Ralentir Travaux

From Avignon, in April 1930, Paul Éluard wrote to Gala: “Breton, Char and I have made a fairly long book of thirty very fine poems, which Char’s printer is producing for us at no cost, in 200 copies.” The poems were conceived during a difficult period for André Breton and Paul Éluard, both intellectually and emotionally, at the moment when the two poets rejoined René Char, newly won over to Surrealism, in the Vaucluse at the very end of winter 1930. Together they composed this legendary three-handed collection: “These were weeks of poetic fervor. At the end of this Provençal holiday, the friendship was sealed, and Char joined Breton and Éluard as they returned to Paris, the manuscript of Ralentir Travaux in their luggage,” to entrust it to Char’s printer, who was none other than José Corti. This meeting is described in detail in Provisoirement Définitif, where the publisher recalls this moment and this collection as “one of the most luminous illustrations of the will to pool thought, one of the major axes of the Surrealist project (…) where each one’s contribution (…) is blended like sand into lime.”

The book was ultimately printed in 300 copies: 8 copies on old Japan paper [and not the 8 China copies announced], 20 copies on colored paper, 22 on Hollande and 250 on Lafuma-Navarre.

A fine copy.