[ORIGINAL EDITION WITH 20 ORIGINAL WATERCOLORS... - Lot 290 - Marie-Saint Germain

Lot 290
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[ORIGINAL EDITION WITH 20 ORIGINAL WATERCOLORS... - Lot 290 - Marie-Saint Germain
[ORIGINAL EDITION WITH 20 ORIGINAL WATERCOLORS BY ROJAN]. Free verse. Champigny, au Panier Fleuri [René Bonnel, Paris, 1926]. In-4. First edition, filled cover printed in red and black. Enriched with 20 original watercolor drawings by Fédor Rojankovski, known as Rojan. Limited edition of 125 copies on Hollande van Gelder laid paper. His friend Jean Cocteau will never get over it. Raymond Radiguet (1903-1923) dies aged barely twenty years. The world of literature loses too quickly one of its most talented writers. The manuscript of Vers Libres, composed of very sulphurous poems, written by this young prodigal, author of Le Diable au corps, was then circulated. The editor of curiosa, René Bonnel publishes them with the help of his accomplice Pascal Pia: "It is difficult to say what was exactly the importance of the role of Pascal Pia in the "discovery" of the manuscripts having belonged according to him to Miss Beatrix Hastings [? Cocteau was furious and contested the attribution. According to Pia: "At the instigation of Jean Cocteau, whom Massis and Maritain had just brought back to the court of penitence and who wanted Radiguet to have been, too, an exemplary Christian, Mr. Radiguet father and the publisher Bernard Grasset, acting one as owner, the other as assignee of the works of the young writer who had died in 1924, lodged a complaint against X... for forgery. Had Cocteau persuaded them that these poems of Radiguet were apocryphal? It is not certain. In publishing, forgery does not necessarily mean imitation; it is a term that applies to any reproduction of a text made without the permission of the author or his successors. Since Cocteau's death, Radiguet's family has admitted the authenticity of the poems that were once claimed to be fake. Some wealthy patrons were saddened that Pia and Bonnel had chosen to publish the text without illustration. Their decision was made. Who better than Feodor Rojankovsky, known as Rojan, could have produced such a work, who was particularly well known at the time for the quality of his illustrations for children's books. The work remains one of the most beautiful successes of the world of curiosa. So successful that a few years later, one of these works was chosen to be the subject of two editions, enriched with reproductions of the drawings. Bibliography: Pia 499 and Dutel 2590.
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