RIMBAUD Arthur. LA CHASSE SPIRITUELLE. Paris, Mercure de France, 1949. Introduction by Pascal Pia. In-4 (240 x 187 mm) of 58-[6] pp. paperback. First edition of the most famous of Rimbaud's pastiches, whose publication by Pascal Pia without the authors' knowledge gave rise to a scandal of which La Hune was the epicenter. A copy of Flagrant Délit by André Breton, now in the Kandinsky Library, bears this autograph message: "à mon cher Bernard Gheerbrant, dans les jardins de qui se dénonce cette fausse Chasse non sans un assez beau tableau inattendu." One of 3,000 copies on Johannot pur fil (n°686). Autograph letter signed: "Pour La Hune, le monde: les marchants, les naïfs. To Rimbaud. Nicolas Bataille, Akakia Viala (the authors)." "What an uproar! The next day I received Breton's famous letter: 'There isn't a true Rimbaldian whose emotion, on discovering the literary page of Combat this morning, didn't immediately turn to disquiet, and soon after to indignation...'. If that was comforting, I was at least copiously taken to task for having immediately put it in the window. Nobody bothered to read the book, everyone wanted to know how it had been found. I couldn't care less. I was then visited by Akakia-Viala and Nicolas Bataille. Neighbors of our collaborator Suziel Bonnet on the rue Lepic, she had dragged her accomplice to La Hune for consolation and help: they had made a pastiche in revenge for the bad-faith criticism they had received during their theatrical adaptation of Une saison en enfer. And now this farce had been turned against them, and, to add insult to injury, their text was printed under the caduceus of the very publisher of Illuminations! It was becoming a drama! [...] I decided to summon all the actors and journalists who had been following the affair to a press conference at La Hune, to allow the authors of the pastiche to prove their case. Patatras! My windows were about to be torn to shreds on Tuesday May 24th, and I quickly asked Mr. Cazes to receive all these excited people on the second floor of Lipp. And so it was. This memorable evening, according to the Mercure de France's stenographic account, ended with Nicolas Bataille asking Rimbaldian Rolland de Renéville: "Now, Monsieur, that you've seen our drafts, what do you think? - The drafts are convincing." The quarrel did not end, however. On June 4, Samedi soir ran the headline: Rimbaud fera couler du sang à La Hune? " Bernard Gheerbrant, À La Hune, CNAM/Centre Pompidou, p. 50-51.