One of 50 hors commerce copies reserved for the author, this copy no. 19.
Postcard from Lély (120 x 75 mm) and photograph of Greta Garbo (90 x 140 mm) laid in.
A precious copy from René Char's library, who, as he often did, wrote “mon exemplaire” on the glassine wrapper, on the front cover.
Presentation inscription signed: “René, l'herbe où nous étions couchés, le 17 novembre 1942, face au vallon de la Valmasque, aurait voulu nous apaiser: muette, elle avait la confidence du destin… Ami, que le bonheur soit toujours à portée de ta main. Ton frère Gilbert.”
The text of this lecture, delivered in Paris on 2 July 1946 (the announcement card is preserved), constitutes the first public expression of interest in René Char, together with an uncompromising condemnation of a certain “poetry of the Resistance” and of “the wretched return to the alexandrine observed in the aftermath of the defeat.” Lély thus attacks Aragon, hailed as “national poet,” taking pleasure in recalling that it was Char who, in 1932, found the title of the Surrealist tract excommunicating him: “Paillasse!”
Char kept in this copy a postcard that Lély had sent him at the outbreak of the war: “[Ch]er René, je commence [à m]e trouver inquiet de [ton] silence. Ne serais-tu [p]lus à Nîmes? Rassure-[mo]i, je te prie. Je te [ré]pondrai longuement. [Po]ur l’instant, je te cherche. Fraternellement, Gilbert.” The card, postmarked 15 September 1939, is addressed to “Monsieur René Char, 173e RAL, 2e CR-6e pièce, Nîmes”; it was trimmed by the poet, no doubt so that he could keep it among his papers — probably less to preserve intact the written memory of his friend than to keep the photograph of Greta Garbo’s face attached to it! The image is an M.G.M. photograph, included with the set, taken from a film we have not been able to identify. It is rather moving to think that Char kept this photograph with him at the outbreak of the war, and indeed throughout the years of the Resistance, before finally placing it in Lély’s book.
It should be recalled that Gilbert Lély was the first person to whom René Char announced the existence and forthcoming publication of Feuillets d’Hypnos.
The volume is illustrated with 4 plates, among which is a photograph of Char surrounded by the Ginoux, mother and son: a photograph that Char had mounted in his own copy of Feuillets d’Hypnos, and of which he gave away at least two original prints, one to Adrienne Monnier, the other to Max-Pol Fouchet.