Le Libertinage
One of the rare copies on colored paper, this one on green paper, marked “exemplaire d'auteur.”
Aragon, a champion of disorder, refused all injunctions. His vehement preface — a provocative and brilliant apology for love and anarchy — makes this clear: “I understood that my thought was gradually being distorted […] the least unusual part of me was being singled out, and I was going to please the very people who could not have spoken with me for five minutes without anger […]. I have never sought anything but scandal, and I sought it for its own sake.”
The “short stories, tales and dialogued scenes” collected in Le Libertinage were written between the dispersal of the Dada movement and the formation of the Surrealist group, whose Manifeste André Breton would publish that October. Although the book is dedicated to Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, it was composed with André Breton in mind, one of the texts, “Mademoiselle à sa tour monte,” being expressly dedicated to him.
Only a handful of copies on green paper are known, and this appears to be quite simply the first colored paper printed by Gallimard — a fashion the Surrealist group would later revive — in what was almost certainly an extremely small printing: only five copies are known, those of Drieu la Rochelle and André Breton, both inscribed, and three without inscriptions.
Wrappers restored.