Les contrerimes, édition originale

Les contrerimes - Edition originale - 1921

Réf. 85629

€ 6000.00

Paul-Jean TOULET

Paris - Le Divan - 1921

Bookbinder : Semet & Plumelle
Format : In-12
Number of volumes : 1 volume
Binding : Hardcover
Collation : 155 pp

Preserved in a lined slipcase and a light brown half-morocco slipcover with a small overlap. Fauve morocco leather binding with a long-grain Jansenist pattern. All edges gilt. Green morocco leather linings, fauve silk endpapers. Covers and spine preserved. Embellished with an autographed leaf mounted on a tab. Jacket and slipcase slightly rubbed. Binding signed by Semet & Plumelle.

FIRST EDITION of this iconic collection, published only after the author’s death. One of the very few unset first-edition copies printed on China paper. This copy is enhanced by a pasted-in autograph sheet dated December 19, 1919, containing variants and unpublished versions of four couplets and a song. A rhythmic technique invented by Toulet, the contrerime is a quatrain composed of alternating lines of 8 and 6 syllables. Toulet composed a large number of them before the war, compiling them into a collection he simply titled *Les Contrerimes*, whose originality and freedom of tone quickly attracted attention. Toulet’s seminal work, *Les Contrerimes*, would ultimately have to wait before being published by Henri Martineau at Éditions du Divan—a publication of which Toulet would never learn, as he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1920. “If living is a duty, when I have botched it, Let my shroud at least serve as my mystery. One must know how to die, Faustine, and then be silent: To die like Gilbert by swallowing his key.”

A splendid copy