Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$5000.00 + shipping
Description: [48] pp. Plain wrappers with attached dust jacket. Some toning to cover extremities, minor handling wear, near fine. One of 500 numbered copies, although Eluard noted that only 258 copies were printed due to a lack of paper. Eluard's poignant tribute to his wife Nusch, published a few months after her sudden and unexpected death. Illustrated with eleven exquisite photographs of Nusch by Man Ray and Dora Maar. Nusch had also been the subject of Man Ray's camera in the similarly superlative Facile, published ten years earlier (see item 13). In 1965, Louis Aragon, during a tribute to his friend, mentioned his first encounter with the book: "He signed it with an invented name Didier Desroches, because he had killed Paul Eluard. What he had shown me of Didier was of a confounding beauty. This little book which was to appear as the work of an unknown, it is an understatement to say that in my eyes it surpasses all that Eluard signed with his name. I thought it then, and I think it today." A rare and beautiful book.
Seller: Triolet Rare Books, ABAA, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.