Les Éparges
A precious copy belonging to Maurice Genevoix, kept in his personal library, with notes and corrections. It bears at the front the manuscript ownership inscription: “Maurice Genevoix, paru en juin 1921 (écrit de mai à fin septembre 1921).”
The last of Genevoix’s war narratives, covering the period from 11 January to 25 April 1915, a span of one hundred and four days. The narrative ends on the day of the author’s serious wound and his evacuation from the front.
Genevoix opens the account with a preface revealing his retrospective emotion, mixed with clear-sightedness and humility: “now that this last book is finished, I will not say all it represents for me, of joy or of melancholy. I want to forget that it is the last, and see in it only a volume among others: like the others, it has only tried to revive memories, to bring closer to those who would open it a past heavy with humanity (…) I have no illusions: there are currents one cannot swim back up; and this is only a book. I hope at least that former soldiers, reading these pages of memories, will find something of themselves and of what they once were; and that others, perhaps, having finished the book, will think, if only for a minute: “It’s true, though. It did exist, though.”
The copy contains a few typographical corrections in Genevoix’s hand.
A precious copy, bound like a large part of the copies — often on fine papers — kept in his library, in half blue morocco with corners, this one in a less elaborate style than the other war narratives.
From the library of Maurice Genevoix, at “Les Vernelles,” with bookplate.