REVERDY (Pierre).

Le Voleur de Talan. Autograph manuscript, [before 1917], 47 pages in-4 (270 x 210 mm) in black ink, mounted on tabs, bound in one volume in-4, half black morocco with corners, smooth spine, gilt head, case (Alix). Le Voleur de Talan : precious intermediate state, the manuscript which was used for the printing having disappeared. Published in September 1917, "at the author's home" and at his expense, Le Voleur de Talan was composed at the Logis de Sainte-Anne, a hamlet near Sorgues (Vaucluse), where the Reverdys stayed during the summer of 1917 in the neighborhood of the Braques. Through him I had rid myself of an obsession, Reverdy would say - to write a novel without details, a quadrature. The writing of this "poetic novel" went through various manuscript states, of which these are among the earliest. As a handwritten note by Maurice Saillet on a lead sheet indicates, we have here pages 1 to 48 of this first state, from which pages 21, 22, 23 and 29 are missing. Working manuscript, first draft, with erasures and corrections: pages 1 to 46 are crossed out with a large cross, in blue pencil, with the pages indicated in pencil. Fragments of this first draft were published by Maurice Saillet, who underlined all the interest of it, in appendix to his re-edition of Le Voleur de Talan (Flammarion, 1967). "Is the manuscript incomplete at the end or was it in fact interrupted? In his notice Maurice Saillet rightly remarked that the layout of the text became freer and freer as the pages passed. Hence the hypothesis that Reverdy would have given up finishing the copy and would have written the whole thing to end up with the manuscript - which has disappeared - that he was going to give to the printer in Avignon" (E.-A. Hubert in Oeuvres Complètes, t. I, p. 1244). The comparison with the printed text shows indeed that certain pages of this manuscript are either unpublished, or rewritten so that one does not recognize them any more. Still on the pink sheet at the top, this note by Maurice Saillet indicates that it is about pages 32, 33, 34, 36 and 45 of this manuscript. Let us quote as example pages 32 and 33: I was a child and I did not dream. Tonight thousands of shooting stars fell. And now there are only clouds that the wind pursues. Hungry mouths opened under eyes whose brightness dominated the world. It is a force that does not exist. Men climbed so high that their heads were no longer visible. But from here one could no longer see the Eiffel Tower, which supports the sky like a tent. And the water that came to bathe my feet was clearer. Every morning you could see farther and something else was awakening. On the other side of the harbor there must have been a pretty comedy played out in the quiet of the sun-dried grasses. Bound afterwards: 3 unnumbered leaves, on thinner and smaller paper, with erasures and corrections in blue pencil or paper: "As if they had an autonomy, the texts occupy only the upper half of each leaf and two of them are closed by the usual dash in Reverdy's hand to mark the end of a prose poem. It remains that the first two pieces correspond to passages of the novel" (E.-A. Hubert, Oeuvres Complètes, t. I, p. 1274). Oeuvres complètes, Flammarion, 2010, t. I, p. 365-452 and 1237-1275. - É.-A. Hubert, Bibliographie des écrits de Pierre Reverdy, n° 30. We thank Mr. Étienne-Alain Hubert for his precious help and his attentive rereading.