Apollinaire (Guillaume) - Lot 66

Apollinaire (Guillaume) Ɵ Case d'Armons : Bulletin de souscription pour La case d'armon [sic], poem by Guillaume Appolinaire [sic]. Bulletin in-12 "autographed to the armies of the Republic" in blue on buff military paper (fragment of military stamp pasted on verso), 1915 (11 x 17 cm). Extremely rare leaflet, mimeographed in the trenches, for the subscription to Case d'Armons, Apollinaire's rarest book, along with the subscription form for Et moi aussi je suis Peintre for the "lyrical ideograms" project, which the war did not allow to be realized, but which led to Calligrammes. The bulletin indicates a planned print run of "60 copies, including 6 on large paper", at 20 and 65 francs respectively. It should be returned with the subscription amount to "Brigadier G. de Kostrowitsky, 55e Rgt d'artie, 25e Batterie, Secteur 59" (number crossed out and corrected in ink to "138"). It was in May 1915 that Apollinaire planned to produce this collection, which he initially intended to sell by subscription, in order to raise some money for his comrades and for Lou, then in need (for "a good special work", he wrote to André Level). 112 copies were initially planned, but the print run was much smaller. Some of the poet's close friends, such as "Baron" Jean Mollet, Pierre Roy and his childhood friend Toussaint Luca, initially circulated the printed bulletins, which showed only 60 copies. But they finally stopped even lower: "There are only 25 copies. We couldn't print more," wrote Apollinaire to Luca on June 21, 1915. In a fragment of a letter to Lou, found in mid-July 1915, Apollinaire wrote: "Case d'Armons printed by 2 maréchaux des logis has appeared and has already brought in 80 francs, which is not bad in wartime - especially as it only cost me 3 frs 50...". But Apollinaire had to give up after learning that commerce was forbidden in the armies; so on July 18 he instructed "Baron" Mollet to collect the bulletins and cancel the subscription: "All commerce is forbidden, I knew nothing about it." On July 20, he asked Fernand Fleuret: "Send me back the bulletins, I need them. There's no point in going on about the book. I'll tell you another day why. Then, on July 27, he asked Roy to withdraw the subscription forms. This explains why there are still too many fingers to count the blank copies of this bulletin that have survived to this day... Attached is the rare subscription sheet for Et moi aussi je suis Peintre (in-8o sheet printed on the front), an album of "lyrical and colored ideograms", which was to appear at Les Soirées de Paris on August 10, 1914 in an edition of two hundred copies, accompanied by a portrait of the author wood-engraved by Roy after de Chirico. The subscription form had been inserted in the last issue (July-August 1914) of Les Soirées de Paris. As Apollinaire enlisted in the army in August 1914, the work never saw the light of day, and the project only came to fruition in 1918, when it was extensively reworked and renamed Calligrammes. Provenance : Succession Guillaume et Jacqueline Apollinaire.