Collectibles

1917 · 64269 — 1917. Fine. circa 1917-1918 22.30 x 27.60 cm une feuille sous chemise et étui A remarkable autograph poem of youth by André Breton dedicated to Guillaume Apollinaire entitled «Décembre». 20 verses in ink on vergé d'Arches paper composed in December 1915. This manuscript was copied between March 1917 and the beginning of 1918. This poem is presented in a chemise and case with paper boards decorated with abstract motifs the spine of the chemise in green morocco pastedowns and endpapers of beige suede a sheet of flexible plexiglass protecting the poem case lined with green morocco piece of green paper with caption «poème autographe» to bottom of upper cover of case the whole by Thomas Boichot. Key poem of the author's pre-Dadaist period it formed part of the set of 7 manuscript poems by Breton known as coll. X. in the Œuvres complètes d'André Breton volume I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade Gallimard 1988 p. 1071. Thiese poems of his juvenilia are carefully copied out in black ink on watermarked vergé paper. The small collection was addressed to his circle of friends and writers most notably including Valéry Apollinaire Théodore Fraenkel and his brother in arms André Paris. They were later published in his first collection Mont de piété which appeared in June 1919 published by Au Sans Pareil established not long before by his friend René Hilsum. The precise dating of this set of autograph poems is made possible by the composition of the final poem in the set «André Derain» written on 24 March 1917 which provides a definitive terminus post quem. An earlier version of the poem «Age» dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue appears in our collection under its original name «Poème». Dated by the author 19 February 1916 the day of his 20th birthday and composed 10 days previously according to his letters it was not retitled and reworked until its publication in July 1918 in Les Trois Roses. Judging by the similarities to things published before this last poem the seven autograph poems were probably written during 1917 or at the beginning of 1918 while Breton was doing his residency in Val-de-Grâce and where significantly he made the acquaintance of Louis Aragon. The poems that make up Mont de piété represent a rare and valuable insight into his youthful influences at the dawn of his joining the Dada movement and his discovery of automatic writing. Quite short and sometimes sibylline one detects Symbolist highlights borrowed from Mallarmé whom he rediscovered at poetry mornings in the théâtre Antoine and the Vieux-Colombier accompanied by his schoolfriend Théodore Fraenkel. During the first month of the War Breton also dedicated himself to Rimbaud plunging into Les Illuminations the only work he carried with him in the confusion and haste that followed the outbreak of war. From his readings of Rimbaud were born the poems «Décembre» «Age» and «André Derain» while he borrowed Apollinaire's muse Marie Laurencin to whom he dedicated «L'an suave». The author's poetic inheritance was particularly marked by Paul Valéry with whom he corresponded from 1914. Valéry played a considerable role in the writing of the poems of Mont de piété with the advice he gave the young poet. Admiring his disciple's audacity who addressed each of these poems to him he characterized the poem «Façon» 1916 thus: «The theme language scope meter everything is new in the style the manner of the future» Letter of June 1916 Œuvres complètes d'André Breton vol. I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade Gallimard 1988 p. 1072. These essential buds of Breton's youth were written between his seventeenth and twenty-third year. Taken by surprise in Lorient by the declaration of war he became a military nurse serving in several hospitals and on the front during the Meuse offensive. In Nantes he met Jacques Vaché who inspired him to undertake a project of collective writing as well as encouraging him to have illustrated the future col hardcover