Description
GIDE (André).
Amyntas. Mopsus. Travel Notes. From Biskra to Touggourt. Renouncing the Journey.
Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1906. — 16mo, 164 x 110: 291 pp., (2 ff.), printed cover. Black box, a horizontal rectangular piece of purple box inlaid in the centre of the covers, decorated with curved gilt lines and a piece of orange box on the front cover, and three curved gilt lines on the back cover, gilt headband, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved, with a spine and overlapping flaps, edged slipcase (Gertrude Lénore).
First edition – with the exception of *Feuilles de route* – printed in a run of 350 copies on Arches laid paper, unnumbered.
Under this title, Gide compiled travel notes written between 1896 and 1904 whilst in Africa. As Diana Lefter (Centre d’études gidiennes) points out, ‘he is not merely a holidaymaker in search of the exotic, but an experienced traveller, seeking sensations by choice, not by chance. These impressions, at once enduring and almost reasoned, oscillate between a taste for the strange – fuelled by the mystery and oriental charm of the narrow streets and squares – and sensual delight, evoked in an imaginary dialogue between Mopsus and Menalque on the ecstasy aroused by ‘the nuanced emptiness of the desert’. This ecstasy echoes that of rest, when Gide compares the African land to Virgil’s Arcadia, the promised land of peace. Amyntas, finally, becomes both a tribute to and a challenge to the sun: no longer a destructive celestial body, but an invitation to life, to turmoil. This is Gide’s victorious cry; like Amyntas, the shepherd from Virgil’s *Bucolics*, he dares to measure himself against Phoebus, his master.”
A very fine copy bound by Gertrude Lénore.
Slight water stain on pages 9 to 15.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
About the sale
Claude Mozis Library – Black Africa and the African diaspora
Auction location
Auction time
10/21/2026 at 2:00 PM
Lot description modified on 10/09/2026 at 11:29 AM
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