DESNOS (Robert)

Lot 31
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Estimation :
10000 - 15000 EUR
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Result : 24 700EUR
DESNOS (Robert)
Letters poems dreams. Autograph manuscripts and poems. Small in-folio, Bradel, chocolate morocco spine, gold printed title, gilt printed paper boards, showing on the first board the face of Robert Desnos, pages in-4 and 8 are pasted on a fomat in-folio paper, case (Binding probably by Henri Mercher). After a printed paper title page, this collection includes : - a title page - a photograph, original vintage print 23 x 17 cm, representing Robert Desnos as a spahi in Morocco during his two years of military service for the French army (circa 1921) - a photograph, 11.5 x 8.5 cm, showing Robert Desnos in a hypnotic sleep session; these sessions, carried out in 1922 and 1923, were one of the bases of automatic writing. André Breton affirmed: "Surrealism is the order of the day and Desnos is its prophet". - a photograph, 16.5 x 23 cm, circa 1928, showing Youki Desnos and Robert. Desnos met Youki, then Foujita's wife, in 1928, and she became his companion until the poet's death on June 8, 1945. - three autograph letters signed to Youki Desnos, Paris, n.d., 7 pages large in-4 in ink, notes by Desnos on the back of one page. In these letters Desnos evokes material difficulties: "I have just learned that the article on penholders with microscopic vision will be published in Vu. That will enable me to send you more money...", he tells Youki about his friendly or hilarious meetings: ... "greetings to this old scoundrel Georges and tell him that his poetic considerations have moved me a lot... as for Gruta, clumsiness or perfidy? We spoke so little about Marnay that we were talking about going there all three of us, no need to make a fuss, it's just spiritual bullshit for letters a la Sevigne" ... .... "I am dragged into the living room where Jean Moussenegre played the Madelon and God save the king on the piano, and there the little squinty southern hen reveals to me that she is writing and recites to me one of her works in prose entitled The Shipwreck... the little squinty southern whore is moreover a Catholic; I escape with great difficulty from this deluge; this marriage is one of the greatest burlesque madnesses of our time. The colonel and the colonelle are completely spoiled. Their son and the whore are delirious"... ... "I kiss you although I have ink full of the mouth the nose the throat the eyes and the ears". - A Girl from the Plain, autograph poem, one and a half pages in-4 in ink of six quatrains... "The furrows where the seeds lay / Received us with a single impulse / All was color in the plain / Of soft earth and saffron" - Chansons brèves, autograph poem of three quatrains, one page in-4 in ink - Autograph note, half a page in-4 in ink, on the back of a paper with the logo of the surrealist revolution - L'Enfant planète, autograph manuscript of automatic writing written jointly by Robert Desnos and Benjamin Péret and bearing their autograph signatures twice, 3 pages and a half in-4 in ink: "This Saturday, May 6 (an overprint a deletion) we composed these two poems simultaneously, without correction, amalgamated them.... the first word is that of Perret (sic) and the second that of Desnos the child planet the two poems are signed of the respective author and the whole of the two undersigned Robert Desnos Benjamin Péret"... The text is dedicated by Péret: "To Mr. Yves Breton flames set fire to the barn Benjamin Péret" ... "she cut the hand of a monkey with blue buttocks and then laughed at him while cutting a broom handle that he intended for a mysterious use: to extinguish the candles of the nearby church. Do not trust miracles... sink your heels into the swamps of the evenings with chloroform of planets". Extraordinary and rare document - Night of September 11-12, 1922, autograph manuscript of automatic writing due to a hypnotic sleep session, one and a half pages in-4 in ink... "From the square, an invisible ramp leads up to the middle of the room, a procession composed of a princess dressed in the Louisiana fashion, next to whom walks a character who is neither Richelieu nor Mazarin, but one of these two ministers... I realize that these people are coming to take me to a gallows where I am to be hanged, but the princess..." - Night of the 16 to the 17 June 1925, autograph text one and a half page in-4 in ink - Night of March 21 to 22, 1931, autograph manuscript one page in-4 in ink... "I dream that I am with Youki and Brancusi in his studio but it is not the real one... I go out for a moment. Then I see the house suddenly collapse and as I run up with a great strangled cry in my throat I see Foujita who looks at me with a grimace - Pointed, autograph manuscript, 7 folio pages in-4 in ink, dreamlike journey in the line of the great surrealist texts... "stop yourself tugboats bellowing
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