Les Mémoires de Zeus
One of 52 deluxe copies on vergé de Montval, this copy hors commerce (no. IV), with the autograph addition “- comme les 4 éléments.”
Signed presentation inscription: “The last but not the least. Pour ma chère Madeleine qui a aidé, transcrit, veillé, en toutes leurs étapes, [Les Mémoires de Zeus], et qui m’a accompagné durant tout ce périple avec une inlassable affection, en souvenir d’Olympie, du Val Bleu, de Nauplie, comme de Vence, de Grosrouvre, de Castellaras, en la remerciant, en l’embrassant. Maurice, Mai 1963.”
After the vast historical fresco novels that had brought him success — Les Grandes Familles, winner of the 1948 Prix Goncourt, then the long-running Rois maudits sequence — Maurice Druon undertook a project of an entirely different nature with Les Mémoires de Zeus.
At the time of publication, he explained that he had always been “drawn to, inhabited by, ancient themes,” and that in writing the book he had tried to “recreate a Greek soul” for himself, in order to recover, behind the mythological narratives, an understanding of the world that modern civilizations had, in part, lost.
A magnificent copy inscribed to his new muse and closest collaborator, Madeleine Marignac, bearing witness to her direct part in the genesis of the book. She would not marry Maurice Druon until five years later, in September 1968. In 1963, she had already for several years been his essential collaborator — she had notably taken part in the composition of Les Rois maudits — and she shared closely in the birth of Les Mémoires de Zeus. The words “helped, transcribed, watched over,” the places listed as so many stages of a shared journey, followed by “untiring affection” and “embracing her,” make this copy both a literary and an intimate record of their life together before their marriage.