“The method used for the translation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick was an original one: the English antique dealer of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Joan Smith, produced a word-for-word rendering, which Lucien Jacques — who did not know a word of English — put into French. Giono then revised this version, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lucien Jacques at his side.” (Pléiade, p. 119, note 2)
It was from these loose gathering — later dismantled — that the book edition would be assembled, brought together in the spring of 1939, with a limitation leaf added for a few dozen copies, numbered by Lucien Jacques.
The declaration of war brought an abrupt end to the pacifist-literary adventure of Le Contadour and to the publication of the Cahiers of the same name, which have since become very rare. “While the translation in the Cahiers remained a limited affair of 400 copies […] the edition was not put on sale immediately, but stored in a shepherd’s hut, where it was largely destroyed. It was replaced by the edition published by Gallimard in 1941, during the war.” (Correspondance Jean Giono – Lucien Jacques 1930–1961).
The text is distributed within the series as follows:
Cahier no. V: pp. 1 to 120.
Cahier no. VI: pp. 121 to 240, with a plate printed on coated paper: La Chasse à la Baleine.
Cahier no. VII: pp. 241 to 400, with a plate: La Chasse au Cachalot.
Cahier no. VIII: pp. 401 to 516, with a plate: La Chasse à la Baleine (the same as in Cahier no. VI).
Not all of Alexandre Noll’s woodcuts on coated paper were retained for the later book edition, and a large proportion of the copies made up in 1939 contain them in varying combinations: one only, both, twice the same one, or, more rarely, all three in their original order.
All three plates are present in this set.
Besides various texts by Giono and Noll’s woodcuts, the contents include contributions by Charles Vildrac, Eugene O’Neill, Jean Lescure and Romain Rolland, photographs by Kardas, Gos and Joset, engravings by Lucien Jacques, and drawings by Henry Chenet.
Spine of no. VIII stained.