Lot n° 140
Estimation :
30000 - 40000
EUR
QUENEAU Raymond . - Lot 140
QUENEAU Raymond .
Autograph MANUSCRIPTS of his Journals, 1914-1965; over 2,000 pages in various formats, plus 170 pages in corrected typescript.
Exceptional collection of the various diaries kept by Queneau throughout his life, in notebooks, notepads and loose sheets.
Although he was not obliged to keep his diary regularly, Raymond Queneau did, during several periods of his life, engage in this exercise which met an episodic need and took on various forms. A diary, to which he entrusted the vagaries of his feelings and desires, convictions and opinions, with a constant desire for lucidity that we find in his astonishing accounts of dreams, carefully recorded from 1928 to 1932; a literary diary, of course, a mine of information on publishing and artistic life, from the surrealist movement to the Gallimard nebula; but also memoranda, itineraries, quotations, reading notes, sometimes with small sketches... Far from operating in the literary genre explored by the Goncourts or Gide, Queneau kept a sort of logbook, "a testimony of frankness" (he wrote in 1930), which he called "a book of the past". (he wrote in 1930), for personal use.
The notes taken from day to day were sometimes edited, in a retrospective movement: thus, the diary that the schoolboy kept in Le Havre from the age of 13 to 20 is known to us through the Journal du Havre, copied into a notebook in 1923, and partly typed (and corrected) in the Journal d'un jeune homme paüvre (1920-1927). The dream accounts (1928-1932) were recorded day by day, with a system of coloured inks to differentiate between dreams and their interpretation. The notebooks of the "War Diary" (1939-1940) were revised by Queneau, who removed passages with scissors. From 1949 onwards, Queneau opted for a continuous numbering system for his notes.
We have tried to present these disparate elements as best we can, referring to Anne Isabelle Queneau's edition of the Journaux (Gallimard, 1996, 1240 p.) [
J], some elements having however remained unpublished.
A. Journal du Havre (1914-1923). Hardbound notebook, in-4 (21.6 x 17 cm), beige cloth, lined paper. 117 autograph pages in black ink plus 1 detached page inserted. The beginning of the manuscript, carefully edited, was written by Queneau from notes taken in previous years, probably in 1917 (on the first page, Queneau made his accounts: "Résumé du 1er Trimestre 1917", which has remained unpublished; he values his library at 569 F). He continued to keep his journal afterwards. This diary was started in Le Havre on April 15, 1914, continued in Paris, in Épinay and during his various trips (to England, Alsace, Grenoble...) until the last entry on April 26, 1923. [J 11-115]. An inserted sheet tells of the trip to Grenoble in early October 1922 [J 102-103], with some variants, a plan and some unpublished notes. B. Diary (1923-1927). Autograph manuscript, 68 ff. paginated later than 1-83 (pages 1-27 on sheets of in-4 school notebook, the rest on various formats (including sheets of small notebook), from July 26, 1923 to 1927 [J 115-148]. A few passages have remained unpublished, including (p. 67) two short accounts of dreams on April 3 and 5, 1927, and a crossed-out paragraph (p. 82) on God and poverty: "God is the favourite word of the abandoned boats where the monotony of ordered meals groans, which weigh down like butchers the small dose of hope left the night before on the night table. [...] these saveloy eaters and hostess eaters stuff their pockets with banknotes stained with the sweat of their work or their baseness. I don't understand the value of money and what wealth or poverty means"... C. The Diary of a Poor Young Man (1920-1927). Corrected typescript, 85 ff. in-4 (27x 21 cm) typewritten, with numerous autograph additions and corrections in ink, with glued in blocks. In a folder bearing the autograph title: "Le Journal d'un Jeune Homme Paüvre (1920-1927)", a second title in capital letters (Journal d'un Paüvre Jeune Homme corrigé) with the crossed-out mention "seventeen to twenty-four years", and the epigraph "Alas what a poor young man / Later I became (Oak and dog)". This typescript includes, from May 18, 1920, the text of the Journal du Havre, until April 1923 (ff. 1-46), and then the text of the Journal manuscripts until November 27, 1927 [J 65-149]. Attached is a typewritten copy (double carbon) of the Journal, from April 17, 1920, to November 27, 1927 (86 ff. in-4, some cuts to last pages).
D. Autograph notes (1917-1939). - Diary (November 28-29 [1919]), fragment cut out, different from the edited text [J 43]. - Unpublished school notebook page titled "Diary since November 12, 1920," with ep.
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