Ceux de 14
Working copy, annotated by the author, with his manuscript bookplate dated 1962. Maurice Genevoix records here the real names of his comrades, which had been omitted or truncated in previous editions.
Ceux de 14 is an absolute masterpiece that reads as a rise toward sacrifice and horror. Its climax is the Battle of Les Éparges, the paroxysm of violence and one of the worst ordeals of 1914–1918 […] its extreme violence and the continuous bombardment of a confined position foreshadow the intensity of the Battle of Verdun. The attention paid to the living men fighting alongside him, more than a hundred of whom are precisely identified, gives this text an incomparable human depth, and its literary beauty was admired immediately,” states the writer Michel Bernard, author of Pour Genevoix (La Table ronde, 2011). Eight hundred pages, for eight months at the front. This is unquestionably the most extensive, precise and accurate account of the combat experience.
This copy, kept by Genevoix in his library at Les Vernelles, is enriched with completely unpublished manuscript additions that he added to the pages of his first book, Sous Verdun. This shows how, some thirty-five years later, certain memories and details, still painful, resurfaced and drove him to set them down: “Monday 7 September […] I recognize Captain Rive from a distance […] I go to meet him to report to him […],” to which Genevoix added in ink at the bottom of this page, page 32: “He was odious. Whereas I was the only one, during the withdrawal we had been ordered to make toward the designated rallying point, to reason out the route of my section and thereby spare lives, and whereas I legitimately expected to be commended for it, he ‘expressed surprise’ at the casualty figures for my section, which were indeed lower for the reason I have given. It was during their withdrawal, uncontrolled and haphazard, that the other sections paid an additional price.” The injustice and mistrust shown by this officer toward Private Genevoix seem to have continued to cut a furrow of pain as sharp thirty years later as on the day he was so treacherously suspected, even though he adds afterward that they later spoke and cleared the matter up.
A moving copy, rich with unpublished notes by the author.
Print run of 1,000 copies stated on the wrapper.
From the library of Maurice Genevoix, at “Les Vernelles,” with bookplate.