From Blanchot to Marcel Arland, future immortel
Le Livre à venir.
Paris: Gallimard, [1959].
Price: $1,250.00
About the item
First edition, review copy, marked S.P. on back cover. 308 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Original wrappers printed in red and black. Fine.
Item #353650
Inscribed on the half title by the author, “Pour Marcel Arland avec une forte amitié Blanchot”.
Marcel Arland (1899-1986) won the prix Goncourt in 1929 for L'Ordre and was awarded the grand prix de l'Académie française in 1952; he was elected to the Académie française in 1968, succeeding André Maurois.
Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), philosopher and literary critic, was awarded the Prix Henri Dumarest in 1939. He joined the Nouvelle Revue Française in 1942; after the war, he wrote a monthly column from 1953 to 1968, which served as the raw materials for his many volumes of criticism. In Le Livre à venir, Blanchot ranges from Rousseau and Mallarmé and Proust to Samuel Beckett.
Reclusive by temperament, he was nonetheless profoundly engaged in French cultural and political thought. He wote the final version of the Manifeste des 121, calling upon French soldiers in Algeria to desert rather than enagge in torture. In 1968, he took to the streets during the protests of May 1968, and there met Jacques Derrida, who, like Blanchot, was deeply interested in the writings of Mallarmé; Derrida delivered the eulogy at Banchot’s funeral.
A NOTABLE ASSOCIATION COPY.
