LECUIRE (Pierre). ROUAN (François) ill. Carnet romain. - Lot 126

LECUIRE (Pierre). ROUAN (François) ill. Carnet romain. Exceptional book-object by Pierre Lecuire, in the form of a handwritten notebook produced in only 3 copies, and illustrated with original red gel-pen drawings by François Rouan. Paris, Pierre Lecuire, 2007. Manuscript contained in a small oblong notebook (11 × 16 cm), 39ff. in beige cloth-covered bradel boards. In this "Roman Notebook", made up of 30 handwritten sheets of text, 7 original drawings by François Rouan and 9 handwritten sheets of notes, "the temptation of a book" as the poet writes in the final pages of notes, Pierre Lecuire retraces the "road to Italy" he made in 1948, after having chosen Florence, his wife, and then Rome, twenty years later... "LE PANORAMA DE LA VIA APPIA signs the landscape / SUR LE TIBRE is a mystery / VILLA D'ESTE is a hymn to the pure joy of water, its sacredness". This book is unlike any other in the poet Pierre Lecuire's output, and remains perfectly unknown until now, since only 3 copies were made, all handwritten, justified and signed by the two artists, of which the one presented here appears to be the first to be marketed. Biographical note published in "Livres de Pierre Lecuire", a monograph devoted to the poet by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: "The French poet Pierre Lecuire represents an undoubtedly unique case in contemporary literary creation. His complete works are now part of the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, where they form the Pierre and Mila Lecuire fonds. "I don't make my books to shelter or hide my poems. They are neither my alibis nor my retreats. They are the last, monumental, finished expression of the Poem. A poet who has chosen the difficult path of merging his poem with the Book, Lecuire works in collaboration with the artists he has chosen for his books: Nicolas de Staël, Lanskoy, Etienne Hajdu, Geneviève Asse, Charchoune, Vera Pagava, Aguayo, François Rouan and others. He also works with the artisans who create books: typographers (Fequet et Baudier, François Da Ros, Francis Mérat), stencillers (Atelier Leblanc), colorists and papermakers. As a poet and architect of the Book, he orders all the elements, the "fundamentals" of the Book - text, space, rhythm, lines, colors - until they form a unity, as perfect as possible. The meeting of Nicolas de Staël and Pierre Lecuire in Paris in March 1945 was decisive in the young poet's search for a personal form of expression.