Jean ROUSSELOT (1913-2004), poète et écrivain Lot n° 32

5 L.A.S. to Max Bilen. 1985-1989. 9 pp. in-8 and in-4. Wetness at the bottom of a letter. Beautiful friendly correspondence full of reflections on the condition of the poet, drawn from the work of Max Bilen, in particular The Subject of Writing. "I am struck by the comparison between Jewishness and the kind of negritude that is the condition of the poet. Except that the poet is a member of a community more cursed than chosen, which has not had to undergo exile since it is itself, despite my assertion (there is no exile - 1954), more ontological it is true than poetic, nor to undergo genocide, it being obvious that it is, quite obviously, in danger of extinction. That poetry remains "the absolute reality" as Novalis has told us, is what I still believe [...]. In my big essay Death or Survival of Language (1968), I tried to show the interval between the thing and the language that says it, which is sometimes the object and the subject of poetry [...]".