Paul ÉLUARD (1895-1952). Manuscript partly autograph and signed, Guernica, [1949]; 6 pages small in-4 (22x17cm) on 6 ff. of squared and perforated paper, the last page entirely autograph (small repair to f.5). Commentary for the film Guernica directed by Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens in 1950, based on Pablo Picasso's painting inspired by the bombing of the town of Guernica; this commentary takes up important passages from his poem La Victoire de Guernica, written while Picasso was producing his painting exhibited at the Spanish Pavilion of the Paris International Exhibition in 1937 (poem published in Cahiers d'art in 1937 and collected in 1944 in Au rendez-vous allemand). This text by Paul Éluard, voiced by Maria Casarès and Jacques Pruvost in the film, was published in the magazine Europe in December 1949; it was republished in the tribute to Éluard (after the poet's death) in Lettres françaises on November 27, 1952, page 8, with a reproduction of the 1st page of our document. It was later collected in Le Poète et son ombre (Seghers, 1963) and later in the Œuvres complètes (Pléiade, t.II, p.913-917). The text begins: "Guernica. It's a small town in Vizcaya, the traditional capital of the Basque Country. It was here that the Oak Tree stood, the sacred symbol of Basque traditions and freedoms [...]. On April 26, 1937, market day, in the early afternoon hours, German planes in the service of Franco bombed Guernica for three and a half hours [...] The town was completely burnt down and razed to the ground. Two thousand people died, all civilians; the purpose of the bombing was to test the combined effects of explosive and incendiary bombs on a civilian population"... The present document is the double carbon in violet of the first 5 pages of the original manuscript, written in pencil (it appeared in 2016 in catalog 143 of our bookshop Les Autographes, no. 195, and was acquired by the Musée d'art et d'histoire Paul Éluard de Saint-Denis). Paginated in red pencil from 1 to 6, this double was prepared for publication in Europe and bears autograph annotations and corrections in black ink by Paul Éluard, with the last page redone entirely in his own handwriting. At the top, Éluard has added the title and subtitle: "Guernica (Commentaire pour un film d'après le tableau de Picasso)" in his own handwriting; he has also made typographical separation marks, and added this note at the bottom of the 1st page: "bien marquer les séparations indiquées [...] il en y a 14" [the manuscript included 8 numbered sequences, the nos of which have been crossed out here]. An autograph verse is added on page 2: "Pauvres visages sacrifiés" [Poor sacrificial faces]; two autograph corrections are made on pages 3 and 4. The last page is entirely autograph, in black ink. It includes 10 lines: "Monuments of distress, [...] You are the subjects of worms and crows/ And yet you were our quivering hope"; then the conclusion: "Under the dead wood of the Guernica oak, on the ruins of Guernica, under the pure sky of Guernica, a man has returned, who carried in his arms a bleating kid, and in his heart a dove. He sings for all other men the pure song of rebellion, which says thank you to love, which says no to oppression. [...] He says that Guernica, like Oradour and Hiroshima, are the capitals of living peace. Their nothingness is a protest louder than terror itself. A man sings, a man hopes. And the hornets of his pain move away into the hardened azure. And the bees of his songs have still made their honey in the hearts of men. Guernica! innocence will overcome crime. Guernica!"