Description

FIRST EDITION ILLUSRATED with 33 full-page lithographs by Jean Piaubert These poems were published underground during the Occupation under the pseudonym Jean Noir.
Published by Editions de Minuit and Editions Hune, limited to 200 numbered copies on Rives vellum plus a few numbered copies in Roman numerals reserved for collaborators.

Copy V with two signed autograph letters, one from Jean Cassou and the other from Jean Piaubert:

"To General Bank
to "Mathilde
his faithful and cordial comrade
Jean Cassou

"in tribute to General Bank
J. Piaubert

During the Second World War, General Bank commanded the 13th Brigade of American Field Artillery, and was also behind the creation of the status of painter in the armed forces.

"I was arrested for Resistance activity by the Vichy police on 13 December 1941 in Toulouse, in the unoccupied zone, and held incommunicado in the military prison there with the other comrades from our network who were caught with me. [...] no walks in the courtyard, no visits, no paper to write on, no correspondence and no reading. […] From the very first night, to pass the time, I set about composing sonnets in my head, this strict form of prosody seeming to me the most appropriate for such an exercise in purely cerebral composition and memory..."

(Monod, 2343 - Vigne, 19)