project to become this book, made up of 835 definitions forming a series of linguistic fictions, at once erudite, playful and poetic.
Published by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the volume is one of the very few of the publisher’s books to include captions for its illustrations, offering readers a genuine key to interpretation. It is also the first paginated book published by Kahnweiler. The encounter between Leiris’s glosses and Masson’s lithographs makes this a dialogue between friends, in which text and image achieve a singular harmony, further enhanced by a fine binding by François Brindeau.
Skira 245; Hugues 28; Chapon p. 285; Saphire & Cramer 13; Galland p. 971.

