La Chute [The Fall]
Paris, Gallimard, (May) 1956.
1 vol. (115 x 185 mm) of 169 p., [1] and 2 f. Anthracite buffalo, beige oeser title on front cover, smooth spine, author and title on front cover, beige suede goatskin lining and endpapers, gilt edges on endpapers, preserved covers and spine, bound in folder and slipcase (binding signed by Renaud Vernier; titling by Claude Ribal and gilt edging by Jean-Luc Bongrain, 2023).
First edition.
One of 35 copies on Hollande (no. 26) – after ten author’s copies.
Mounted at the top, a page from the manuscript.
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
La Chute – whose original title is unknown – was excluded from the forthcoming collection at the beginning of 1956 because it was too long, and Camus developed the text into the novel we know.
Under a title proposed by Roger Martin du Gard, The Fall went on sale on May 16 and was a huge success in bookshops. Those who ironically predicted “the fall of Camus” fell silent. Most saw the text as a kind of autobiography, as his contemporaries tried to get him to admit. Camus invariably replied in the negative: “The only thing I have in common with Jean-Baptiste Clamence – with whom people insist on identifying me – would be his lack of imagination,” he declared in Le Monde.
A very fine copy, enriched at the top with a major, with several variants and corrections (16 lines, in blue ink). The text is that of the fifth paragraph at the beginning of the novel: the “hero”, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, introduces himself and describes his environment, that of Amsterdam, where he approaches a compatriot in a dubious bar in the city, the Mexico-City, and offers to act as his interpreter with the bartender.
“Are you staying in Amsterdam for a while? Beautiful city, isn’t it? Fascinating? That’s an adjective I haven’t heard in a long time. Since I left Paris, in fact, years ago. But the heart has its memory and I have not forgotten anything about our beautiful capital. Paris is a superb setting inhabited by four million silhouettes […]. The Dutch, on the other hand, are much less modern. They have time; they take each day as it comes. What do they do? Indeed, these gentlemen live off the labor of these ladies. They are, moreover, male and female, very bourgeois creatures, who have come here, as [usually, through mythomania or stupidity].”
It is the last novel completed by Camus, divided into six parts, for a story whose events take place over five successive days. A year later, he would receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
We enclose a typed letter signed by Suzanne Agnely, Albert Camus’ secretary, written on his behalf and addressed to André Devaux:
Paris, February 21, 1958.
1 p. on 1 sheet (135 x 210 mm), on printed NRF letterhead.
“Mr. Albert Camus has just left Paris for a trip of about three months. Before his departure, he asked me to write to you on his behalf to thank you for your letter and your interest, and to send you a handwritten page from The Fall. […]”.
André Devaux, a student at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris during his final year of secondary school, was a pupil of Ferdinand Alquié during the Second World War. He specialized in philosophy and continued his studies at the Sorbonne, where he was forwarded by René Le Senne. After gaining his agrégation, he began teaching at secondary schools in Laon and Rouen, as well as at the teacher training college in Besançon. He was then appointed lecturer at the Sorbonne, where he was deputy director of the philosophy department for many years. A philosopher and specialist in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and René Le Senne, he produced fundamental texts on Saint-Exupéry and Charles Péguy and was the specialist in the work of Simone Weil.
He wrote several texts devoted to Albert Camus (Albert Camus devant le christianisme et les chrétiens, 1968, Albert Camus et l’hellénisme, 1970) and his texts on Weil include numerous quotations from Camus’s work. In the text published in Science et Esprit, he quotes several passages from The Fall, a novel in which, according to him, “Camus honors the crucified, but fails to see the Redeemer”.
A perfect copy by Renaud Vernier.
