L’Intelligence et l’échafaud
One of 40 copies on white vélin astra, numbered and signed by the publisher (no. 33).
L’intelligence et l’échafaud first appeared in the journal Confluences, in its July 1943 issue.
The characters, Camus writes, “are curious heroes who all perish of feeling and seek out fatal illnesses in thwarted passions,” following a tradition of French fiction that goes straight to the point, in the manner established by La Princesse de Clèves. From its author, Madame de Lafayette, through Benjamin Constant and up to Proust, the text is built entirely on admiration for classical art. Camus would return to this theme two years later in his preface to the works of Chamfort, and gave it further resonance in his Combat editorials of 1944.
This booklet was completed in print on 14 January 1960, just ten days after Camus’s accidental death on the roads of Burgundy. Printed in only 51 copies, it appeared simultaneously with another tribute published by Pierre Aelberts in his “Brimborions” series, namely Jean-Paul Sartre’s Albert Camus.
Marginal damp stain on the wrapper.