En trente-trois morceaux
Preamble and afterword previously unpublished.
One of 50 copies on vélin pur chiffon d'Arches (no. 3), with the original etching in three colors signed by Char as frontispiece. This etching is reserved for the first 58 copies; it is justified and titled: “épreuve d'artiste / démon déguisée en roseau.”
Signed presentation inscription: “Au Docteur Zara avec ma sympathie amicale René Char.”
“One recent night, walking here and thinking of him [Marcel Proust], the vertical and dimly lit mass of my early works balanced upon my head, I advanced without caution. Now and then a leafy branch appeared in the gap between two houses. Suddenly — through what misstep, I do not know — the tower of my poems collapsed to the ground and shattered like glass. No doubt, quickening my pace and meeting emptiness, I had tried to seize, against its will, the hand of Time — Time, who chooses — a hand it was not yet willing to give me. Le Marteau sans maître, Placard pour un chemin des écoliers, Art bref, Dehors la nuit est gouvernée had by then kept nothing of the book but its name. I gathered up thirty-three pieces. After a moment of confusion, I realized that all I had lost in the accident was the top of my face.”
Cahiers de l’Herne, 228; Coron, GLM, 409; PAB, René Char, 70; L’Herne, Bibliographie, p. 279, no. 228.