QUENEAU RAYMOND (1903-1976)

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Lot n° 105
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QUENEAU RAYMOND (1903-1976)
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 complementary file. Morale élémentaire was published in October 1975 by Gallimard in the collection Blanche; Queneau worked on it from April 1973 to May 1975. It is the last poetic collection of Raymond Queneau, and his last book. "Morale élémentaire, it is what I wrote of better", he notes in his newspaper a few months before his death. The collection, divided into three parts, is based on a complex hidden structure. The first part is composed of 51 "lipolepses", a form invented by Queneau in the line of the oulipian exercises, the two following ones gather 16 and 64 poems in prose, expressing at the same time the me and the world, a spiritual quest before the next death, organized according to the I Ching or Book of changes, very ancient book of Chinese wisdom. The manuscript includes the manuscripts of the three parts of Elementary Morality. 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 placed at the end of some of the poems, the writing of the poems began in April-May 1973 and ended 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 the 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 mathematical or rhythmic research that could be explained"... The first poem of the collection ("redone on Sept. 15" is noted on the manuscript) will serve as an example: "Isis sombre Fruit vert Animal tacheté Clear neologisms Red flower Transparent attitude Orange star Clear spring Brown forest Red boar Bleating herd Clear tree A boat on the water alone goes with the current A crocodile bites the keel in vain Ochre Isis Furniture statue Apricot totem pole Clear neologisms". These poems with an inflexible structure have nothing of rhetorical exercises. On the contrary, they are full of personal elements and even draw a kind of autobiography. We find allusions to his missing wife Janine, to his passage in surrealism ("Hollow dream / Pale dream / Pale song / Empty monkey"), to the bombing of Le Havre ("Razed city / Folded city / Crushed city / General ruins"), to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés of the fifties ("Conquering vertigo / Rocky alcohols / Syrupy counters / Noachite echoes"). A file of preparatory or discarded poems (14 ff. in-4 or in-8, of which 6 on nrf paper), in black ink or blue pen, shows in particular that Queneau had the idea of composing lipolepses from famous poems of 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 schoolbooks with large squares (22 x 17 cm), except for the first sheet of wove paper (27 x 21 cm). It presents erasures and corrections (249 words or passages crossed out, corrected or added), and variants. All the poems are dated, and were written from April 6 to 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
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