Les Dimanches de Jean Dézert
Presentation copy inscribed by the author's sister: “À notre excellente amie et voisine, Madame Labat, en souvenir d'une des plus grandes joies de Jean. Bordeaux, le 18 octobre 1915. S. de La Ville” [Suzanne de La Ville de Mirmont, the author's sister].
The copy is in the first-issue wrappers (orange).
A unique and dazzling novel, conceived as early as 1911 (“My character is permanently a ministry clerk… He is mortally bored for lack of imagination… I don’t even have to invent anything”), a double-edged fantasy of striking modernity in which methodical boredom, dry humor and a language of classical purity lead Jean Dézert to plan even his suicide “on a Sunday, so as not to miss a day at the office.” Jean Le Cardonnel, in the Anthologie des écrivains morts à la guerre (1926), praised “this short novel, written in admirable language, of bitter pessimism and haughty irony.”
The first and only book of a young sergeant killed on the Aisne front in November 1914, his neck broken by the blast of a Minenwerfer at the Chemin des Dames (Verneuil), it has become one of the landmark works of the literature of loss and ordinary life.
A moving copy presented by the author’s sister, Suzanne, who, exactly three years to the day after this inscription, on 18 October 1918, gave birth to her only son, whom she named Jean in memory of her late brother. Jean Mathivet de la Ville de Mirmont went on to have a distinguished career as a diplomat, and was awarded the Croix du Combattant volontaire de la Résistance. From the library of Jean-Claude Delaunay (bookplate).