QUENEAU Raymond. - Lot 154

Lot n° 154
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3000 - 4000 EUR
QUENEAU Raymond. - Lot 154
QUENEAU Raymond. autograph manuscript, [En passant, 1944]; 48 pages small in-4 in a Student Book. Complete manuscript of this play in two acts. En passant, "one act plus one act to precede a drama," was published in April 1944 in No. 8 of the journal L'Arbalète; the play was premiered in April 1947 at the Agnès Capri theater, by the Masques nus company, directed by Pierre Gout, in front of a photographic set by Brassaï, as a "curtain raiser" to Luigi Pirandello's drama La vie que je t'ai donnée. Queneau's play, set in a metro corridor, presents two symmetrical acts, whose characters and events respond to each other in pairs. With its dominant poetic tone and verbal humour reminiscent of the theatre of the absurd, this play is linked to the themes of incommunicability and impossible dreams. The manuscript, in black ink, consists of 48 pages from two notebooks, preserved in a grey-green Student Book cover: the first act (25 pages) on lined paper (22.5 x 14.6 cm), and the "2nd tableau" (23 pages) on large-square schoolbook paper (22.5 x 17.6 cm). It shows numerous and important erasures, corrections, deletions and additions, in ink or pencil, with notably a dozen pages crossed out; as well as numerous variants with the published version, notably the first name of the heroine Irène, who will become Odile. A title sheet with the letterhead of the nrf shows the original title crossed out "Un invité" (A guest), replaced by Un passant (A passer-by), with two pairs of characters: "Joachim / Le Passant" (Joachim / The passer-by) and "Irène / La Mendiante" (Irène / The beggar). Attached are the invitation to the dress rehearsal and the program of the Agnès Theatre Capri; plus a photocopy of the publication in review.
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