ONE OF THREE COPIES OUT OF COMMERCE & FRAGMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT

SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL.

La mort dans l'âme, roman. Les chemins de la liberté III. + manuscript-fragment for the novel.

(Paris), Gallimard, (1949).

Uncut and unopened in the orig. printed wrappers, excellent copy + original handwritten manuscript-leaf in ink, 2pp., 4to, for the pages 134-138 in the first edition, containing numerous corrections and emendations as well as a burnt hole from one of Sartre's cigarettes. The paper is watermarked "Herakles". Both items are placed in a very beautiful custom-made red full-morocco box, internally broadened to fit both items, w. single gilt line-borders to boards and back, beatifully gilt titles on back. The manuscript-fragment is placed in a red morocco-backed plastic-folder.

First edition of this splendid and important novel, without doubt the best of the novel-cycle, one of three copies out of commerce printed on "vergé antique blanc", numbered "C".

The manuscript-fragment greatly varies from the printed leaves, and is probably part of Sartre's very first notes to the manuscript, which were written several years before the publication of the work. The work was announced already in 1945 under the title "La Dernière Chance", and was supposed to appear in "Les Temps modernes" in November 1947, but because the work grew to great, Sartre let it become part three of the novel-cycle "Les chemins de la liberté", instead of setting free the characters in the already printed novels (I and II) and casting them as main characters in new independent novels. This work represents one of Sartre's best literary works, and in it he presents us with the existentialist moral sentiments that were philosophically outlined in his main philosophical work, L'être et le néant, but this time in literary form.

"Le volume - qui est sans doute le meilleur de la série - fut écrit en 1947-1948 en même temps, notons-le que l'ébauche de la morale de l'existentialisme promise à la fin de L'ÊTRE ET LE NÉANT. Le première partie couvre chronologiquement la période du 1 au 18 juin 1940 et se termine en laissant Mathieu dans une situation particulièrement despérée; la deuxième partie décrit le début de captivité d'un groupe de soldats francais qui comprend le militant communiste Brunet et un certain Schneider que l'on soupconne d'être un indicateur." (Contat & Rybalka, p. 207).

The first edition of the work appeared in 2163 copies , out of which 8 were on "vergé antique blanc", numbered I-V and A-C (the last three being "hors commerce"), 105 were on "vélin pur fil Lafuma Navarre", numbered VI-CV and D-H (the last five being "hors commerce"), and 2.050 on "alfa Navarre", numbered 1-2050 (the last 50 being "hors commerce").

Contat & Rybalka 49/179.

Order-nr.: 34301