Lot n° 143
Estimation :
800 - 1000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 1 280EUR
Anne Desclos, known as Dominique AURY (1907-1998). Autograph - Lot 143
Anne Desclos, known as Dominique AURY (1907-1998). Autograph manuscript, Un village et son maquis, 1944; 55 pages in-8, on blue-green paper.
La vie d'un village et d'un maquis sous l'Occupation (Life in a village and a maquis during the Occupation), by the future author of Histoire d'O.
Manuscript, with erasures and corrections, of an account published in Les Lettres Françaises on October 21, 1944, illustrated by Bernard Milleret. It presents some differences with the published text. The village may be that of Launoy, in Seine-et-Marne, where Anne Desclos' parents had acquired a house before the war. The first 11 pages of the manuscript have not been published: they tell of Aimé's arrest (who will be found tortured and murdered) and the departure of three boys from the village to join the maquis, as the Germans retreat to the North and East: "The beautiful German army of 1940, which proudly hung its red flag marked with the Nazi spider on the facades of the town halls in the villages that the exodus and the bombings had devastated, was stealthily returning in the wee hours of the morning, slipping away by circuitous routes when everything was sleeping under the moon. Bernard leaves with "a blanket, a sweater, a quarter, a bit of string, a knife, a few eggs: what the scouts take to go camping, what children take to go play Redskins in the woods. Bernard was almost forty years old, but on his face that evening, one could see an unknown childhood emerging. In the maquis, farm boys, rebels, "the butcher, the truck driver, the teacher, the masons, the gendarmes, the locals and the people next door, those from the water's edge, those from the farms lost on the plateau - in all, more than eighty men. The published account begins by recalling the four years of resistance and the night when the men gathered, retrieved weapons from a grave in the cemetery and went into hiding in caves in the marl, while the Germans passed and passed again on the roads. After 4 days, a team from the maquis surprised 3 German officers at their meal and arrested them. A second expedition with three cars and a truck, "with the men in clusters on the running boards. All with their armbands" set the village abuzz, and arrested the German soldiers and two militiamen: "They joined in one of the caves of the maquis the petinist collaborators of the first and last hour, piled up, jumbled up. [...] It was these caves that gave the maquis an inaccessible character, a refuge out of time. But the Germans were still cracking down: a few kilometers away, "about twenty guys had been arrested in the neighboring farms, and savagely beaten in the school hall. Despite the closed windows, the screams could be heard in the square, and the walls of the room were open with blood. An eighteen-year-old child had been shot. Every hamlet could be Oradour"... Another passage has remained unpublished, describing the panic of the enemy troops lost on the roads, like game that questions "in vain the ground and the wind. But the peasants know that nothing is as dangerous as a herd of stalked boars, which turn around", and the women making flags with pieces of cloth in the colors of the Allies (p. 32 to 37 of the manuscript). The flowers are no longer picked in the gardens: they are saved for the Americans who arrive one stormy day, picked up in the rain with flowers and tears. Then the leader of the maquis settled in the village and informed the American officers, whose troops were going to cross the Seine, after hard fighting. Once the Seine was crossed, "the entire maquis went down to the village. The whole village took out its flags [...] Few spectacles were more touching than this parade of a handful of men without uniforms, armed with machine guns and rifles, and who smiled at their wives and children. Four of them remained at the town hall to ensure the interim between the Vichy people and the new administration. In the manuscript, one page describes their activities: finding supplies for Paris, starting up the threshing machines again, investigating collaborators, keeping an eye on the roads, etc. And Lucien comes to announce the death of his brother Aimé; "everything ended like in the legends [...] by blood, silently and secretly poured, by flags and by songs [...] How long will the memory of their song last, how long will the echo last: They are from the maquis, those of the Resistance".
Enclosed is the issue of Lettres françaises dated October 21, 1944, with the published text; and a postcard a.s. from the English writer James Stern (June 15, 1939, in English) to Anne Desclos, regretting that she does not want to publish his books.
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