Description

IMPORTANT AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF A PASSAGE FROM HIS NOVEL FROM ONE CASTLE TO ANOTHER.
24 pages of first draft, primitive version not retained in the final printed text.
The manuscript, which is very elaborate, contains numerous, albeit slight, strikethroughs and additions that give access to the author's very first ideas, their selection and correction.

There are several developments on the luxury of Raumnitz's bedroom and on the Löwen contributors who write him denunciatory letters against each other (see the Pléiade edition, pp. 144 and 147-148), and extraordinary digressions on informers in general (in particular attacks on Sartre), on his cat Bébert, on their journey through Germany on fire...

"But they were too slumped over, too scared, too shivering, the collabos... and too riddled with scabies too, scratching themselves everywhere, they only thought of eating... scratching themselves... see the restaurant, they couldn't stand on their stools scratching, shaking, jumping... there wasn't only scabies... crabs and fleas and lice... oh, I know the Middle Ages very well, I can see what they were like... lords stuffing their faces with everything in their castles, I'm telling you, two-metre thick walls at the bottom of the towers, a whole swarm of nasty, snarling, pustule-ridden parasites rotten with commerce......" (pp. 633-634)

"Tartre didn't invent anything, nor Paulhan, nor Herold Paqui, nor Madeleine Jacob, they did everything just as well, even better at Siegmaringen - you can see my worst refugee collab crevans that I looked after, that I worked on day and night, all feverish, mangy, spitting blood.
You don't have to be Tartre or Mado Jacob, the anger and hatred I inspired in these poor people was just as sick as they were... I ate less than they did and I worked a lot harder, I couldn't stop...
For Tartre again, the hatred can be explained: he's a plagiarist impostor who's good at it (that's how I think), and the worst of these hatreds, the most truly demented, came to me above all from Tartres who are good at it, plagiarists, dilettante professors."(pp. 643 - 644)

Elegantly mounted manuscripts in a mottled paper album.