Rêves d’encre

Presentation copy:

“À Dominique Corticchiato mon fils unique notre DOUMÉ, J’écris ton nom si doux en tête de ces images découvertes en pensant à toi, et que tu n’as jamais vues… J’écris ton nom de bonheur, Doumé, ton nom si doux — et je pleure… Dans l’enfer de notre solitude, je pleure, mon petit, en pensant à ta solitude à toi, à ta mortelle solitude… J. C.”

This unique, moving and extraordinary copy brings together all the original manuscripts and drawings added to the copy that José Corti had reserved for his son. He would never be able to give him his Rêves d’encre.

The copy notably contains:

— the signed autograph manuscript of Paul Éluard, Temps anciens, temps bénis (1 leaf), with an autograph letter signed by José Corti to Éluard, dated 15 May 1945;
— the signed autograph manuscript of René Char, La Lune rouge et le géranium noir (2 leaves), with two autograph letters signed by Char to Corti, dated 8 and 24 August 1945;
— the signed autograph manuscript of Julien Gracq, Éclosion de la pierre (1 leaf);
— the signed autograph manuscript of Gaston Bachelard, Une rêverie de la matière (4 leaves);
— the 20 original drawings by José Corti and trial prints annotated on the verso.

Constituted in this way, it is not merely an enriched copy but the almost complete genetic dossier of the book, kept in the publisher’s archives and, since he never parted with it, long kept close to his heart. Among this material, Corti also preserved the draft of the letter he sent to Paul Éluard, the first writer he thought of to preface his book.

This letter to Éluard is of capital importance, for it documents the very genesis of the book: Corti initially envisaged only a simple presentation of his images by the poet. It was only afterward that Gaston Bachelard, a friend of Corti’s, had the idea of expanding the project, leading to the involvement of René Char and Julien Gracq. The letter closes with words that history has since rendered both tragic and deeply moving: “Votre acceptation de mon projet me ferait très plaisir à moi – et aussi à mon fils, lorsqu’il reviendra. Il aime autant Bachelard et Gracq qu’il voyait souvent, qu’il a d’admiration pour vous. Et Char a été si gentil pour lui… cette réunion aurait à mes yeux l’air d’une manifestation d’amitié, suis tout vôtre, José Corti, 15. 5. 45.”

The book was thus being prepared while awaiting the return of Dominique Corticchiato, arrested by the Gestapo on 2 May 1944, and deported on the last convoy of 15 August 1944.

Several sources, beginning with the author’s own Souvenirs désordonnés, recount what happened on that fateful day of 2 May. These accounts have since been supplemented by the biographical research of Olivier Salon, who published François le Lionnais, le disparate (Othello) in 2016: the story of Dominique Corticchiato emerges in greater detail, along with his ties to the Resistance — particularly to François Le Lionnais. The latter, active in the Resistance after his demobilization, used the Corti bookshop “as the Paris headquarters of his resistance activity, using the telephone in the back room (while keeping José Corti entirely unaware of this activity),” on behalf of the Resistance network Marco Polo, in which the young Dominique Corti was also active.

Le Lionnais was arrested by the Gestapo on 29 April 1944, three days before Dominique Corti and his mother, Nicole Corti. For twelve months, between May 1944 and May 1945, Corti held out relentless hope of finding his son again. They were sent to Fresnes for three months, until 15 August 1944. Both men were deported on the last convoy, that of 15 August 1944. Mme Corti, for her part, was released and rejoined her husband on 17 August 1944. François Le Lionnais survived until the liberation of the camps and returned to Paris on 3 May 1945, twelve days before the letter Corti sent to Éluard, in which he still hoped for his son’s return.

He would not learn the terrible news until several weeks later.

In September 1945, Éluard paid tribute to Dominique Corti: his name appears among the litany of writers who disappeared during the war, mourned by the poet in his “Éternité de ceux que je n’ai pas revus,” a poem published immediately in the columns of Les Lettres françaises of 8 September 1945 (before appearing in the expanded edition of Au rendez-vous allemand, Éditions de Minuit, 1946).

Although Éluard and Corti came together in 1945 to publish Rêves d’encre, the drawing up of successive “blacklists” of writers accused of collaboration by the Comité national des écrivains — on which Éluard and Aragon showed themselves among the most uncompromising — would lead to their estrangement. Following a request by Maurice Chapelan, who had been placed on these lists and then excluded by Aragon, to publish in an anthology a text by Éluard published by Corti, the latter sent the poet this mischievous note: “Je ne savais pas qu’Aragon tenait boutique de blanchisserie.” This outburst proved fatal to their friendship: “I telephoned three or four days later,” Corti would recount. “‘I am just writing to you,’ Éluard told me, ‘for you have hurt me very, very much — attacking Aragon is attacking me.’ I fell, as they say, from a great height. His letter reached me. In it I read what he had told me over the telephone. It was only later, much later, that I understood that this letter, without anything hinting at it, was to be the last, and marked the end of our friendship” (Souvenirs désordonnés, p. 102).

Much later, Corti acquired one of the autograph versions of Poésie et Vérité 1942, purchased from the bookseller Lucien Scheler: a final act of amends as much as a tribute to a companion of the Surrealist years and of the war years.

The preservation of Rêves d’encre in his library, the most tangible reminder of his son’s presence, gives this copy an almost heartbreaking value, one that goes far beyond representing the finest possible state of Rêves d’encre: a private memorial, created at the very moment when the publisher still hoped, and then kept beside him as what was meant to welcome his lost son home.

A magnificent ensemble, superbly bound by Renaud Vernier.