Lot n° 11
Estimation :
50000 - 60000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 55 900EUR
BEAUVOIR Simone de (1908-1986).
Autograph MANUSCRIT (and partly in corrected typescript) signed "S. de Beauvoir", Les Mandarins, [1949-1953]; 956 leaves in-4 (27 x 21 cm), of which about 300 typed, mounted on tabs, bound in 2 volumes of jansenist red morocco, edge-to-edge lining and cream calf endpapers, gilt edges on witnesses, folder and slipcase (Pierre-Lucien
Martin, with his invoice enclosed).
Precious working manuscript of this major work by Simone de
Beauvoir, which received the 1954 Prix Goncourt.
Les Mandarins was published by Gallimard on October 21, 1954; Simone de Beauvoir had been working on it since 1950. "In this novel, dedicated to Nelson
Algren, she put a lot of herself. More than any other, she experienced through him the afflictions and the uplifting joys of writing. It is an evocation of the hopes and lost illusions of a group of French intellectuals after the 1939-1945 war, interweaving collective history and individual destinies. Two protagonists stand out against the backdrop:
Anne, a psychoanalyst married to Robert Dubreuilh, a famous writer who was very committed to the left, and Henri Perron, a writer and journalist. The novelist has projected herself into both her heroes - Anne embodying her nocturnal, tragic side, the point of view of the absolute and of death, Henri her love of life, the diurnal, solar, active side. Anne lives a passionate and painful love with an American writer, Henri breaks up with a mistress he no longer loves. Shaken by the crumbling of the fraternity that emerged from the Resistance, by the discovery of Soviet labour camps, by the rise of the Cold War, they lose and regain hope in a better future. In this context, the story is full of intrigue and complexity - travel, love, friendship, eroticism, conflict, conflict, rivalry, revenge, reconciliation - underpinned by a questioning of our reasons for being. The success was considerable: forty thousand copies sold in one month" (Sylvie Lebon de Beauvoir), and the Prix Goncourt.
The manuscript, mainly on squared paper written on both sides in blue-black ink, shows countless erasures and corrections, with some verses crossed out with two cross strokes; it incorporates typed sheets with abundant additions, deletions and autograph corrections, and was given to a typist (see, for example, the instructions on f. 684, and illegible words underlined in red pencil by the typist); the resulting typescript was probably also altered before being handed over to Gallimard in January 1954.
At Christmas 1954, Simone de Beauvoir offered the manuscript to the poet Monny de Boully (1904-1968) and his companion Paulette Grobermann (1902-1995), mother of Claude Lanzmann, who had become Simone de Beauvoir's companion during the writing of The Mandarins. Reading the work from the manuscript of about 1,500 pages was almost impossible at the time, because the pages followed a different order, complicated by some 400 sheets of duplicates and preparatory drafts, which were later removed (they are now in the BnF). Moreover, Beauvoir had paginated her manuscript, in the upper right-hand corner, but many leaves also bear an older foliation, centred at the top of the front.
In 1956, the writer Léon Aréga, to whom Monny de Boully had entrusted the collation of this manuscript, reclassified it in the order of the published text, and refoliated it in fuchsia ink, from 1 to 956; interspersed with Aréga's notes, after a typed presentation of his work, are notes by Aréga, pointing out gaps and textual disparities. This reconstitution of the document allows for an in-depth study of the author's work. Thus we discover that folio 27 in Aréga's numbering, originally "551 - Anne", in Beauvoir's handwriting, bears a new pagination by the author: "1", testifying that its author thought, for a moment, of beginning Les
Mandarins thus: "No, it is not today that I will know my death; not today nor any other day; for me to tell it, it will take the whole infi ni of an instant. I will have died for others without ever having seen myself die. These lines became the introduction to Chapter I, ii. Moreover, the opening sentences of the novel are found on a sheet of paper folioed "552" by Beauvoir, then paginated "51" by herself, and finally refiled "1" by Aréga. The wording differs from that published in the second sentence: "Henri took one last look at the sky: a black crystal. A thousand airplanes ransacking this silence, it was impossible to imagine; a stupid vignette stubbornly stuck in his eyes: against the map of the Netherlands, a grey-green soldier; but the words kept on coming back and forth in his head with a joyful noise: offensives stopped, German debacle, it's the end, a real Christmas party"...
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