Le temps déborde
“It surpasses all that Eluard signed with his name” (Aragon).
First edition.
An attractive copy with 11 photos of Man Ray and Dora Maar, preserved in a superb binding by Leroux.
In-4, black calf boards covered with a white, black and grey printed silk cloth and set with black box mosaics, smooth spine titled in long, gilt head, covers preserved, silk slightly frayed and unstuck at the bottom corner of the first board, lined case (Binding by Leroux)
185 x 245 mm.
Eluard, Paul (under the pseudonym of Didier Desroches) - Man Ray & Dora Maar. Le temps deborde.
Paris, Editions Cahier d'art, 1947.
First edition.
Edition announced at 500 numbered copies on vellum (n°139). According to a copy annotated by Eluard, the edition would have been only 258 copies, due to the lack of paper.
« The paper necessary for the manufacture of this work was offered by Gallimard, but we could print only 258 copies and not 500 as announced in the "achevé d'imprimer » (according to a note from Paul Eluard).
Le temps déborde is a collection of 11 poems, illustrated with 11 photographs of Nusch Eluard, taken by Man Ray and Dora Maar. The two artists were able to render the brilliance of the model through sublime black and white photographs.
The book was published in 1947, a few months after the sudden and unexpected death of Nusch, the companion of Paul Eluard. Some of the poems were written before her death, marking a break with the later poems, filled with deep sadness.
In 1965, Aragon, during a tribute to his friend, mentioned his discovery of this masterpiece:
« He signed it with an invented name Didier Desroches, because he had killed Paul Eluard. I let him say. What he had shown me of Didier was of a confounding beauty. This little book which was to appear as the work of an unknown, it is an understatement to say that in my eyes it surpasses all that Eluard signed with his name. I thought it then, and I think it today »
A rare and attractive copy.
