Lot n° 112
Estimation :
3000 - 4000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 3 640EUR
BLANCHOT (Maurice).
26 autograph letters signed to Jean PAULHAN. 34 p. in-8 or in-16 most often without dates, rather from the 60s.
Beautiful letters of which we can only give some extracts, without order. Dominique Aury, Roger Judrin, Pierre Oster, Georges Bataille, Albert Camus, Jules Supervielle, Marcel Arland and the whole team around and beside Paulhan appear at some point in these pages.
About Albert Camus: wasn't it touching, this so embarrassed detour by which, writing, he tried to reach this simplicity which was otherwise so natural to him and which he found all the more difficult as he was less resigned to lose it or as he did not want to find another one?
I was reading this week "Le Pont traversé", and always with the same feeling of knowing everything that this book gives me, I mean as if I suddenly knew more than I could possibly know. This movement should help me get closer to reading your pages. Thank you for this gift of friendship.
I would like to give you these pages on Camus now (too late and too early) [Camus died on January 4, 1960], so that they remain at your disposal. In January, I sent you a column entitled "Interview on a change of era". In order to leave some time after the tribute issue, this column could appear first? (...)
Will you mind if I join the tribute that the magazine pays to Supervielle? But, of course, if these pages do not seem to you to be appropriate, do not take into account it...
Don't be irritated by the way, undoubtedly rude, in which I could not refrain from using "Le Pont traversé". You know how attached I am to this book, how it never ceases to speak to me, each time gently surprising me by enriching me with my ignorance. (...) In the same way that I remain grateful for R. Judrin's book ["La Vocation transparente de Jean Paulhan", 1961] for the letters that he allows me to read and that I have read and still read with a strange emotion...
What is happening? Indeed, your friendship has discerned it well: often rather joyful, in any case, not very surprised. As for my relationship with the judge (which continues), it has taught me something not only about judges, but also about philosophy. I saw there, with a kind of recognition, that philosophy had not completely lost its scandalous force, as if, in this privileged place that is the judge's chambers, quiet abstract sentences found their shaking powers. Here are 2 chronicles, also very abstract, alas (but which do not shake anything)...
I am worried about Georges Bataille's health, although he is apparently better and even willing to move back to the Saint-Sulpice district at the end of the year. I don't know what serious threatens him... ... how to tell you, without confusion, of my poor embarrassment. Will I talk about Gilles de Rais by Georges Bataille (but?). There is also a book by Jünger which claims to show that we are out of history, which seems to have come to an end some time ago; which would allow us to talk about Father Teilhard and also perhaps to ask why the idea of our radical destruction by a few bombs raises universally among scientists and thinkers - including, I believe, the surrealists - a perhaps frivolous reprobation. That politicians seek to oppose it, nothing to say, but it seems to me that it is not the possibility of this destruction that is nihilistic, but the refusal to want to think about this possibility and the concern to give it so much importance (but does all this need to be said?)
I have the impression that, this time, we hold the ideal Critics' Prize: with La Chambre des enfants [by Louis-René des Forêts]. Apart from our two valiant academics, wouldn't it be fair to call upon generations different from ours - for example Georges Lambrichs, Yves Berger? And wouldn't it be better to stop bothering Thierry Maulnier by not counting him in a jury where he obviously doesn't like it? In this case, what better replacement could we find for him than his former disciple, Claude Roy, an excellent critic, perhaps a little too liberal, but it would be a good answer to those who reproach us for lacking in liberalism.
But, dear Jean, you have acted for the better, taking for yourself the concern of this matter and sparing us the trouble of deliberating. And finally, since we need academics, I will say, without delicacy, that we have not lost out: moreover, doctors, that will give health to the Prize and perhaps to the whole jury.
Finally, in order not to put you in trouble and also because the heart does not allow much more, I will limit myself, if you will, to this page which brings nothing to your issue but a shadow of friendship
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