QUENEAU Raymond. - Lot 204

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Lot n° 204
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QUENEAU Raymond. - Lot 204
QUENEAU Raymond. Autograph MANUSCRIT, Morale élémentaire, [1973-1975] ; 108 pages in-4, and 16 pages in-4 or in-8. Complete manuscript of Queneau's last collection of poetry, with a supplementary file. Morale élémentaire was published in October 1975 by Gallimard in the - the Blanche collection; Queneau worked on it from April 1973 to May 1975. It is Raymond Queneau's last collection of poetry, and his last book. "Morale élémentaire is the best I have written," he wrote in his diary a few months before his death. The collection, divided into three parts, is based on a complex hidden structure. The first part is made up of 51 "lipoleps". - The first part is made up of 51 "lipolepses", a form invented by Queneau in the tradition of Oulipian exercises, the next two parts bring together 16 and 64 prose poems, expressing both the self and the world, a spiritual quest before the coming death, organized according to the I Ching, or Book of Changes, a very ancient book of Chinese wisdom. The manuscript includes the manuscripts of the three parts of Elementary Morals. I. The manuscript of the first part consists of 50 pages numbered 1-50, on the front of sheets of vellum paper (27 x 21 cm). According to the dates at the end of some of the poems, the writing of the poems began in April-May 1973 and was completed on 'Easter Monday 1974'. This part is composed of what Queneau called "lipolepses", a term coined from two Greek verbs meaning "I take" and "I leave". An autograph note from Queneau (1 p. in-4, with his typing), attached to the file, and intended to accompany the publication of some of these poems in La Nouvelle Revue française, defines the fixed form of these poems: "First three times plus one noun plus adjective (or participle) groups with some repetitions, rhymes, alliterations, echoes ad libitum; then a small parenthesis of seven lines of one to five syllables; finally a conclusion of three plus one noun plus adjective (or participle) groups repeating more or less some of the twenty-four words used in the first part. Verses of six, seven or eight syllables (eight at most) in the parenthesis, but the substantive-adjective order is absolutely imperative. Purely internal "reasons" have determined this form, which was not preceded by any explicable mathematical or rhythmic research"... The first poem of the collection ("redone on 15 Sept. The first poem of the collection ("redone on Sept. 15" is noted on the manuscript) will serve as an example: "Dark Isis Green fruit Spotted animal Clear neologisms Red flower Transparent attitude Orange star Clear spring Brown forest Red boar Bleating herd Clear tree A boat on the water alone follows the current A crocodile bites the keel in vain Ochre Isis Furnished statue Apricot totem Clear neologisms" These poems with an inflexible structure have nothing to do with rhetorical exercises. On the contrary, they are full of personal elements and even form a kind of autobiography. There are allusions to his late wife Janine, to his time in surrealism ("Songe creux / Songe pâle / Songerie blême / Singerie vide"), to the bombing of Le Havre ("Ville rasée / Ville pliée / Ville concassée / Ruines générales"), to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés of the 1950s ("Vertiges vainqueurs / Alcools rocailleux / Comptoirs sirupeux / Échos noachites") A file of preparatory or discarded poems (14 ff. in-4 or in-8, 6 of which on nrf paper), in black ink or blue pen, shows in particular that Queneau had the idea of composing lipolepses from famous poems in French literature, or even from his own works; thus for Mallarmé: "Glaive nu / siècle épouvanté / voix étrange / Sursaut vil", or for Pierrot mon ami: "moyenne petite / temps beau / autos électriques / manèges déserts"; but also Ronsard, du Bellay, Malherbe, Lamartine's Le Lac, Baudelaire's Le Balcon, Verlaine... II and III. The manuscript, in black ink, is paginated from 1-58, on sheets torn from large-square schoolbooks (22 x 17 cm), except for the first sheet of wove paper (27 x 21 cm). It contains erasures and corrections (249 words or passages crossed out, corrected or added), and variants. All the poems are dated, and were written between April 6 and May 19, 1975, at the rate of one or two per day. The last two poems of the manuscript will be placed at the head of Part III. At the head of the file, an autograph table (on a page of a school notebook) is divided into boxes where the 16 poems of Elementary Morality II and the 64 poems of Elementary Morality III are characterized in a few words, according to the I Ching, which is made up of 64 kua, among which Khien represents the principle of activity or masculine and Khouen the principle of passivity or feminine. In the table drawn up by Queneau, in which each box contains a summary in a few words of
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