Robert DESNOS.

Lot 141
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
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Result : 2 275EUR
Robert DESNOS.
La Liberté ou l'Amour ! Paris, Aux Éditions du Sagittaire chez Simon Kra, 1927. In-12 : red half calf, white vellum boards half covered with black lace with title printed in red letters, red suede lining, entirely untrimmed, cover and spine preserved, folder, case (Antonio). First edition. One of 35 first copies on Japan paper (no. 16). The novel was published the same year as André Breton's Manifesto: under the pretext of censorship, the publisher withdrew the crudest pages - those referring to the Sperm Drinkers' Club and to La Nouvelle Eucharistie, which consecrated the divinity of Bébé Cadum. "Doubt remains: did Kra pre-empt the condemnation by printing the work without the incriminating pages, or did he stage a bibliophilic "coup" by making people believe he was pre-empting a possible condemnation and by censoring himself? At the time, one did not condemn a book before it was printed. Today, no trace of any judgment obliging the Kra to censor the volume has been found, but if letting people believe that one is censored is not a crime, it is on the other hand a trick that gave the book a nice notoriety" (François Laurent and Béatrice Mousli). And the "censored" passages were available to anyone who asked for them. A copy of Youki Desnos, with her bookplate, remarkably bound by Antonio afterwards: it is complete with the passages censored by the publisher. (Laurent and Mousli, Les Éditions du Sagittaire, IMEC, 2003, p. 113.)
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