DESNOS (Robert).

Lot 140
Go to lot
Estimation :
3000 - 4000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 5 200EUR
DESNOS (Robert).
The Sperm Drinkers' Club. No place or date [ca. 1924-1927]. Autograph manuscript fragment of 10 pages 1/3 in-8 square on school notebook leaves, bound in raspberry percaline à la Bradel (G. Gauché). Important first draft autograph manuscript of an early version of La Liberté ou l'Amour! Unfinished, it is entirely unpublished and shows only rare erasures. The setting, the characters and the themes evoked refer to the 7th chapter of Liberty or Love. The main character has a slightly different name - Corsaire Topaze versus Corsaire Sanglot in the final version. Likewise, Desnos already calls upon the prophetic figure of Bébé Cadum, "an admirable harbinger of a new redemption despite the somewhat crude symbol of clean skin." The main part of the unbridled erotic story is about Corsair Topaz's visit to the phantasmagorical Sperm Drinkers' Club: "Take your place among us! We (you and we) have rediscovered the serious tone that suits love. You have served it under all earthly appearances, knowing full well that it is unique and that its human cult must bend without hesitation to all our fantasies without risk of expectations to its essential presence. Pederast in this town, pimp in the next, willing dupe in the third, onanist here, chaste elsewhere, sadist or masochist, worshipper of chastity belts, mules or rods, or of a certain part of the body, all your tribulations were powerless to make you take appearance for reality [...] In a few moments, you will be brought the bohemian cup and you will choose from six bottles the liquid which suits your taste. To supply our reserves, dearly paid women scrutinize the most beautiful boys on earth. The sperm of each of them, carefully collected in these little thirteen-sided bottles that the valet brings you, is brought to you with the dawn [...]. Some consume it fresh, others prefer it several days or months or even years old. You will be able to taste it from 1884, from the year 1914, a year of war when it flowed through the white fingers of our grape-pickers. Then, the infernal and bloody mixture of nations inspiring us, we undertook the most curious ethnographic collection ever, from the slimy Eskimos to the Breton of France, from the Coromandel Hindus to the Negroes of Libria and the Americans of San Francisco. Taste! There is no great difference in its flavor. You look for a long time for the one who will satisfy you before death has in a supreme jump flooded your fingers with the last seed, sign that the pathetic minute has just passed and leaving you with the regret of having lived believing a change possible in your essence. Superb surrealist manuscript, close to automatic writing; it testifies to the great facility of Robert Desnos. Two other first draft manuscripts are known for La Liberté ou l'Amour! one of which dated 13 December 1924 appeared in the sale of Bernard Loliée (Sale R. and B. L., 2016, No. 211). They turn out to be much closer to the final version. The writing of La Liberté ou l'Amour ! closely follows Deuil pour Deuil (published in 1924), but the work was not published until 1927. This manuscript of the Club des Buveurs de spermes appeared in the Nicaise catalogue Cubisme, Futurisme, Dada, Surréalisme (1960, no. 427).
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue