Naissance et jour levant d’une amitié

The project of La Postérité du soleil was repeatedly postponed, then abandoned altogether following Camus’s sudden death in January 1960. René Char was subsequently asked to write the preface for the first edition of Camus’s works in the “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,” prepared by Roger Quilliot. But because of the close friendship that had bound him to Camus, the poet declined: “[…] I offer you my regret and my apologies. To be at peace with myself, I must add that the fraternal affection I felt for Camus still stands in the way of my ability to judge his wide-open œuvre freely […] I am too moved by it to present Camus’s work in that light […].” Instead, this became the occasion for Char to give voice to his grief at the loss of his friend, and to revive, in his memory, the publication of La Postérité du soleil. He decided to add this luminous text, first recorded in January 1965 at the home of Edwin Engelberts in Geneva. The booklet was then set in type in May, while Char and the publisher worked on the composition of the main volume, limited to 100 copies — the same number as this separate printing — plus 20 hors commerce copies; for the latter, the separate printing matched the format of the book, without Camus’s portrait.

The text was published in December in Jean Daniel’s Nouvel Observateur, at the same time as the book’s appearance. These 100 copies constitute the true first edition of the text: the booklets were given, before publication, to a few close friends (known recipients include Erwin Engelberts, Francine Camus, Henriette Grindat, Roger Quilliot, Claude Gallimard, José Corti, and thus Maryse Lafont — who was also the dedicatee of one of the twenty hors commerce copies), before the remaining copies were added to the volumes published in December. As a result, few copies encountered today still contain it.

A fine copy with an excellent provenance, as close as possible to René Char himself.