Pierre Jean Jouve & Jean Paulhan, 1925-1961
Pierre Jean JouveJean Paulhan“Everything in my life is always tormented and very hard with some beautiful things”
Pierre Jean Jouve wrote in his “Journal sans date”, En Miroir (Mercure de France, 1954): “A worse day was the one on which I met Jean Paulhan, because we know the damage that ensued for a whole part of my work.” If the poet's editorial life, between 1925 and 1961, was partially in the hands of the director of La NRF, Jean Paulhan was perhaps, among his correspondents, the most able to understand the secret of his work: as evidenced by these 149 letters from a Jouve who was shady and anxious about the edition of his texts, as well as the 19 letters found from Paulhan (the others were destroyed by Jouve) and a book dedicated to Paulhan, but published by Grasset, Le Paradis perdu (1929).
First granting his full confidence to the man he called his friend, then becoming hyper-sensitive to any criticism – only Bernard Groethuysen, Gabriel Bounoure and Jean Wahl gave him some satisfaction at La NRF –, Jouve strove not to abandon his “continuous defensive position”, except during the time of the war, where he began with his interlocutor a dialogue of a new force, magnetized by the “sacred cause” of the Resistance.
Punctuated by several crises, ruptures and reconciliations whose movement ended abruptly in 1961, this corpus of 168 letters perhaps adds secrecy to the secret of Pierre Jean Jouve, if only because of the almost total absence of Jean Paulhan's voice. However, breaking up is not hating, it is suffering, asserts Jouve in En Miroir: “But who is responsible? Is it the tendency of rupture occurring without finesse, without cunning, without diplomacy – or is it the exceptional animosities which, especially in Parisian society, responded to my work and my existence? I will probably die not having found an answer.” This is one of the questions that Jouve seems to have asked Paulhan.
Edition established, prefaced and annotated by Muriel Pic (EHESS). A specialist in Pierre Jean Jouve, Muriel Pic published at the same time the essay she devoted to the author of Noces: Le Désir monster, Poétique de Pierre Jean Jouve (Éditions du Félin, released in November 2006).
• 253 pages. 13 x 21.5 cm. 31 illustrations and facsimiles n. & bl.
• Appendices: texts by Bernard Groethuysen, Gabriel Bounoure, Raymond Schwab, Jean Wahl, Pierre Jean Jouve (unpublished letter to Gabriel Bounoure), Balthus.
• Jovian bibliography. Index of Names and Titles cited.
• Collection “Correspondences of Jean Paulhan”
• Published with the assistance of the La Poste Foundation.
• Edition: 1,050 copies. Isbn: 2-912222-26-5
• Public sale price: €31
Publisher : Claire Paulhan