Paul Eluard.

Lot 164
Go to lot
Estimation :
6000 - 8000 EUR
Result without fees
Result : 9 000EUR
Paul Eluard.
À toute épreuve. Paris, Éditions surréalistes, 1930. Booklet in-32 consisting of one leaf folded three times, uncut. Attached: Paul ELUARD. À toute épreuve. Autograph manuscript signed. Valentine HUGO. Portrait of Paul Eluard, 1926: original blue pencil drawing, signed. Victor HUGO. Letter to Lord Palmerston, 1854: booklet in-32. First edition. Three copies: on pink, white and yellow paper. On October 15, 1930, Ducros and Colas completed the printing of an unnumbered sixteen-page in-32 booklet for the Éditions surréalistes A toute épreuve. It was presented in the form of a sheet folded three times that could then be cut out. It was printed on different coloured paper. This leaflet, which looked like a folded leaflet, resembled the extracts from Les Châtiments that Victor Hugo had printed in Jersey in 1852-1853 for clandestine distribution. The format was the same and the copies preserved as published were identical, in the form of a sheet folded three times. Intended to be smuggled into France by letter in order to circumvent censorship and promote the publication of the firebrand castigating the emperor Napoleon III, four excerpts appeared: L'Expiation, Joyeuse Vie, À l'obéissance passive and Nox. The process proved so effective that Victor Hugo subsequently distributed other works in this form, including the famous Letter to Lord Palmerston, Secretary of State for the Interior, in England. This pamphlet, printed in 1854 on the presses of the Imprimerie Universelle in Jersey, contained the letter of protest against the execution of John Charles Tapner by hanging on 10 February 1854 in Guernsey. The execution took place despite the protests of the inhabitants, but the exiled poet's diatribe, which was part of his fight against capital punishment, had such a resonance that Tapner was the last person sentenced to death on the island. The similarity of the presentation of Victor Hugo's and Paul Eluard's booklets was in fact no coincidence, as the document from the Kahn collection proves. Along with a Letter to Lor d Palmerston by Victor Hugo, an unpublished autograph note by Valentine Hugo is attached: In 1930, she wrote, I gave Paul Eluard a copy of this "Letter to Lord Palmerston" that Victor Hugo sent from Jersey in 1854. Travellers used to carry V.H.'s vengeful writings hidden in their shoes and send them to France. The format and the colour of this writing gave Paul Eluard the idea to publish "A toute épreuve" towards the end of 1930. The manuscript was bought from the Gallimard bookstore in 1931. To this autograph note is attached the complete autograph manuscript of the work. Working manuscript with several erasures and corrections. The list of works "From the same author" shows many differences. It has 31 leaves in all, 26 on ruled leaves taken from schoolbooks, 1 on a blank sheet and 4 on the covers of Spanish schoolbooks. It is preserved in a double sheet of laid paper bearing the poet's signature and the title of the work, the subtitle, L'univers solitude, being written on another sheet of laid paper. This cover appears to be a little later than the manuscript. The whole was put together at the time in a half-cream cloth slipcase, with a burgundy calf title page. (Another manuscript of the collection is known, later, bearing a letter to René Char. See Album de la Pléiade, p. 129.) Also included is a superb original signed portrait of Paul Eluard by Valentine Hugo. Blue pencil drawing (201 x 143 mm), signed and dated 1926, with this autograph note on the back: "Paul Eluard as he appeared to me at about 7 o'clock on the evening of the inauguration of the Surrealist Gallery in rue Jacques Callot. I was with Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge. It was March 26, 1926." Unique set. (The copy of À toute épreuve from the Trutat collection in the Bibliothèque nationale de France is bound: it includes prints of the booklet on different papers and is followed by the Letter to Lord Palmerston).
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue