Description

FIRST EDITION.

ONE OF THE 830 NUMBERED EXAMPLES [ON ALFA] IN IN-8 FORMAT, (after 108 ex. in quarter tellière format), and among these one of the 30 non-commercial copies.

SIGNED AUTOGRAPH CONSIGNMENT :

"To Henri de Régnier
my serious tribute
Drieu La Rochelle."

Receipt of this copy enabled Henri de Régnier, then editor of Le Figaro, to write a review published on 6 March 1922:
"[…] The different child or teenage images in which he appears, he tries to draw them as exactly as possible. They do not cause him any tenderness and he does not feel any bias for them. Mr. Drieu la Rochelle does not seek in the reminder of his childhood a subject for daydreaming. He only wants to know about it.... […] Rather, it seems that he notes them on the blackboard in neat, almost mathematical formulas, in concise sentences, of a conciseness that is not without dryness and whose elliptical brevity often leads to real darkness. Nevertheless, under this stripping and in this desired nudity, one can sense in Mr. Drieu la Rochelle a talented writer who, one day, will be able to acquire more ease and flexibility and impose a fuller and more harmonious movement on his sentences. But, in the work he gives us, it is neither flexibility nor harmony. It's all about sincerity, and Mr. Drieu la Rochelle is most commendable to himself."

First autobiographical account, Registryfirst entitled History of my body, contains the phrase that has remained famous and that characterizes almost all of Drieu La Rochelle's work: "I want to tell a story, will I ever be able to tell anything other than my story?"

Copy well bound by Lavaux.