Ralentir Travaux

Writing to Gala from Avignon in April 1930, Paul Éluard reported: “Breton, Char and I have made a fairly long book of thirty very fine poems, which Char’s printer is producing for us for nothing, in 200 copies.” The poems were conceived during a difficult period for André Breton and Éluard, both intellectually and emotionally, at the moment when the two poets met up with René Char — newly won over to Surrealism — in the Vaucluse, at the very end of winter 1930. Together they composed this legendary three-handed collection: these were, as later described, “weeks of poetic fervor,” at the end of which friendship was sealed and Char joined Breton and Éluard as they returned to Paris with the manuscript of Ralentir Travaux in their luggage, to entrust it to Char’s printer, none other than José Corti. Corti later recalled the encounter and the book in Provisoirement définitif, describing it as “one of the most luminous illustrations of the will to pool thought, one of the major axes of the Surrealist project… where each man’s contribution… is blended like sand into lime.”

The book was ultimately printed in 300 copies: 8 copies on old Japanese paper [and not the 8 China copies announced], 20 copies on colored paper, 22 on Holland paper and 250 on Lafuma-Navarre.

A rare printing, in good condition (some discoloration to the upper margin of the front wrapper).