Louis ARAGON. Feu de joie. With a drawing by Pablo Picasso. - Lot 38

Louis ARAGON. Feu de joie. With a drawing by Pablo Picasso. Paris, Au Sans Pareil, 1920. In-12, red morocco, smooth spine, gilt geometric decoration on front cover, cover preserved (F. Simon). First edition. Numbered copy on vergé bouffant. The author's first published collection of poems, illustrated with a full-page cubist composition by Picasso. Fine autograph letter signed on the title page: à René Branallec, / mes excuses de 1935 / pour un livre qui a / été mon "livre de guerre" / Aragon Although some of the poems date from Aragon's period of mobilization, the collection, which went to press on December 10, 1919, is silent on the circumstances of its creation. This "ignorant attitude" was severely criticized by the militant communist: "The characteristic of these young people without a coherent ideology, of which I was one, was basically to judge everything according to their aesthetics" (Pour expliquer ce que j'étais). Louis Aragon's autograph manuscript of the poem Fugue (8 lines in blue ink on a fragment of mourning paper) is bound at the head. The poem was published in Feu de joie, but without the punctuation used in the manuscript. Ex-libris Emmy Joubert.