Un balcon en forêt
“Marvelous by virtue of simplicity, attention to things, and the supernatural.”
First edition of Julien Gracq's last great novel.
A very fine copy, one of 50 from the deluxe edition, no. 1, preserved in wrappers, partially unopened, as issued.
12mo of 253 pp.
Publisher’s brochure, partially unopened copy, slipcase.
185 x 120 mm.
Gracq, Julien. A Balcony in the Forest.
Librairie José Corti, 1958.
First edition of the “last great Gracq novel” (F. Gasté).
One of 50 copies from the deluxe edition, no. 1.
“An absolute masterpiece where nothing happens except for the nagging wait and the sudden eruption of war” (P. Ratte).
A Balcony in the Forest is a third-person narrative that begins in 1939, with Officer Cadet Grange taking command during the “Phoney War,” at the fortified house of the Falizes in the Ardennes forest, and ends on May 13, 1940, after the German attack.
At the center of this universe stands a blockhouse, built deep in the forest, on a height overlooking the Meuse. The officer was both buried and perched there, accompanied by three soldiers of rural origin. Now and then, supplies and mail come up from the valley, orders even more rarely. War is absence and emptiness. Its silence is unsettling and, in so doing, subtly disturbing, but above all, it invites forgetfulness.
The work remains attached to Gracq’s great poetic tales, inviting the reader to many tête-à-têtes with a nature that represents the necessarily complementary counterpart. (New Dictionary of Works).
“Never before had Grange felt, as he did this evening, the sensation of living in a forgotten forest: all the vastness of the Ardennes seemed to breathe in that clearing of ghosts, just as the heart of an enchanted forest throbs around its spring.”
“Marvelous in its simplicity, its attention to things and its touch of the supernatural, it shows what a cadet named Grange witnessed of the war of 1939–40... The few characters brought to the stage are ordinary people. The author does not analyze them, but they live. His style has become more stripped-down over the years. Less enchanting but more convincing, he is prodigiously skilled at capturing, with scrupulous patience, the beauty and weight behind the froth of the everyday.”
Beautiful copy preserved in its original wrappers, partially unopened, as issued.
