JEAN DUBUFFET.

Boreal Views. Copenhagen, August 10, 1961. Autograph manuscript signed, 5 pages in-4. Autograph manuscript with numerous erasures and corrections of this text published in the Cahiers du Collège de Pataphysique, n° 16, under the title of Faustroll pôle du milieu. It bears a signed autograph dispatch: "Petit souvenir pour la collection de Noël Arnaud avec l'amitié de J.D.". Contribution to the Vernian tribute paid by the Satrapes of the College of Pataphysics on the occasion of the centenary of the discovery of the North Pole by Captain Hatteras, protagonist of the novel by Jules Verne. In a perfectly pataphysical spirit, Dubuffet explores the notions of terrestrial rotation, "this gyrating movement" and the relativity of obliquity, describing all the tourist attractions that one would find in a residence at the North Pole. There is a contentment in removing notions that used to fence off our mental field and I am as sensitive to it as anyone else; those two old walls of north and south have been impatient with me for a long time and I in my great jig to greet their collapse. I know of no greater pleasure than to tear down walls and open the way to the wind. [...] There can be only one pole and that is the place where his Magnificence is found. [The north is the opposite of a point; it is immense, immeasurable, in time as in extent. Attached are the typescript with some autograph corrections of the text, as well as three versions, typed or in carbon copies, of a supplement to be inserted, dated Vence, September 1, 1961, with a proposal of three titles to choose from Faustroll seul pôle, Le pôle du milieu, Faustroll pôle du milieu. And an autograph note signed J. D. dated September 2, 1961. Dubuffet asks to keep only the last draft of this supplement "which is finally the one I am sending to Latis".