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213 - [MANUSCRIPT] - DARNETAL (Jacques). Signed autograph manuscri…
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Estimate €300 - €500
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Description
[MANUSCRIPT] - DARNETAL (Jacques). Signed autograph manuscript, "Impressions", "Short Stories" and "The Human Faun". Thirteen unpublished texts written during and immediately after the Great War (1917–1919), combining prose poems, impressions and short stories, including an extract from the novel *Le Faune humain*. A style ranging from irony to disenchantment, revealing the voice of an author who died young and is now forgotten. 1917, 1918, 1919. Quarto volume (280 x 220 mm), Bradel-style cardboard binding, smooth spine with author’s name and title ‘Manuscrit’ in gold lettering. Binding worn with scuffing and damage to the head and corners. A few ink stains and signs of handling. The manuscript consists of an 119-page in-8 notebook (220 x 175 mm), followed by five bundles of 10, 4, 10, 6 and 8 pages in various in-4 and in-8 formats. Contains 13 separate texts, each titled, dated and signed, written between 1917 and 1919 in black and blue ink. Regular handwriting, easy to decipher, with erasures and corrections. On the first double-page spread of the notebook are two wax seals bearing the monogram "JB", titles with corrections and crossings-out, and at the top the epigraph "A book is neither moral nor immoral; it is well or poorly written, that is all" (O. Wilde). The notebook opens with a series of prose poems and/or impressions: “En passant…” (1917), “L’éternelle chimère” (1917, crossed out), “Parallèlement” (1917), “ironie” (undated, crossed out), “A Life” (1917), “Letter to a Blonde Vision – In a Dream” (Nov. 1918), “Character of a Very Ordinary Century” (17 Dec. 1918), “Symphony in White or On Socialism in Love” (10 March 1919) and concludes with 63 pages of an extract from the novel “The Human Faun” (18, 19, 20 March 1919, pages numbered 56–119). This was followed by the short stories "The Conversations of a Madman on the Troubles of the World", Part II (Christmas 1919), “The Man Who Doesn’t Know How to Die!” (January 1919), “The Conversations of a Madman”, Part I (December 1919), “Symphony in White…” (first draft, 9 March 1919). “The False Start” (6 August 1919). A poet and novelist, Jacques Darnetal (Paris, 1900–1938) belongs to that lineage of writers for whom the work constitutes the intimate counterpart of life. A spiritual heir to Laforgue, he blends, in restrained prose, laughter and tears, irony and despair. Beneath an apparent narrative form, his writing remains deeply poetic, animated by acute sensitivity and a cruel lucidity in the face of human failings. He left behind *Le Faune humain*, a novel (Éditions des Écrits libres, 1922), *Patrice*, a novel (Paris, Monde nouveau, 1923), and two unpublished works: *Interludes*, poems, and *Le Livre de Haine*, a novel. (cf. Maurice Rostand).
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About the sale Fine antique and collectible books, manuscripts and modern illustrated works
Auction location
Auction time 06/29/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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