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BOISGIRARD - ANTONINI

84 - SEGALEN (VICTOR)
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Estimate €15,000 - €20,000
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Description
SEGALEN (VICTOR) Stèles. Pei-King, published by Pei-T’ang Press, 1912. Volume in folio (288 x 142 mm), accordion-folded, 106 pp. (including the first 2 and last 3 blank endpapers), cream paper cover with a printed title label pasted onto the front cover, the whole housed in a slipcase with the title painted in green on the spine of the slipcase and a paper slipcase featuring a green and white ikat-style pattern. `A genuine first edition, in a limited non-commercial print run of just 286 copies: 81 on Korean imperial paper (like the 81 slabs of the Temple of Heaven’s terrace), the first 21 of which were printed on heavy paper; 1 unnumbered proof copy on the same paper, 2 copies on ‘chine’ paper (one for the author himself, the other for his wife Yvonne) and 2 copies on ‘japon’ paper (one for the author, one as a reserve). These 86 copies were reserved for the author, his close family and friends, including several prominent figures: Paul Claudel (to whom Segalen dedicated this work), Claude Debussy, André Gide, the philosopher Jules de Gaultier and the sinologist Édouard Chavannes. The remaining 200 were printed on vellum. Set on the Lazarist presses in Beijing in May and June 1912, and published on 13 August 1912, this first edition is the only one corrected in Segalen’s own hand; unlike the second edition, the printing of which he was, to his regret, unable to oversee, as it was carried out too quickly for his liking. ‘This edition, with its wood-engraved Chinese characters, will, I believe, constitute a novelty for bibliophiles, for it is not a European booklet decorated in the Chinese style, but an experiment in printing and typesetting in which Chinese bibliophilia plays an equal part to the conventions of European bookmaking: margins, titles, etc.”, letter from Victor Segalen to Augusto Gilbert de Voisins, dated 1912. Complete with the three hand-stamped ‘cinnabar’ red seals at the beginning and end of the volume: ‘古今碑録’ (= ‘Collection of Ancient and Contemporary Steles’), ‘秘 園 之’ (= ‘Seal of Mi Yuan’, ‘Mi Yuan’—meaning ‘Mysterious Garden’—was the author’s literary pseudonym, reserved for close friends), ‘無 朝 心 宣’ (= ‘Intimate Proclamation of the Wao era [= without a dynasty]’, the epigraph of the first stele in the collection). Excellent provenance: copy no. 49, featuring an AUTOGRAPHED DEDICATION to PIERRE LOTI ‘in respectful homage’, dated November 1912 and written in Changdefu. Both a ‘vision of China’ and a major work of 20th-century French literature, this text is rooted in Segalen’s profound experience of the Chinese world. Having begun studying Chinese in 1908, he travelled to China on three occasions: first as a doctor and explorer from 1909 to 1913, then on two archaeological missions in 1913–1914 and in 1917. These journeys gave rise to significant scientific works, notably the ‘First Report on the Archaeological Findings Obtained in Western China by the Mission of Gilbert de Voisins, Jean Lartigue and Victor Segalen’ (1914), published in two instalments (1916) and later supplemented by an atlas (1923–1924). But this immersion also nourished his literary work, inspiring a series of books that explore and reimagine China in various forms, such as *Stèles* (1912), *Peintures* (1916) and *Odes* (1926). ‘The Chinese world depicted in this work is a vast allegory of Segalen’s inner world, serving to express the inexpressible […] This intimate contact with the real China was complemented, through imaginative creation, by a mythical China: ‘it is neither Europe nor China that I have come here to seek, but a vision of China…’, he wrote to Debussy. From then on, many of the texts he sketched out in the evenings whilst travelling would be transformed into poems. The ‘stele’ form he adopted arose from a striking analogy between the stone tablets scattered throughout China and the ‘short, dense prose pieces’ he intended to write even before he had seen them. Condensing and concentrating the language was all the more necessary as he needed to capture those ‘divinatory moments’ which, as he had said of Rimbaud, ‘define the essential poet’.” (Henri Bouillier, in *En Français dans le texte*, BnF, 1998, no. 340). A precious copy bringing together two essential figures of travel writing, Victor Segalen and Pierre Loti, whose life paths were remarkably similar, at the crossroads of literature and military travel. Both were naval officers – Segalen as a naval surgeon, Loti as an officer – which led them to travel the world, notably through Asia and the distant territories of the colonial empire. These experiences profoundly shaped their work: in Loti’s case, they gave rise to tales characterised by exoticism, nostalgia and a certain idealisation of the cultures they encountered, whilst Segalen developed a more intellectual and aesthetic approach to the ‘elsewhere’, seeking to reflect on the notion of diversity rather than romanticise it. Although the younger Segalen initially saw Loti as a prestigious figure and a potential role model, this admiration was soon accompanied by a distancing of himself from Loti. Segalen criticised Loti for a vision of exoticism that he deemed too subjective, melancholic and at times stereotypical. Loti emerges as a forerunner whom Segalen admires, whilst at the same time surpassing and criticising him.
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About the sale Charity sale in aid of the Petits Frères Des Pauvres charity
Auction location
Auction time 10/25/2026 at 10:00 AM
Pictures credits:
Boisgirard Antonini
See original version (French)
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