Description

FIRST EDITION.
ONE OF THE COPIES ON JAPAN, only large paper.

Inscribed and signed by the author repeating a passage from page 236:

"And millions of Suns,
from here we can see the whole thing in the form of a cloud of dust!...
Very respectfully written for Madame de Lipovatz.
Raymond Roussel

February 2, 1926, The Dust of Suns is being performed for the first time at the Théâtre Saint-Martin. A succession of very short scenes, the play is technically difficult.
to stage. But Roussel was so demanding that he promised the stagehands, at the dress rehearsal, an extra reward for every second they saved over the deadlines set for the set changes. Despite this demand, the play was very poorly received by the critics as a whole: "The short adventures are cut in the manner of epinal pictures. The curtain is lowered before the scenes are completed, and raised again only after the orchestra has played a series of false notes mixed with various noises". (Jean Prudhomme, Le Matin5 February 1926). This failure led to Roussel abandoning his writing for the stage once and for all, and the considerable cost of staging the play bankrupted him.

Hélène de Lipovatz, daughter of General de Lipovatz, was the wife of Prince Serge Yourievitch, a Russian sculptor and friend of Rodin, who had a solo exhibition in New York in 1931. He was also a researcher and announced in 1929 that he had discovered that the rhythmic movement of the human eye was autonomous!