GENET, Jean.

Le Journal du voleur. October 1947. Autograph manuscript signed : modern black morocco slipcase by Loutrel. Published clandestinely in 1948, Le Journal du voleur marks the end of the autobiographical series begun with Querelle de Brest and continued by Pompes funèbres, Notre-Dame des fleurs and Le Miracle de la rose. Halfway between a formative novel and a philosophical essay, it relates the difficult asceticism of its author towards evil (an asceticism he calls "sanctity"), associated with homosexuality and theft. The deliberately assumed infamy is both a manifestation of freedom and a source of poetry. (Under the direction of Henri Mitterand, Dictionnaire des oeuvres du XX e siècle, 1995, p. 253.) Signed autograph manuscript: its reappearance in the Jacques Guérin sale in 1986 caused a sensation. It offers the third known state of the text, close to the final version. The manuscript consists of 156 small leaves in-4 on squared school paper, including a signed and dated title sheet, under a cover of a notebook, also titled and signed. In blue or black ink, paginated from 1 to 87 then from 1 to 51 (some leaves bis and ter), and in blue pencil, in another hand, for the typing. It also includes autograph additions, on tabs of different sizes or on the back of some leaves, ranging from two to about fifteen lines. The manuscript, complete in itself, corresponds to about two thirds of the published novel, the story having been modified and enlarged afterwards by Jean Genet. It presents some variations: some passages are missing or follow each other differently (description of the Ramblas of Barcelona or evocation of the Lady of the Unicorn, for example), minimal modifications of certain words or syntax, the name of Java is indicated whereas Genet will sometimes leave it blank in the final text... These minimal differences can be read from the very first lines of the manuscript (p. 1101, edition of the Pléiade): If one speaks of the violence of a man, it is less a matter of a tumultuous manifestation as anger sometimes provokes, but of an audacity at rest in love with perils. It can be read in a look, a walk, a smile, and it is in you that it produces the turmoil, it is you that it dismantles. This violence is a calm which agitates you. The last page of this manuscript ends with an essay identical to the one that will be found in the final version, before the developments on the character of Armand (p. 268, 1949 edition, p. 1287, in the Pléiade): However, if the oppositions of vile and noble were to remain, would I have been able to unravel in them the moments of pride, of rigor, to recognize them as the scattered elements of a severity that I want to gather in myself, in order to obtain a voluntary masterpiece. As early as 1943, Le Journal du voleur was mentioned in the publishing contract established with Paul Morihien, commissioned by Cocteau, but Jean Genet did not begin writing it until 1945. The first extracts were published in Les Temps modernes in July-August 1946. The original edition appeared at Geneva, probably in the fall of 1948: it was published anonymously "At the expense of a friend" by Albert Skira and printed in 410 copies off the shelf. This first edition is dedicated "To Castor, To Sartre". (In 1952, Jean-Paul Sartre published a Saint Genet, comédien et martyr which was to be decisive in the recognition of the writer.) Then, in July 1949, Gallimard published a second edition of the Journal du voleur with a text censored by the author himself. The original text, as it had appeared in 1948, has just been republished for the first time in the Pléiade collection (2021). Provenance: Jacques Guérin (cat. June 4, 1986, no. 83: "This manuscript can be qualified as a capital piece").