Jean PAULHAN. Lot n° 235

Le Pont traversé. Paris, Camille Bloch, 1921. In-16 : marbled paper boards à la Bradel, entirely untrimmed, cover preserved (period binding). First edition: limited edition of 575 copies on Arches laid paper. One of the 75 first copies out of trade, numbered in Roman numerals (no. XVIII). Autograph letter signed: to Paul Eluard, Jean P. Paul Eluard has had two autograph letters from Jean Paulhan addressed to him mounted at the head of the book. A first one, signed, of 2 pages in-12, in which Paulhan evokes André Breton: "I haven't found any flies; but I'm going to learn how to raise them: they grow in vinegar. [...] André Breton wrote me a charming dispatch. If I haven't answered him yet, it's because I don't know what to answer. (I would be quite ready to join, with five or six of us, a secret society, with strict rules and threats.) It is strange that at bottom we have never spoken [sic]." The second, on a postcard, unsigned: Paulhan asks that his initials be removed from an advertisement, with this comment, "Have we reached the pompous moment of our friendship." "It's true your reading of Tzara worries me. Also this Lischtfousse. About this Leon, what surprised you: Jacques Vaché, if he had been Jewish, his letters would be different. There is an intellectual "quality" of the Jews, where they have a desperate spirit, which is unique. (But anti-Semites are pretty much alone in having a hunch - or a concern.)"