Le Silence de la mer
Rare collection in contemporary bindings, comprising 18 volumes published by Éditions de Minuit under the Occupation, between 20 February 1942 (Le Silence de la mer) and 1 August 1944 (Dans la prison).
The copy of Le Silence de la mer is complete with the manifesto.
The volumes in this set, in fine condition, were most likely entrusted in the immediate postwar period to the Zipélius Brillouin workshop: behind this mysterious name lies a duo, made up of Jeanne Zipélius and Madeleine Brillouin. Established in Paris in 1941, they exhibited their work from 1946 onward at the Salon des artistes décorateurs, and continued working until the late 1950s. Here they created a remarkable set with a decoration of gilt fillets, different on each front cover, each one interpreting the title of the collection.
It should be noted that the absence of certain volumes is certainly the result of a deliberate choice, and not an imperfection or bibliophilic oversight. Among the 25 titles of the same 16mo format, only three volumes from the “Témoignages” series are missing, along with the two titles printed for the Comité national des écrivains, in which the extra-literary Communist influence is more explicit, and the translation of John Steinbeck’s novel, Nuits noires, the only title not originally written in French. This set, decked in the national colors, can be read as the purely French literary monument of “l’intelligence en guerre.”
Vignes-Lacroix, L’Intelligence en guerre, no. 21; Vignes, Bibliographie des Éditions de Minuit, no. 1; Simonin, Le Devoir d’insoumission, pp. 80 and sq.; Debû-Bridel, La Résistance intellectuelle; Dalloz, Vérité sur le drame de Vercors, pp. 37 and 122; Fléty, 179; Librairie Vrain, Reliures de femmes, 82.