Robert DESNOS.

Lot 82
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30000 - 40000 EUR
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Result : 28 000EUR
Robert DESNOS.
Preparatory file and mock-up of the Rrose Sélavy collection. Circa 1922-1927. Set of autograph documents, original drawings and cuttings from published texts, in a blue cardboard folder. Exceptional collection of documents in the hand of Robert Desnos relating to hypnotic sleep experiments: it contains all the aphorisms and puns produced under hypnotic sleep and published, as well as 25 unpublished sentences. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's approximate puns signed by the pseudonym Rrose Sélavy, these sentences are similar to the first experiences of paradoxical sleep under hypnosis experimented by the Literature group in 1922. A new member of the group, Robert Desnos was fascinated by his extraordinary verbal abilities: "Not only does he effortlessly practice automatic writing but, in a state of sleep close to that of mediums, he 'speaks surrealist at will', the flow of his words being inexhaustible, strongly rhythmic, the words being called by sound affinities. Asleep, he answers questions from assistants, starts poems or drawings. Surrealism is the order of the day and Desnos is his prophet', says Breton" (website of the association of the Friends of Robert Desnos). Desnos's puns were published under the title of Rrose Sélavy in the number 7 of the review Littérature, in December 1922, then in the collection Corps et Bien in 1930. The file consists of first draft manuscripts and a mock-up intended for publication. First draft manuscript with 7 original drawings, in grey, blue and red pencils or ink, numbered by an unknown hand. It consists of 25 leaves of various formats (21 x 13.5 or 27 x 21 cm), some with the letterhead of the magazine Littérature, the Paris Congress or bearing the stamp of the Italian restaurant Turpin & Navone 10 Galerie Montmartre. Some have been dated on the back, in a second step, by the hand of Robert Desnos. Enclosed is: - an autograph sheet in ink, headed Paris Matinal, later than the previous on
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