Under a title suggested by Paul Éluard, Êtes-vous fous? paints the tragic self-portrait of its author. Vagualame, the hero and double of Crevel, believes in revolutionary struggle: “the truth is that there is not enough anger in the blood of our hearts.” This anti-hero, whose unease psychoanalysis failed to relieve, is ready to serve the common cause even as illness holds him back. A pastiche of popular novels, the narrative — convulsive in style and corrosive in humor — reveals the confessions of a René Crevel haunted by illness (tuberculosis) and by suicide. His lucidity as a condemned man leads him to this final observation: “Why cry out, why believe in new times, when fiber by fiber the muscles were tearing apart? That bitch, pain, he let it bite into his very flesh.”
The book is, naturally, dedicated to Éluard and to his companion at the time, Gala. The working manuscript is dated 1927–1928 and carries as an epigraph a quotation from Éluard, “La vie est accrochée aux armes menaçantes,” which was not retained for the printed edition of April 1929 (cf. Mille nuits de rêves, Coll. Geneviève et Jean-Paul Kahn, Paris, cat. 7 November 2019, no. 126).
What does the publisher’s insert say, also published in La NRF, no. 188, of 1 May 1929 (p. 129)? That “Madame de Rosalba, a fortune-teller, reads the cards for René Crevel. ‘A devilish tale! […] It is only a matter of unlearning how to live, of losing oneself in this magic. The words, then, you no longer utter one by one, but in great sheaves, and their scent lies on another mouth than your own. You step out of your own marvelous story and out of every story — you are now nothing but the accomplice of that clear head making love.’ Paul Éluard.”
A precious manuscript, containing several variants and second thoughts, notably in the final paragraph of the text.
Accompanied by the original printed publisher’s insert (one leaf, 135 x 215 mm), printed in black on pink paper.