Catherine Pozzi & Jean Paulhan, 1926-1934
Catherine PozziJean PaulhanCorrespondence Jean Paulhan & Catherine Pozzi, 1926-1934
On the subject of Catherine Pozzi (1882-1934), Jean Paulhan wrote to the young Dominique de Roux, around 1963: “Karin Pozzi was a tall young woman, graceful and ugly, who was the wife of É[douard] Bourdet, the mother of Claude B[ourdet] and the mistress of Valéry (to whom the poem “la grande amour…” is addressed) She did not write other poems than these, but a sort of metaphysical essay: Peau d’âme (by Buchet) and two or three notes which appeared in the nrf (one on Julien Lanoë). Ah, and an admirable story, Agnès (nrf). » Almost forty years earlier, Jean Paulhan, recently appointed editor-in-chief of La Nouvelle Revue Française, had made the acquaintance of this fragile and tuberculous, enigmatic and haughty woman – then the mistress of Paul Valéry – who had just refused to sign his first published text with her name, Agnès. From the complicated encryption of the early days (1926-1927) to the evasions of the proven writer (1930-1932), to the tensions and misunderstandings (1932-1934) around an unfinished work by Catherine Pozzi, Peau d'Âme, this cross-correspondence between a hypersensitive author and his pressing and intrigued editor makes us understand the growing difficulty of a relationship that his Journal 1913-1934 already showed: each new writing by Catherine Pozzi, sent “to the friend, not to the great Director”, is the occasion of a new crisis of mutual incomprehension. “There are so many reasons to write, besides publishing,” explained Catherine Pozzi to Jean Paulhan, in her letter of June 10, 1931. For example, to exalt consciousness, attention; trace a path; his way; destroy; grow. And everything comes back to a certain form of life, which is the work par excellence, and from which, perhaps, the written thing would stand out more naturally and less perceptibly if it were admitted that life was in fact the work. This opinion is, moreover, out of fashion, Athenian as it may be.
• Text established, introduced, annotated and “epilogued” by Françoise Simonet-Tenant. “Correspondences of Jean Paulhan” collection.
• Crossed timeline. Bibliographies of C. Pozzi & J. Paulhan. Appendices. Index of names and titles cited. Portrait of C. Pozzi by Jean Marchand. Portrait of J. Paulhan by Paul-Émile Bécat. Letters and documents reproduced in facsimiles.
• First edition, in April 1999. Edition of 800 copies on ivory Centaure 90 g., under salmon-filled cover.
• 13 x 21.5 cm. 216 pages. ISBN: 2-912222-06-0.
• Public sale price: €23.
Publisher : Claire Paulhan