Anthologie de l'humour noir
"Black humor is constrained by too many things […] but it is, above all, the mortal enemy of sentimentality."
One of 35 copies on pure rag paper, featuring an original decal by Oscar Dominguez, signed and different on each copy.
Octavo, paperback, illustrated cover on both sides, flaps, 262 pages and 20 plates out of text.
232 x 161 mm.
Breton, André. Anthology of Black Humor.
Paris, Éditions du Sagittaire, 1940.
First edition.
Monod, 1917.
One of 35 copies on pure rag paper (No. 40).
The book features an original decalcomania by Oscar Dominguez on the entire cover, different for each copy, here heightened with green gouache and signed.
Only the copies on fine paper are covered with this dust jacket.
Complete with the small slip correcting the note stating a cover by Duchamp for the luxury edition: “M. Marcel Duchamp being currently in America, the cover of the deluxe copies is by Dominguez.”
“Conceived at least since the beginning of 1935, the work saw its first edition, scarcely out of the Sagittaire presses in 1940 after complicated editorial adventures, face a ban on any distribution due to the Vichy government’s censorship, and waited until 1945 to finally find, quietly, its first audience, before embarking on a journey whose success, marked by many reprints, attests that it is one of those books that powerfully shape the profile of an era.” (Étienne-Alain Hubert, in Breton, Œuvres complètes II, 1992).
Breton gathers and introduces each author with a note placing them in the field that he himself defined in a preface entitled “Lightning Rod” in homage to an aphorism by Lichtenberg included in his selection: “Gallows with lightning rod.”
He defines as follows: “Black humor is bounded by too many things, such as stupidity, skeptical irony, jokes without gravity… (the list would be long), but it is above all the mortal enemy of sentimentality, always looking hunted – sentimentality always on a blue background – and of a certain short-term fancy, which too often presents itself as poetry, vainly persists in wanting to subject the mind to its obsolete tricks, and probably will not for long still raise, above the sun among other poppy seeds, its crowned crane’s head.” André Breton, 1939.
This definition serving as a preamble, Breton’s aim is to amass in his anthology the examples, studying how black humor manifests in the diverse works. In any case, it allows Breton to cite some rare or little-known texts, to reveal a definite kinship between writers who influenced surrealism, and to gather the texts of authors as diverse as Swift, Sade, Prévert, Dali, or Kafka.
A very beautiful, unopened copy.
